What do you think of my site's new design ?

[Maciamo]

Hi all !

I've been working on improving the design of Maciamo Japan recently. I've only recently started to meddle with Dreamweaver and Flash.

What do you think of these 3 designs for the home page ?

http://maciamo.tripod.com/

http://maciamo.tripod.com/fr/index.html

http://maciamo.tripod.com/fr/index2.html

The 2 last are in French, but I actually lpan to have a different design for each of the 4 languages of the site.

Thanks for your feedback !:p

[vvx]

Do you really expect me to resize my display to 800x600 and start using IE?

[Pizzicatoblue]

I like the second one better.

[Maciamo]

Do you really expect me to resize my display to 800x600 and start using IE?

Not if you tell me how to resize it in another definition and adapt it to other browser. What do you use ?

[cstaylor]

Just a few style points:

- Lose the background image, as it tiles in a nasty way on my 1600x1200 screen
- The Aqua buttons are nice, but do you really need to use Flash for rollover? You could do the same with Javascript and lower your user requirements
- Ditch the animated GIFs... they were cool when Netscape was the only game in town, but they look kind of last decade these days
- Move your awards to a special "about this site" page or "awards" page... they add too much clutter
- Hit counters are not very useful

[groovewonder]

It is very, very crowded. Nobody needs that many graphics on one page. Clean it up.

[camelys]

The layout and design doesn't really seem that professional, it looks more like a personal website than something you would use to provide information. The images all appear really cluttered on the main page, I'd try to use more text and less images to keep it simple.

[GomiGirl]

Why are you promoting IE? You on commission from $MS? They really don't need the help..

I use Safari browser mainly - but IE when I absolutely have to.. (like when I need to cut and paste in S-JIS). IE is just too damn fat and heavy IMHO

So things just don't look right with the graphic links etc..

Keep it simple.. it is really busy..

[vvx]

I'll let others talk about it being crowded etc.. but, browser? If you're going to maintain a webpage, the least you can do is see how it looks in other browsers. Opera and Mozilla are two good ones to get, as many smaller ones are based on Mozilla and Opera (free downloads) .. well, there's not a whole lof oe people who use Opera but nice to see how it looks in a variety of pages. I think what you'll find is your page looks about the same in most browsers (and you could then drop the IE comment.)

If for some reason, it doesn't look the same in all the browsers, what you have is probably wrong html code. Investigate and see if there's something obvious to fix.

As for resolution, it seems your main problem is with that background image? If you don't want to lose it, you could do something a little bit un-proper (but I do it, so how bad can it be? ) and set the background to be a table background. (I think that's not proper html, but all the browsers seem to support it.) You can then set the table dimensions to width = 800pixels or whatver, and center the table. Anyone with a large 1600x1200 browser will see black borders past that frame.

My page with a background image in a table data field --> http://www.inod3.net (there's no content to speak of as of yet..) the site menu thingy on the left uses the image as a background.

[Maciamo]

Thanks for your feedback.

I've worked a lot on a new design (copying a little bit on other sites ) and here is what I get :

http://maciamo.tripod.com/

It's completely different for the home page, but other pages stay the same so far.

What do you think now ?

[groovewonder]

MUCH better!!!

[Big Booger]

The page loads slow and I am on a fiber connection. You might want to consider the fact that there are many who are on dialup. Kill those animated images. No need really IMHO.

But you have started in the right direction. Nice work.

[GomiGirl]

Much better.. I am on fibre too and have no trouble loading it. But BB is right to say that you should kill the animated gif's. Very last year!!

[GargoyleTS]

Gomi, don't you dare tell him its all aout Flash now! I swear if I see one more all flash site I am gonna turn off the internet! Ok, maybe not, but I will cry and you'll feel guilty for making me cry and you don't want to feel guilty now do you?

OTOH, the GIF's are a touch annoying. NTM once you decide you like what you've got, get a real hosting account. The extra banners and pop-ups are a serious turn-off. If you really like the GIF's, mabye try and script a mouse-over that loads the GIF when passed over instead of all the time. And no, I don't know how to do it. I only look at the web, I don't make it.

[Big Booger]

I like a simple design. Maybe a subtle flash banner.. Mouse over effects..

BUt the animated gifs become a distraction from the content. They also can get old quick. If you plan on users routinely visiting your site, you might want to consider axing the animated gifs.

But from your first design it is a 1000% improvement. About the tripod account, you can pay their $4.95 fee per month to remove the banners, and get more bandwidth and space. I have a tripod account and it has a bandwidth limitation, http://www.bigbooger.tk

As you can see I am over my bandwidth and that is what happens. I will soon be upgrading the site to a paid account so the bandwidth improves.

Another thing you can do to lower bandwidth consumption is to open up several tripod accounts and link them together. 1 account per page. YOu have a lot of storage space and you spread the bandwidth out over the pages.

Good luck with your site.