Need Comments on Redesigned Site

[Zarrock God of Evil]

I just relaunchedZarrock's Dark Realms, my unofficial FR mod, and Zarrock's Dragonstar as sister sites. Before I sound official announcements on various boards, I'd like to hear some general feedback on mainly the design (all comments are welcome though). I'm especially curious if users with lower resolutions have difficulty navigating and using the site.

My RttToEE campaign site will follow shortly, rounding up the trio...

Thanks for your time.

-Zarrock

 

[Drawmack]

Frames are a bad idea. They do not allow people to bookmark individual pages. You're much better off to use templates and shtml or a site mamangement tool like frontpage.

If you're going to use images for your menu then you really should go the extra mile and make them rollovers. You should also use the alt tag for the images. This way if the images don't load for any reason the person still knows what the links do.

Instead of all that text telling me what the logo does how about a simple home link?

Not too bad though.

My personal suggestion:
Incorporate the header and the menu into the pages and use that cool bacground for the entire site.

 

[Zarrock God of Evil]

Frames are a bad idea. They do not allow people to bookmark individual pages. You're much better off to use templates and shtml or a site mamangement tool like frontpage.

If you're going to use images for your menu then you really should go the extra mile and make them rollovers. You should also use the alt tag for the images. This way if the images don't load for any reason the person still knows what the links do.

Instead of all that text telling me what the logo does how about a simple home link?

Not too bad though.

My personal suggestion:
Incorporate the header and the menu into the pages and use that cool bacground for the entire site.

Thanks. The logo home idea is an old idea that I've used for many years. I'll consider incorporating a home link instead.
I used to have roll-over images - but removed them since I thought they were becoming outdated and I wanted to keep it simpler.

I'll probably throw in the alt tags when I get the time to do it - would be useful I digress.

I use Notepad and Dreamweaver combined to do my texting, so Frontpage would be a step back I guess - but I'll look into the possibility of integrating the navbar and titlebar into the documents - but that would take me some time. Maybe there's another way around to allow deep linking? Anyway I think frames is really a much-debated topic - some people love them (like me) others hate them. I think I'll collect a few more opinions on this particular topic.

I was wondering, what parts of the site do you mean should also use the red background (thought I used it everywhere)? (I'm glad you like it - some people I've spoken to hate textured backgrounds )

Thanks for the comment - it's all appreciated, so I can gain a picture of what people want.

-Zarrock

 

[gariig]

Dreamweaver MX has site management....

Gariig

 

[Zarrock God of Evil]

Dreamweaver MX has site management....

Gariig

Good - that's what I use (though I was trained in DW3 and notepad years back and I'm still getting to learn the new features). So far I haven't had problems with the use of frames and a few webdesigners I know are quite fond of them as well. Does anyone else have problems with frames?

-Zarrock

 

[Nifft]

I dislike Frames, but don't have a problem with them if they're very well done -- inobtrusive, etc. The reason I dislike them is that they're seldom very well done.

The colors of the Dark Realms site are jarring. I much prefer the cool, friendly tones of the DS site.

-- Nifft

 

[Zarrock God of Evil]

I dislike Frames, but don't have a problem with them if they're very well done -- inobtrusive, etc. The reason I dislike them is that they're seldom very well done.

The colors of the Dark Realms site are jarring. I much prefer the cool, friendly tones of the DS site.

-- Nifft

Yeah - I think that's most people's problems with frames - I've seen some horrible examples of how bad you can implement them myself. I'll be playing around with frame borders tomorrow I think, but unless many users have problems with navigation and/or viewing it at lower resolutions, this problem has lower priority for me.

Seems I'm getting myself into trouble with these questions here, though - adding to the confusion anyway. I designed the DS site colours because a friend of mine told me that the human psychology responds well to large white spaces (explaining most modern company website looks - especially banks). Glad you liked the DS site, though - I actually considered changing it's colour theme since I have had fears that it is to "cold".

On the other hand the colour theme of the Dark Realms site was well-received when it was first launched back in 1999 (this site uses considerably smaller graphics and is much simpler - even though much of the framework remains). It's curious how different opinions you can get when it comes to colour themes. The main reason for the black, red and gold theme is, however, that these are the main colours used by the god Zarrock (central evil power of most of my campaigns) and his minions and servants (well - that and I'm a sucker for black/red. Always loved that colour combination).

-Zarrock

 

[haiiro]

[Puts on pontificating hat]

I would avoid frames at all costs. The amount of work you may save by using them is outweighed by the amount of frustration they are likely to generate among visitors. Unless your site is intended to transcend or explore the boundaries of the medium (like demian.5's <a href="http://www.demian5.com/" target="blank">When I Am King</a>, for example), don't use frames.

Should you decide to stick with frames, however, check out this article on <a href="http://www.alistapart.com/stories/frames/" target="blank">making frames more manageable and user-friendly</a>. It's from an excellent web design site called <a href="http://www.alistapart.com/" target="blank">A List Apart</a>, which also offers a lot of other useful articles.

I agree with all of Drawmack's other points as well.

The color scheme for your Dragonstar site is much easier on the eyes than the one used for Dark Realms, and looks more professional to boot. When your content consists primarily of text, making it as easy to read as possible is important -- i.e., dark text on light background, or light text on dark background. Yellow on red looks fairly cool, but won't be much fun after you've read through several screens of text.

[Takes off pontificating hat]

You've clearly put a lot of work into these sites -- as well as what's on them -- and it shows. Overall, they're both pretty good.

 

[Nifft]

(well - that and I'm a sucker for black/red. Always loved that colour combination).

I have no issue with the black. It's the red, and the blue-on-red of hyperlinks, that's jarring. Tone down (darken and/or de-saturate) the red and I have no issue with the color scheme.

I've seen plenty of well-done black-background sites. The thing to remember is that your text has to be easy to read, so no graphics under text and always keep a high contrast between text and background colors.

-- Nifft

 

[Zarrock God of Evil]

I have no issue with the black. It's the red, and the blue-on-red of hyperlinks, that's jarring. Tone down (darken and/or de-saturate) the red and I have no issue with the color scheme.

I've seen plenty of well-done black-background sites. The thing to remember is that your text has to be easy to read, so no graphics under text and always keep a high contrast between text and background colors.

-- Nifft

Blue-on-red? The server must be slow on updates - I changed the hyperlinks to a brownish colour before the final launch yesterday. I'll go check it out.

I'll try to play around with the red a bit.

-Zarrock