Hi Phil,

Nice work! Congrats.

On the splash screen, the pink words have a white fuzz around them. I
couldn't figure out if it was s'posed to be a "glow" effect or if the
image had been anti-aliased for a white background. You might want to
clean that up a bit.

On the contents page, the nav frame contains 2 x &nbsp - you probably
forgot the ; at the end. If you can't get the black curve to work, just
make the frame bgs black and make do with a black L-shape. It will look
more professional in the end.

With a few minor adjustments, you could easily get the site to work for
640x480 - a good idea since many people still use that res.

In the main frame, I didn't like the lefthand image - maybe I'm just a
prude ;) On the other hand, perhaps a more gradual transition from the
romantic pics to the suckface pics would be appropriate. This obviously
posed-for-effect pic didn't give me a great impression of what the company
offers (One-Night-Stands-R-Us?).

In fact, taking a quick look through the site, the photos are very
obviously posed pics of models - none of them are of "real" people -
they're all young, white, straight and very good-looking. Does the company
not cater for those who are a little older, darker or plainer? If this is
the look that the company goes for, there's not too much you can do about
it, but as a propective client I would find it very off-putting.

Again on the pics, I'm not sure that the mix of cartoon-style and
photographs works for me. They look very different. I don't think the
cartoons are really appropriate for this type of site - they don't give a
slick, professional feel.

Since I've already condemned the photos, you might be thinking: well what
*does* she want then? I'd like to see colour pics (B&W - even colourised -
in this context gives a cold feeling) of real, happy-looking people (or a
reasonable facsimile thereof ;) - and more diversity! Some plain, some
beautiful, old and young, dark and light, even a same-sex couple if the
company is daring enough.

One problem I had on every section was that the name of the section was
not displayed. If you click on something and then do something else while
the page loads, you often can't remember what you clicked on, if the page
doesn't tell you. Perhaps use the mauve bar for that.

On the TOC page, I had no idea where the "next" link would take me.
Perhaps "next" is a little too vague a label. It implies another contents
page. In fact the navigation was quite confusing - perhaps because of the
lack of page headers.

I don't think the style of the leading cap (is that the right term?) suits
the site. I would use a more modern font.

Under Compatability, compat1.gif looks as though it hasn't finished
loading - perhaps straighten the bottom edge or add a partial border.

Under More Than... the text on the images is not distinct enough - either
remove it or make it stand out more. Perhaps remove it, since you haven't
used it anywhere else.

I don't see any obvious "about the company" or "contact us" sections -
could be a problem on a commercial site. I'd like to know who they are,
how long they've been around, etc. After all, this is not like getting
your windows cleaned!

I would also condense the content onto fewer pages. You need to achieve a
good ratio between how long the page took to download and how long it will
take to read. I am finding the the former is longer than the latter.

As for the time estimate thing - you're not alone! I've been building
sites for 3 years and I still have a problem making accurate estimates.

To sum up - my main problems were the pics (not your choice) and the
navigation (fairly easy to improve on) - I think you've done a great job
with the material you have.

I looked at the site with Opera 3.50 beta 11.

That's all I have time for now - HTH
- Lynnsey

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR ***********

On 12/18/98, at 3:23 PM, C and P wrote: 

>Hi all
>
>I have just completed (except for filling in a few alt tags, width height
>tags etc) my first ever contracted, PAID site.  YAY!  It is for a singles
>dating service, based here in Toronto.  To test it I have put it onto a
>xoom account:  http://members.xoom.com/enigmatize
>
>Would some of you be so kind as to take a look and tell me what you see?
>How is the layout?  Navigation?  DL time?  Design?  etc etc.  Please
>include all your specs. :)
>
>All the graphics, except the main logo, were provided via mac disks (I
use
>a PC grrrr) in black and white .eps format.  They were all very large,
some
>around 20 MB, so I have had to resize and retouch most of them.  I
couldn't
>handle the black and white so I have coloured them all.  Please tell me
>what you think of this...  black and white is ok, but there is just too
>many of them... what do you think?
>
>Another thing I could use some info on is time.  It took me approx. 30hrs
>from when I got the disks and hardcopy to where I am now.  Do you think
>this is an acceptable time frame for the results?  I had to make a few
>graphics, basically anything that isnt a photo or a cartoon, and had to
>retouch the rest.  I have a few more contracts lined up for January... I
>want to start to prepare quotes but the time frame for a site is what I
>have trouble with...
>
>Ok that's it,
>
>thanks guys!
>phil.

l y n n s e y   s k l i r o s
                      m o b i l e   t e l e p h o n e   n e t w o r k s

The mind of the bigot is like the pupil of the eye; the more light you
pour upon it, the more it will contract. -- Oliver Wendell Holmes

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