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I've switched from white to black, and from arial to trebuchet, and re-layed out pretty much the whole site - I'm just wondering if anyone gets a chance to have a look at it, whether it looks readable and well layed out to you. It all seems fine on my PC, but you always wonder how it appears on different screen sizes, browsers, etc.

Cheers,

Ric.

Link below >

Looks great Ric; it's easy to navigate, not too cluttered, and loads pretty quick. I also like the look of your work.

-Keith

I agree, very nice. Google Ads are the most prominent thing there though



I LOVE your music work. Very Sony Playstation 1998ish. Nostalgia

Ric,

I never saw ths previous one, but this one looks very professional.

Best.

If anything, the reflection on the cd-boxes ends a bit abruptly. The focal point of the site is indeed the ads, which is rather painful - but nevertheless, the overall design is nice. I kinda dislike the low contrast between the fonts and background.

Thanks guys - that's very useful feedback.

Looks nice. This is probably me just nit-picking, but the gradient should be a little stronger on the reflections as they don't quite fade out completely. (i have a bright monitor though) And the perspective-look of the boxes isn't right. You show the side of the boxes, yet the bottom isn't angled back any to indicate that you aren't looking straight on.

Nice design.
I quite enjoyed the music samples.

Oh and Ric, my apologies for forgetting to mention it and only listing the things I didn't like: overall, the site does look quite nice . Just some minor fixes or changes and you've got one pretty site there.

tad too dark or my likes, your logo is also too close to the alienware one.

the google adverts also make it look like it's hosted on a free host site... I know that these things get money in; but I'd be surprised if it was much or that people will apreciate having such crap in their face.

I know that adverts on a site put me off to a point where I'll just stop using it most of the time. It often really puts me off here, cause they're sodding everywhere... and for a company that is supposidly successful just not really any excuse imo

also it is a little too plain as far as a website goes, again screams "cheap" from the get go; while the nice package graphics distract from that a bit, you're back in when you start reading again.

your copyright, doesn't really cover you if someone steals your stuff; as well as a TOS and Privacy Policy are really needed again to legally protect yourself. always think "down-the-line".

no-fixed width text is also a big no-no. means it won't appear the same on all resolutions; always try to keep to a 720x350 viewspace mentality... the height isn't so much of an issue but width is.

make sure it supports the lowest people are likely to use (Windows XP and Vista this is 800x600 minus menus and boarders)

embed videos, there are plenty of free: Flash, Silverlight, Soap.. things for embedding videos without degridating quality.
In-fact Silverlight actually compresses extremely well, is highly adaptable and microsoft offers free hosting space meaning it doesn't use your own bandwidth.

additional menus try to keep as sub-menus without replacing the main one; as it'll confuse navigation.

try to keep features of something as bullet-points, perhaps linked to a hover-over swapper to show what each feature does.

screenshot systems are also plentiful (some very good silverlight, flash and javascript ones) that'll allow you to put a band someone an expand without opening a new page. make use of these as people enjoy being able to view something quickly.

while you want to keep people on your site longer as it means they're more likely to purchase something; you have to do it without forcing it upon them. make it something that peaks their interest to keep checking things out.

huge images at the top of pages without any text for example =!good
pretty hooks someone, but they need to also quickly get into what something is about.

provide some news as well (easiest way is implimenting a blog system like wordpress) so people can keep up to date, especially good if the blog is tied to an RSS Feed.

@Raven: thank you for your advice - very thorough! I will take on board what you said. The logo is similar to the Alienware logo - I hadn't realised that. I've never seen their website before, so it is completely coincidental. It's different enough that I don't think I would get into trouble though, and as we are aiming at different markets I think it's unlikely to confuse many people - so I think I'm going to keep my logo.

I did ponder for a while about whether to go for fixed width or adjustable width. I agree that it needs to look the same on all monitors - but the problem with fixing the width is that it doesn't look the same on all monitors, in that it looks nice and compact on a small monitor, but on a 1600x1200 scree for example, you get a narrow column down the centre with massive gaps either side. The TGC site is adjustable, and I think it works. I'll ponder some more. Thanks for your input.

@Phaelax: yes - I just realised that the reflections look quite different if I turn my brightness up. With my normal settings they fade quite smoothly. And you're right about the perspective - think I need to try playing with the skew tool in Paintshop.

Looks good.