Interesting idea

Karen Cardinal — Tue, 23 Jul 2002 15:28:36 +0000

I think you have an interesting idea here although I'm a little confused about a couple things...

First: Is there a reason why the navigation bar needs to be 1024x768? It looks like the text to the right of your logo could easily be set up on a percentage basis to look good on all sizes.
Of course, I'm not sure if you have control over that element.

Second: About your graphics, you could spice them up by simply printing them out, redrawing them (tracing and coloring them).
Personally I would love to see them redrawn by one of your semi-artistic children you have there. I think that would add a lot of personality to them.

Lastly: You could seperate the "kids side" from the "parents side" of the site by simply using different colors on the backgrounds.
I think it would look best if the layout was the same, but you could have the kids section using a primary color sceme and the parents section in more muted tones.
Something like this could bring this section together... which you want to do, since both sides are part of the same section.

One more thing: If you would really like to host some games on your own site, you could send me an email and I'll let you know where I found many of the javascript, java applet, and shockwave games I'm using for the site I made for my son (he's .

Like I said, I think you have an interesting idea here. I would just like to see more personality and unity to this part of your site.

IanD — Tue, 23 Jul 2002 10:58:25 +0000

Thanks for your reply

The horizontal scrollbar you're getting in 800x600 from the navigation bar is part of the entire site (it was designed for 1024x768). I didn't design that part of the site, though, I'm just working on the KidsTown site. I didn't see that when I checked the site in 800x600, though, so if you think it's something different feel free to send me a screenshot and I'll check it out.

The two graphics on the intro page are photographs, so that's why they look a bit washed out. The boy is "missing" a leg because the lighting was reflecting off of him (he's a cardboard cutout with a reflective surface) when the photo was taken. I don't know that much about photo editing, so I didn't know how to make it look better. (It wasn't as noticable in the original, but after I change the background of the jpeg to match the background color of the site it showed up more.)

I don't want to remove the arrows that aren't used, just to keep a consistent look, but I did add a "Page X of 4" to all of those frames.

We wanted to put some games on the site (because it's for kids), but I'm just a beginner with Flash, so I couldn't make any.

The parents' site is supposed to look like a different site. I've added an Apex link to the kids' site. There's allready one in the Links section of the parents' site. But, since it's the only link right now do you think I should just replace the links section on the navigation bar to one link to the Apex site?

Thanks for all the suggestions, they were very helpful

One cocern I had is loading time, because of all the graphics. If anyone has a dial-up connection, did it take too long to load? I tried to keep it down using thumbnails (parents' site) and preloaders (kids' site).

The Webmistress — Tue, 23 Jul 2002 07:13:56 +0000

I'm getting a huge horizontal scrollbar at 800*600 caused by the table being set at width="975". The graphics are a bit washed out looking and why has the boy got a leg missing? On the Kids site, when you have arrows take off the forward arrow when you are onto the last page as it's not clear then that there isn't any more on that section. I thought that the games would open as part of this site not as an external link. On the parents part it looks like it goes to a different site, I think you either need a bit of continuity throughout both or have definite designs for each sections linking back to the main Apex site.