Melter — Sun, 09 Feb 2003 19:51:51 +0000

I've made some changes on one of the pages to stop the text look like it's floating. Any comments before I alter all the pages?
authoretica - test page

hclear — Mon, 03 Feb 2003 17:08:56 +0000

i like it, very simple color scheme, easy and relaxed, just right for reading, simple links and easy going, i really like it and it has a different touch to it.cool 9/10

Melter — Fri, 24 Jan 2003 23:12:55 +0000

Thanks fifeclub the contact addresses are now clickable.

fifeclub — Fri, 24 Jan 2003 21:21:23 +0000

Very nice stylish header. Thou it feels somewhat disconnected from the rest of the site. I don't know if a thin bounding border or a slightly lighter shade background behind the content would help.

On the authors, links, and contact pages you place the "directions" on the right side column. That works fine for links and contact because they don't really need explaination, it doesn't work for me on the authors section. I mean, I know what's going on but natural workflow causes me to start on the topleft... that's where the alphabet-tagets should be. And right away I was confused by SF and ALT wondering what that meant. I'd swap sides.

On the contact page the email addresses aren't clickable. I see that if you read the expalaination below that the word "here" is clickable, but I think that it would be better the other way around. As soon as I see the address I know whether I want to click it (which I can't) so I don't need to read what's below it. It's just human nature that if you list a full email address that you'd assume to click on it.

But the site looks good. Very smooth and stylish.

Melter — Fri, 24 Jan 2003 13:37:19 +0000

Megan: The only reason I added some commentary is that with their only being 20 authors listed so far news on them is a bit thin on the ground, and I didn't want the first page that greets people to look too bare. And I didn't want to add anymore authors in case I needed to make any drastic changes to the site. But I take note and you won't find anymore commentary being added.

The point about the reviews is that I need ppl to send them in (I've had two so far) therefore these pages would be empty until that happens, so rather than give ppl a blank page to look at I use a stock page that tells visitors there aren't any reviews yet for that book and ask for reviews to be sent in. Better that than a dead link! This is a new site so will take some time to build up.

This covers one of Taff's points as well: Icons. The 'marble' is there purely as decoration. I wanted to put a matching icon there to indicate each section but;
(a) I couldn't find any free ones that were suitable and,
(b) my attempts to make my own have been disastrous so far.
As the 'marble' now seems comfortable where it is, if I can ever sort out some decent icons I'd probably like to make use of the circles as Megan suggested.

What else? Erm...I like the black outline on the imagetexts so that stays. I might be tempted to increase the font sizes but I quite like the colours I've used, although I might change the gold/green colour that seems to offend most.

Thanks for the response and I look forward to reading more.

The Webmistress — Fri, 24 Jan 2003 08:15:46 +0000

Overall pretty good and I agree with what's already been said, so I wont repeat it. I'm just going to add that I find the graphics at the top a bit fuzzy with that hairy look overcompression gives (or text as jpegs) and I feel it should be a tad wider so it fills 800*600 and doesn't feel quite so skinny at larger resolutions.

Good work

Renegade — Thu, 23 Jan 2003 22:25:02 +0000

'nuff has been said but one more thing from me, there is a bit of empty space at the bottom, i'm sure you don't need it

Busy — Thu, 23 Jan 2003 20:59:47 +0000

It looks like it's missing something.
The words on the navigation are way to small.
Maybe have a border around the text section or a different color background under the text to enhance it as it's a little hard to read. I'd increase the font size and make the content section a bit wider.
Overall I like the effect but it's like a murder mystery with the last few pages missing.

taff — Thu, 23 Jan 2003 19:54:33 +0000

I like what you're shooting for in theory but it isn't quite working in practice. Clear as mud?

I like the approach of changing colour scheme per page but have trouble with the way it is implemented.

Like Megan, I dislike the link colour, particularly with that background. Even more, I dislike the "yellowish-brown" text colour you use to the right.

The graphics up top have an unfinished look about them (what *is* that marble about anyway?) and doesn't really mesh well with the "minimalist" approach in the body - you're overdressed up top and rather naked down below

Megan — Thu, 23 Jan 2003 18:53:49 +0000

I've never understood why so many web sites feel the need to put a running commentary of behind the scenes changes on the front page. I mean, who cares? I don't. Show me the content already! Some of this is legitimage news but a lot of it is irrelevant. Better to use this space to highlight new or prominent authors and other important content.

Navigating around here a bit - don't link to stuff that's not there! I've followed a couple of links to an author's review section and found nothing but a notice asking me to review a book!

I'm finding it really hard to read that green text on the blue background, and it's on the small side too (my current major pet peeve!).

Cranky criticism aside, I do like what you've done with the interface. It's good a good look and feel going, although I feel that some changes would be in order. First of all, if you're going to do a fixed width design I think there should be some sides to it so the content area just doesn't go floating into space at higher resolutions. I like to do the sides in a different colour which provides some contrast and defines the spaces on the page.

Another problem I see is that the navigation items seem really smooshed. Those should definitely take up more space. I'm also wondering about the circles along the top. I actually thought that those would do something - they seem to regularly spaced to be just decorative. What you could do is develop those into a navigation system, replacing the existing smooshed text look. You could do some neat things with icons in those cricles.