[thelist] Site Critique Request

[Seb Barre]

At 12:48 PM 10/18/2000 -0500, you wrote:
>Just went live today.  Wanted to get some feedback on the layout, color, 
>compatibility, etc.  There will eventually be a version for 3.0 users but 
>it wasn't an immediate priority for the client.  Maybe next week.
>
>I really want to know if there is anything horribly off putting.  I like 
>the design and to me it is easily navigable (is that a word?) but I'd like 
>to know how easy it is for a person to get around who hasn't spent the 
>last month of their life looking at it day in and day out.
>
>Be as harsh as you want.  I can take it.

Rainbow dividers!!! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO....

Hehe, I'm just kidding of course, those aren't the standard heathen ones 
you all know and hate..  But that menubar with the NBC rainbow colours just 
gave me horrible flashbacks to that damn GIF..  A crumpled paper background 
would have made me blind.. phew.. =)

One thing about your pop-up windows.  A close countdown timer on the last 
used window (when the mouse is moved off) is a bit more graceful than a 
close button.

Basically you start the countdown through the OnMouseOut event (using 
setTimeout() etc), and if the countdown expires the window is removed.  The 
countdown gets cancelled if the OnMouseOver event triggers for the window 
(the user moved his mouse off quickly and went back).  You should be able 
to combine that kind of logic with your existing JS code that removes the 
window when another one is opened, so that this countdown only happens when 
the user moves off the pop-up window and doesn't go over another one.

Let me dig up an example of this..

Some kind of functionality like this should work, with lowlite() linked to 
the mouseout and hilite() linked to the mouseover.
-------------

var hideMainTimeout;

function hilite(){
         clearTimeout(hideMainTimeout);
}

function lowlite(item){
         hideMainTimeout = setTimeout('document.all.item.style.visibility = 
"hidden"',1000);
}

-------------

You will probably have to tweak that a bit (and make it cross-browser, 
sorry!) since you'll need a different timeout for each menu item, but you 
can either hardcode it or store it in an array for example.


That's just a quick suggestion, unfortunately I don't have time to review 
your entire site, but I figured I would help where I could. =)  Nice work 
from what I could see!

--- -- -
Seb Barre - sebastien at oven.com
OVEN Digital Toronto
Work: 416-595-9750 x 222
Mobile: 416-254-5078
http://www.oven.com/