[thelist] new site:: nmachina.com

Shirley Kaiser, SKDesigns skaiser1 at skdesigns.com
Wed Dec 19 21:27:42 CST 2001


Carole,

At 08:10 AM 12/19/2001, kristina wrote:
>carole,
>
>on Wednesday, December 19, 2001, 3:39:02 PM, carole wrote:
>
>::
> > check out a cool new site - http://nmachina.com -> builder of *dream
> > machines* (workstations + servers) custome built for each customer.  this a
> > new project I just completed and guess what?
>::
>
>Not entirely sure you're requesting a site check here or just telling
>us that you've launched it.  But anyway the following is my first
>impressions and opinion of it.

I had the same question.

>I absolutely hated the mouseover popup thingyUmmy's that happen when
>you roll the mouse over the case study (etc) links, on the right hand
>side.

I didn't even know there was a popup. So if there's important information, 
it looks like it could be easily missed. And if it's not important, maybe 
it doesn't even need to be at the site? Otherwise it may need some adjustments.

>1: the popup goes off the right hand side of the screen. - Though,  I
>could maximise my window, I don't want to.  Though it seems I
>would be forunate to have that option.  Anyone with less than 1024 x
>768 is never going to see all of what it says on those rollovers!
>Because even if I move the scrollbar all the way to the right THEN
>rollover the link the scroll bar bounces back to the left.  Unless I'm
>being unfair in refusing to maximise my window.

Seems unreasonable to expect all visitors to have their screen window open 
that wide. Perhaps this site is targeted for higher end, more sophisticated 
visitors, but I nonetheless feel that the screen width should be no more 
than 800x600, preferably less since so many people don't view the Web with 
their browser windows maximized.

For usability, the content ought to be viewable around 560, maybe even 500, 
but I suspect you're not concerned about WebTV, screen readers, or other 
accessibility issues for this target market, especially since the main page 
says the site's optimized for version 5 browsers. (I also wonder why it's 
necessary to state that at all, but that's one of my pet peeves and I've 
never liked that statement anyway, especially for a business site. <smile>)

>2: the way the horizontal scroll bars bounce around, when those rollover
>thing's are rolled over....  *eugh*
>
>I'm not keen on link text that appears in the status bar, being
>different from the actual link.  I like to know where I'm going, when
>I click something.
>
>The text is not comfortable to read on alot of the pages where its
>kind of fuzzy grey on IE5.5, but on N4.7 its got a solid colour
>background, which looks untidy.

With Opera 6 I can't read lines 3 through 7 in the specs on this page, as 
it's obscured by the transparent background and graphic behind it:
http://nmachina.com/cs3graphic.php

The main page has problems with this, too, but not as severe as the above page.

I don't have time to review the entire site, but those are the points that 
especially struck me. I noticed the readability problem on all the pages 
that have images behind the text with the transparent treatment.

Overall I like the site design but have some concerns about the screen 
width and readability issues....

>How much are the machines that are previewed in the case study's?
>Some idea of price would go along way to changing that though!   Or
>was that in the part of the rollover I couldn't see.....

Some idea of pricing would indeed be helpful. If prices aren't available at 
the site, I tend to think they must be too expensive and I wouldn't even 
bother contacting the company. Even a ballpark range would be helpful.

I didn't check out any of the rest of the content, either.

Also, I'd avoid the >, the space and - before the titles, and other things 
you've got in the title tags if the client is interested in optimizing the 
site for search engines.

Picky details, Carole. Overall, it's a visually attractive design.

Warmly,
Shirley


>--
>hth
>  kristina
>
>kristina at kfx-design.co.uk
>
>
>
>--
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-- 
Shirley E. Kaiser, M.A.
SKDesigns  mailto:skaiser at skdesigns.com
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