I have just finished these two sites and would really apprecaite any feedback.

I have used  CSS for the layout of both sites. I have also used the HouseMenu skin object for the menus.


Site 1

www.hourglassbc.com

This was a re-development of an existing "static" HTML site. I replicated the look and feel on the original site by creating a CSS skin. All the graphics came from the original site.


Site 2

www.futurelegends.com.au

I developed this site for a friend who has just started a photography business part time. It uses  the Simple Gallery module.


Thanks in advance for taking the time to review these sites and provide feedback.

Regards

Kevin Owen
White Rock Solutions
www.whiterocksolutions.com

That first site - the logo looks a lot like "ass business ting" because of the stylised L - but I guess there isn't much you can do about that if you are using existing graphics! Who knows it might be a good thing!

The graphics on the right look a bit jaggy, did you have to resize them? They let the feel of the page down a little, which overall feels quite professional. Rounded corners don't quite work either as they don't blend in with the site and the rounding is a little rough. The Direct Debit logo is really jaggy.

I also think the breadcrumb font style clashes a little with the menu font.

There is a bit too much white space on the header round the graphic element on the right. Could you make it bigger or the logo a little shorter in height? Also the animated gif could do with a little polishing, anti aliasing on the fonts would make it look smarter.

Good use of Header tags for SEO, with the H1 at the top and the H2 for the container headers!

The other site is more polished. The header is missing from some of the pages: http://www.futurelegends.com.au/Pro...fault.aspx is that deliberate?

KMOwen,
You achieved something I did not think was possible with the HouseMenu skin objective - your sites have a navigation menu that has drop down entries which work on all major browsers (I checked your hourglassbc.com menu and it performs uniformly for me in IE7, IE6, Firefox 2, Safari 3 and Opera 9). Was there a trick to achieve this or was my understanding that this was not possible flawed? Any insight would be appreciated. First I suppose is what version of the HouseMenu skin object are you using - v1.3 or the beta v1.4?
Eoghano

isomies

Thanks for your feedback.

The graphics on the right are animated GIF's. These have been developed by the customer. They were larger, but I advised the customer that they should be "standard" size. I think they may have just been resized. I'll pass your feedback onto the customer.

I am aware of the "white space" issue, again this was the result of "standardising" the size of the banner at the top of the screen. I will modify the design of the skin to address this. 

Good point about the breadcrumb font color. I'll also fix this up.

Regarding the other site, I am still working with my friend to agree on the wording of the "H1" page taglines and keywords. If you check back again next neek these should be finalised. 

Regards

Kevin Owen

eoghano

Thanks for your feedback.

I used the HouseMenu skin object Ver. 1.4 (beta). I had to make the appropriate updates in the skin.xml file to specify that the menu would be "Horizontal" and "Dynamic".

I also used the CSS from one of the templates that ships with the HouseMenu skin object as a starting point. Because of the width of some of the menu items I had to play around a little to get the width settings and hover width settings working OK.

One problem I did come across was that I was also using the "iehacks.css" file that comes with Lee's RedLeaf CSS design. This file contains a couple of CSS entries for the HouseMenu and one of these entries was overiding my width setting.

The biggest problem I had was with IE7 and the sub-menus not collapsing after mouse off. I fixed this after finding a simple CSS workaround.

The only other problem that I am aware of is that in IE6 there is some "extra" space below the menu items which does not appear in IE7 or Firefox.

You should be able to view the full CSS for the site with the Firefox Developer toolbar. The CSS code is fully commented. I am more than happy for you to take a copy and use yourself.

The sites only use a 2-tier menu but I have tested it up to 4-tier and it all appears to work OK.

Regards

Kevin Owen
White Rock Solutions

Kevin,

Thanks for the comprehensive reply! I will check out your CSS code when I get the opportunity.

Interesting to see that you are using v1.4 beta of the Housmenu. I used that for a while but found that the admin/host menus did not appear in IE7 (I got a "false" error - see thread on it here). Have you checked for that? I was able to fix it by reverting to v1.3 of the Housemenu skin object.

One final thing, the skin.xml file is obviously key to this. Can you provide here the mark up of your skin.xml? I find it a bit of minefield in choosing the right options, and you seem to have hit upon it.

Nice work!

Eoghano

Eoghano,

Below is the relevant section from the skin.xml file. Please note that I have named my class"HouseMenuHNav" (extra "H" for Horizontal"). You can obviously name your class anything you want, just has to be the same name used in your CSS...

Let me know how you get on.

Kevin Owen
White Rock Solutions

kevin,
Thanks for that. Will try it out as soon as i have a chacne (which will be a while) and will let you know how it goes.
Did you check for the "false" error on the Admin navigation in IE7? Am curious to know if you are managing to avoid it with v1.4 beta of the Housemenu skin object!
Eoghano