Design firm's new site needs reviewing... pls

[ahsanshami]

Hi All,

It's been a while since I've posted, perhaps because I haven't really had any serious issues with Powweb (touch wood!).

Anyway, we've redesigned our site and I'd love for you all to offer your opinions on it.

I run a design firm, so I guess the site needs to be impressive.

http://www.barelyaverage.com/

I considered offer some explanations about why we've done some of the things on the site the way we have, but I figured that would defeat the purpose of soliciting an unbiased critique.

Be brutal, if you need to, though I'm really hoping no one comes back with a "It really, really sucks! Scrap it and start over" type post!

Thanks for your time,
Ahsan

[IanS]

The design is impressive, but ......

every time you change page the images are slower than the rest of the page to load up. This becomes annoying after a few pages and make you want to leave. (I didn't leave, but only because I wanted to see if it kept on happening.)

Some kind of interlaced loading of the pictures whilst the page is loading, or reduction in size of the images would speed up the loading of the page.

[ahsanshami]

Thanks for having a look.

I assume you're using IE, so what you're seeing is the result of IE needing a Javascript hack to correctly display the transparency in PNG files. Because the script is implemented after all the images are loaded, you end up staring at the grayish boxes until it kicks in.

I use IE (actually Maxthon) almost exclusively, so I go through what you went through. I know -- it sucks, but I wanted to have the flexibility to alter the site's color scheme without having to regenerate all of the graphics.

With this implementation, I can change a few bg colors in my CSS file and I'm good to go.

On a side note, Firefox, as much as I resent it's recent increase in popularity, renders our site pages correctly.

[IanS]

Thanks for having a look.

I assume you're using IE, so what you're seeing is the result of IE needing a Javascript hack to correctly display the transparency in PNG files. Because the script is implemented after all the images are loaded, you end up staring at the grayish boxes until it kicks in.Yes, I'm using IE6 on XP Pro with SP2+updates - so will most of the people viewing your pages.