Sorry for the delay - I was quite sick earlier =) So here goes!
Cheers!
Kirupa 
ā¦"sick "ā¦ thought you donāt drink?? 
ok, letās see thenā¦
lol, it was something that I ateā¦I couldāve sworn I swallowed a bug while running yesterday =)
Running!!! Now I know you must of been sick, no healthy computer nerd actually runsā¦
lol, it is a welcome break from the long hours I spend sitting behind a computer 
Cheers!
Kirupa :rd:
whatās the girlās name you were chasinā , kirā ? lol
voted for darkstar, even though i didnāt like some stuff, lesser evil i guessā¦but i made second place in tetris, soā¦(could also be considered as last place, as thereās only 2 ranks so far, hehā¦)
As to darkstarclone:
www.superhere.net -> Goodies -> Tutorials -> AS LennyKravitz.com
It is the exact same navi system, same colors and all.
<B>Artus:</B> That gigantic pop-up is a big no-no. And that intro really made me feel like I HAD to say a whileā¦ or stay forever just to get to the site. This might have just been my comp, but your animation was very laggy. I am not really sure exactly what your site is about. I read the about thing, and it just seems to be a description about an abondoned hospital. Is this an experiments site? A personal site? A portfolio? Is this a real place? Great image used, I love them, and I think the navigation is in interesting as well, but there are a few issues with it.
<B>reverendFlash:</B> Oh manā¦ do we have to do thisā¦ lol. Well I will still be 100% honest. I think the intro was kind of slow. The rollover on the bottom panel/buttons were nice. You might want to make the dynamic text for the button labels unselectable though, if you try and select it, the text shiftsā¦ sometimes out of view. I see you use the same animation between when a section loadsā¦ but it appears to be scaled up and I donāt think it looks as good scaled up, seems very jaggedy. In the The Book -> About The Book if you click the down arrow, then the up arrow it reloads the section. This happens if you hit the Up arrow until it hits hits the top of the area. In The Studio -> Sketches when you click on an image, you seem to use a black clip that fades outā¦ but the thing is, that clip is above your navigation menu of the image, so the top part of your menu items gets cut off and faded back in.
<B>teodora:</B> Didnāt really āgetā the intro, just some blurry image and sound, then a load bullet shot? It could use a bit more color, the black and white theme didnāt really work here, it kinda dulls down the site. I am not a real big fan of drag and drop navigation menus unless they have something to do with the transition between sections. It didnāt really have a defined layout, just a black and white image and a box with text (that I couldnāt read because I donāt speak the langauge 
)
<B>joelmedia:</B> The color scheme is a bit ātrendyā, but I think it looks good. Very nice simple and clear navigation for the amount of items you have (work section). The transitions were always smooth which is good. I like this site. Just as a note though: In the info sectionā¦ the āyā in āUniversityā is half cut off, you might want to fix that.
<B>darkstarclone:</B> That splash page is incredibly CPU intensive. Your navigation is exact the same as www.superhere.net -> Goodies -> Tutorials -> AS LennyKravitz.com , same colors and everything, you could of at the least edited to make it more your own. And are you saying that I have to click a link, wait for the transition to finish and the content to load just to be able to figure out what section I am going to then I have to memorize which button does what so I know where to go if I want to go back to a section? You should definitely add some way to know which section the user is going too, even mystery meat navigation lets the user know before they click the link. The links in your links section were buggy, if you rollover them too fast they stick to the right and donāt go back until you rollover and then rollout them again.
<B>alex:</B> Your preloader appeared like it should of had a loading bar, but it didnātā¦ was this intentional? Aligning the text to be centered isnāt usually a wise idea for a large amount of text. You have a scrollbar on the about you text, but it doesnāt need to scrollā¦ so it is justā¦ there. Your portfolio navigation needs work. You have folders that you rollover to open, and click to view the project. But how do you know what project you are viewing? Do you just have to go to it, wait for it to load and then see? Thats like the same deal as darkstarclones navigation, it just doesnāt work like that, people donāt like to do that. This site is a very good first start, but I am not sure about SOTW material.
<B>markus steffan:</B> The layout is indeed clean, and the navigation clear. But it seemed like your sections are mostly just a centered box with a textfield and up and down arrows inside or a form. Not a bad site at all, but it might fall under the category of too simplistic.
I voted joelmedia because it is simplistic without being too simplistic, just the way I like it.
And Rev: I have seen better from you, sorry if I disappointed you
Lost - of course you didnāt disappoint me. All of your points are valid.
I do have just one comment, and that is how the poll was set up. My name should never have been involved in this. This is a SOTW, not the best a certain designer is capable of, or because I know who did this site and whyā¦
Just makes it open to influence is allā¦
Rev
Yeah, I think when a mod submits people will think they will get an unfair advantage in the vote and we get anough arguments over our voting system, this will probably just cause more of a stir.
I posted my vote, but Iām sorry I canāt post any critiques this weekā¦
Iām extremely swamped with work so I hope you guys will understandā¦
Artus: Hard for me to give critiques, because the atmosphere seems to be very important in this site, and I donāt have sound on my computer. Also, it was hard to understand what was the purpose of the site.
Reverendflash: Very unconventionnal. Iām not sure I understand why you used dark colors so much, when this woman seems to be so cheerful. Also, I donāt like that kind of ādirtyā look, with the videos, and the signature. Well-made, but not appealing to me.
teodora: I didnāt have enough time to explore the whole site, sorry.
joelmedia: Cool little site, very well executed. Nothing crazy, nothing new.
darstarclone: I donāt know, it might just be an idea I have, but I have the feeling that this site is just bits and pieces of open source thrown together. The āwelcomeā thinggy reminds me of something from Ultrashock, the nav reminds me of the Lenny Kravitz navā¦ Pretty cool site, but not very personnal.
alex: There are a few problems with this site. The first thing that really made me want to leave is that the hit area of the buttons is NOT the entire button. This is, as Lost says, a big no-no. And the design needs more work.
Marcus Steffen: Nice, clean, simple, I like it.
Artus: Very pleasing to look at, and an original style, but it took a long time to load. I wasnāt always quite sure when it had finished loading though, so I was probably hanging around for longer than I ought to have been. An interesting navigation choice as well. I liked it a lot, but the major concern is that some people might not get it too quickly, and have problems. I also wasnāt totally sure what the whole thing was aboutā¦ Iām presuming photography, but it was a little bit of a mystery tour. But minus points for making me have a pop up window.
Reverend Flash: Very Gothic colour scheme, the red and black. I also liked the menu buttons at the bottom with the kind of bitmap quality to them. One thing I noticed about the first one though was the animation comes out of the box a little. This could be intentional, but since the others donāt, just thought Iād mention it. The animations were very choppy - again this could be intentional, but I donāt know for sure.
Teodora: I really liked the look and feel of this, even if I couldnāt understand the French. Menu system was easy to follow, and the disc downloading into the brain was definitely a nice touch. There are some nice transitions in there too, although they seemed very stop and start in places. Good imagery and overall I was very impressed with the simplicity of the site.
Joelmedia: Again, another fantastic looking site. Beautiful photographs. A lot of loading, but then I can imagine that those pictures are quite large files. I wasnāt immediately sure what the site was about, but once I got into it, it became a lot clearer. The Info rollover was a good idea, and I liked the draggable calendar, all very nicely done. Wonderful. I just loved it.
Darkstarclone: A very pleasing choice of colours, although I wasnāt sure about the wavy 3D text at the beginning. Seemed a little āfor the sake of itā. One major point would be the navigation. Itās a different approach, but you might find a lot of people just donāt get it. Plus thereās no description of what each box takes you to, so youāre fumbling in the dark, so to speak.
Alex: Where do people get these photos from? Lovely background image, and an interesting design, I liked the blue and grey. Maybe itās just my imagination, but I thought the menu buttons were slightly out of alignment - the Contact one mainly, it just seemed a bit off. Nice idea with the Portfolio and the file folders.
Markus Steffen: More great use of photos and colour. The monochrome pictures are really set off by the one brighter colour over the top. Simple clean layout and easy to use nav options. Excellent content too, and was quick to load.
Oh boy, itās going to be a tough choice this week. Iāve gone for Joelmedia.
