<b>Betsy Taylor, Cellist</b>[list]
[]Overall I thought the layout and design is pretty nice and elegant. The only problem that bugged me was the sliding navigation bar. When you move out of the flash area, it sort of just stops abruptly which makes it appear buggy. Also the text is a bit blurry, but not too major.
[]I didn’t like the way the menu moved, and wasn’t in the same place every time. other than that, nicely designed site. You would have had my vote if it weren’t for the nav[/list]
<hr><b>Distant Sun</b>[list]
[]The design of this site is interesting. At first I couldn’t figure out what it’s all about then I realize it’s a band’s site so it started to make sence. It’s okay and serves it’s purpose, but I don’t think it’s SOTW material, it’s just missing the “wow.” The music is great though.
[]I like the idea of a Flash popup rather than a JavaScript one. I understand the need for preloaders on the images, but I would rather see one large download instead of waiting for each image. Also, I would eliminate the size portion of the preloader, it just gives the user a reason to bail. This site worked the best out of all of them this week for me, gave me the best experience, and didn’t annoy me with “tricky and trendy” garbage, just because we can. Congrats on a nice site… still needs some minor tweaking, but you got my vote this week.[/list]
<hr><b>Jontom.net</b>[list]
[]I’ve seen sites that are really slow that needed the FPS to be bumped up, but this is the first time I’ve encountered a site that needs its FPS reduced. It’s so fast that I can barely get a glimpse of the transitions. It’s nicely put together, but I think it’s just a bit too fast which isn’t really a big problem.
[]too cluttered for me. I had a little trouble finding the enter button, and I don’t think the splash page was actually needed.[/list]
<hr><b>Pelle Piano</b>[list]
[]Interesting concept and layout, but it sort of lacks consistency. For example the gallery opens up in a new page seperate from it’s original layout. Another problem I noticed is with the thumbnail scroller in the gallery section. It scrolls the thumbnails right off the page on either sides which looks wierd.
[]Just curious, why did the one section open in another window, while all the rest did not? Also, I would like to be able to browse through your portfolios without having to open another window, or go to that site.[/list]
<hr><b>Design By Seal</b>[list]
[]Interesting choice of themes, but I’ve seen worse. Overall the design is pretty straight forward, nothing new. Problems that’s obvious is the pixel font, it’s way too small and on top of that it’s white on black which is extremely hard to read after awhile. Nice try, but not SOTW material.
[]This site is waaaay to busy… It also crashed my browser when I tried to click on any link. Why did it need to open a popup? It didn’t seem to be needed.[/list]
<hr><b>Metroid Prime</b>[list]
[]If Nintendo was submitting this site then it would get my vote for SOTW since it’s their idea, but since this site was submitted by someone else using Nintendo’s idea then I’ll have to pass and move on to the next site.
[]I believe I have commented on this site before.[/list]
<hr><b>The Tone Lab</b>[list]
[]I’m not too fond of the disappearing navbar, but overall the design of this site is nice and clean. The sliding transition could be a bit smoother though and the empty space at the bottom of the site could be dropped as well. For this week, I voted for The Tone Lab.
[]another futuristic site that doesn’t quite go all the way. The hunt for the navigation is not needed. Futuristic sites are extremely tough to stay with the ‘style’ and still get the info out. This site, IMO, is too large (just because you have a preloader, does not make it okay to wait for stuff to load), for now reason. It didn’t enhance my experience at all.
[*]I voted The Tone Lab because overall I dig the layout/colors, and overall the functionality is good EXCEPT for that hidden navigation… that is a downer, navigations should never be hidden. Other than that, I liked it.[/list]
<hr><b>A Lobster’s Tale</b>[list]
[]Nice animation, but not SOTW material. The main reason why is that it lacks professionalism.
[]another popup for no reason. This one wasn’t even sized correctly, and ran off the edge of my monitor (I use 1024x768)… Didn’t seem to be very professional in it’s delivery of info.[/list]
<hr><b>Don Earley’s Photo Studio</b>[list]
[*]for a photographer’s site, the images seem to be of poor quality for viewing. If the site isn’t finished yet, you prob should post this in site check. What is the most important thing on this site? The photographs. Also, the main page needs to be optimized. There really isn’t anything of size there, and it takes a bit to load. Again, just because you put a preloader on a site doesn’t mean you don’t have to optimize for the web. The majority of the world still is on dial-up, and has no other option.[/list]
hope you’ll like it!
Your site is really nice!