We just launched our company's "About us" page: http://www.freshgun.com/about-us/ and we would like to know if everyone can see videos and portfolio items correctly. I would love to hear your feedback on this new page. Criticism is always welcome on any issue about whole website. Many thanks guys!
The bast news is that very few users ever look an about page. I your market is kids under 13 then the dumb videos that hog the page might have some value otherwise they are really not a goo idea. If you think you are going to help sell marketing services for the internet with a page that is so defective you better re-think it. The page screams "I was written by someone without a clue of how to use modern approaches and development standards". An XHTML doctype and using HTML5 exclusive tags... come on that is web development 101. At best it rates 2 out of 10 and I mam not going to waste my time looking at the rest of the site when you cannot even do something this simple.
Woah, that was a bit aggressive, man. Sephorus, I actually really like it. I think the :hover videos are awesome, but it does take away loading speed a bit, having to load three videos for each employee. But it still loads pretty fast and honestly I think it's worth it. You got a B! http://gtmetrix.com/reports/www.freshgun.com/3WmoC6SO <video id="staff_video_file_11" preload=""> <source type="video/mp4; codecs="avc1.42E01E, mp4a.40.2"" src="http://www.freshgun.com/data/contacts_staff/videos/employee_11.mp4"></source> <source type="video/ogg; codecs="theora, vorbis"" src="http://www.freshgun.com/data/contacts_staff/videos/employee_11.ogv"></source> <source type="video/webm; codecs="vp8, vorbis"" src="http://www.freshgun.com/data/contacts_staff/videos/employee_11.webm"></source> </video> Also, I like the style and really like the navigation, the only thing from a quick scan of each page is the contact form, the aerial view of the cup of coffee was kinda weird to me. I don't think the videos "hog" the page, they are the focal point of the ABOUT US page and if you're going to purchase a service from a company or considering it, you absolutely will view the about page, even if "I your market is kids under 13". I like the site, I'd give it an 8/10, it's responsive, it's aesthetically pleasing, and it works(even if there are some markup problems like the doctype).
Nice but did you buy the theme because it looks so generic, doesn't look like a creative firm built it, looks more like it was bought from one of the templates website, the portfolio page is too cluttered IMO. On another note, Inga is so hot...wow! When I die and get reincarnated I wanna marry her!
Actually, he was being polite. That is a poster child for everything WRONG with web development today (which is to say the bleeding edge of 1998 coding practices) -- from the goofy space-wasting bandwidth wasting animooted hovers that push actual content "below the fold", to the fonts so big it only fits a five words per line on anything less than 1920 wide, and of course the broken attempt at being responsive thanks to that idiotic halfwit steaming pile of manure known as "foundation" -- which much akin to bootcrap you should find yourself a stick to scrape that off with. Though it is VERY MUCH what I've come to expect the moment I see HTML 5 tags, the absurdity known as jQuery and some idioitic off the shelf CSS framework... the whole site reeks of the typical art faygelah pixel-pusher "design" by people who don't know enough about HTML, CSS, accessibility or even emissive colourspace to have been designing jack **** for the Internet. I would throw that entire site away and start over, using ACTUAL semantic markup, easing up on the endless pointless scripting for nothing, and staying away from pointless bandwidth wasting code bloat and design concepts that have no damned business on websites in the first place. Like the massive images and videos resulting in an absurdly oversized 5.2 MEGABYTES in 32 files. Handshakes ALONE on that could result in a minute long page-load worst-case NOT EVEN TALKING the ape-shit ridiculous file sizes... laughably bad when all you are REALLY delivering in terms of "content of value" is 3k of plaintext; making that 24k of markup also laughably pathetic doing MAYBE 10k of HTML's job. Such code bloat going hand in hand with putting crappy off the shelf frameworks together with "Semantic markup, what's that?"
http://www.ewiusb.com/ Semi-fluid elastic layout, colour contrasts within accessibility norms, semantic markup, and working responsive layouts. Or go through all the rewrites, code samples and other stuff in my "for_others" directory -- it's a hodge podge of taking people's broken sites and rewriting them to show exactly what I'm talking about. http://www.cutcodedown.com/for_others/?C=M&O=D Generally speaking there's no legitimate excuse for the average page on the average website to break 144k in 24 files, with my ideal size being HALF THAT in filesize and a dozen or so files. Take the home page of www.ewiusb.com -- it is 66k in 21 files... despite being fully responsive AND properly graceful degrading as evidenced by these screencaps: http://www.cutcodedown.com/images/ewiUSB/ Just to give you an idea what I'm talking about -- where you have: <div class="row header inner"> <div class="small-12 columns"> <div class="row holder"> <div class="large-3 columns"> <div class="logo"> <a href="http://www.freshgun.com/"> <img src="http://www.freshgun.com/templates/images/logo-index-en.png" alt="FreshGun" /> </a> </div> </div> <div class="large-9 columns"> <div class="top-menu"> <nav id="top-nav" class="top-bar" data-topbar><section class="top-bar-section"><ul class="right"><li ><a href="http://www.freshgun.com/"><div class="hold">HOME<div class="end"></div></div><div style="clear: both;"></div></a></li><li class="in-path"><a href="http://www.freshgun.com/about-us/" ><div class="hold">ABOUT<div class="end"></div></div><div style="clear: both;"></div></a></li><li ><a href="http://www.freshgun.com/main-services/" ><div class="hold">SERVICES<div class="end"></div></div><div style="clear: both;"></div></a></li><li ><a href="http://www.freshgun.com/portfolio-list/" ><div class="hold">WORKS<div class="end"></div></div><div style="clear: both;"></div></a></li><li ><a href="http://www.freshgun.com/contact/" ><div class="hold">CONTACT<div class="end"></div></div><div style="clear: both;"></div></a></li></ul></section></nav><div style="clear: both;"></div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Code (markup): I would have: <h1> <a href="/"> FreshGun <span><!-- image replacement sandbag --></div> </a> </h1> <ul id="mainMenu"> <li><a href="/">HOME</a></li> <li><a href="/about-us/" class="current">ABOUT</a></li> <li><a href="/main-services/">SERVICES</a></li> <li><a href="/portfolio-list/">WORKS</a></li> <li><a href="/contact/">CONTACT</a></li> </ul> Code (markup): For what you are doing there I see no legitimate excuse for all that extra code. That one section ALONE you've got 1362 bytes of code doing 354 bytes' job! (maybe 400 bytes if one were to use span instead of generated content for IE7/earlier support) -- the entire page is filled with nonsense like that. Endless pointless DIV for NOTHING, invalid nesting of DIV (no matter what the new re-re mouth-breathing HTML 5 rules say on putting block level inside inline level it is NOT a reliable technique, nor is there ANY legitimate reason to do so) I would be shocked, SHOCKED -- with no real changes to your about page's functionality -- if it took more than 12k of code in the markup, and done properly like axing all the "gee ain't it neat" bandwidth wasting crap (like those videos and JS for nothing) that add NOTHING of value to the page, it could go as small as 8k -- fully a third what you're throwing at it.
@deathshadow - that site may tick all the boxes but from a design perspective it looks like it hasn't been touched in a decade. @Sephorus - I like the site. If I'm going to spend oodles of cash with a company and I'm comparing a bunch of companies then the decision to shortlist may just come down to which company seems human and approachable and I think the videos do that really well. I'd drop the font size down a bit but not too much - the feedback I get is that people have lost the patience to squint at tiny type on a computer screen - they want the text to be big and easy to read. @MakingMoves - really? You're perving at the staff?
Great web site If you have a Blog page that will be useful to your visitors too profile widget is great but as my concern just need main characters in organization there its too many individuals,,but if you want to give credits too all them that great,,but,,,my Goal is save time on visitors and give other Value,,this not try to criticize but thats me,,anyway cool effort Good luck!
Hasn't needed to be. It generates the traffic it should, delivers it's message... if it ain't broke. It does under the hood have a few flubs as it's the earliest site I did with CSS3 responsiveness; the laugh being adding responsive took about 20 minutes to it's existing design during my 'crash course' in doing so -- since it was already semantic, semi-fluid and elastic... today I do it a little different, but as you said it ticks all the accessibility boxes. But then I'll put functionality and accessibility over goofy bandwidth wasting appearance crap EVERY single time... because again people don't visit websites for the goofy crap you hang around the content, they visit FOR the content. No matter how many artsy-fartsy types and marketing scam artists try to convince you otherwise. That and a lot of "modern" design is inaccessible useless trash, that every time as a user I visit one of them I have to fight the overwhelming urge to bitch-slap whoever was responsible for it. See "Parallax Scrolling", shoving fifteen pages worth of content into one page-load, pretty much EVERYTHING people do with jQuery, the endless pointless ajax-tardery for NOTHING, the "pageloads are evil" paranoid bullshit, the USELESS on mobile "vague icon menu" thing that's supposed to help make pages more useful on mobile (herpafreakingderp) and pretty much EVERY site bult with the steaming pile of manure known as bootcrap. I'd rather have it look dated and have people able to use it, than to have a big fancy slow loading inaccessible mess that does nothing but waste bandwidth for nothing in a manner that makes the site useless to visitors... LIKE ME. When I go searching for things now half the pages I open I end up closing before they even finish loading as being useless crap -- ALL because of developer ineptitude like this type of bull! Bull like Foundation, bull like jQuery, bull like Turdpress, bull like Bootcrap, bull like parallax scrolling, bull like fixed widths, bull like px metric fonts, bull like non-semantic markup resulting in broken keyboard navigation, bull like HTML 5... It's all a bunch of halfwit idiotic bull used by people who to be frank, don't seem to know enough about HTML, CSS or accessibility to be building jack **** for anybody! It's why I look out upon the current state of the industry with disgust to the point of nausea at the filthy little degenerates who vomit up sites any-old-way and to hell with if said crap is actually useful to visitors. At this point I pretty much have a giant middle-finger for the entire web development industry as a whole. We really NEED a second dotcom burst at this point if for no other reason than to thin out their numbers. From people crapping out HTML any-old-way, the people sleazing together off the shelf frameworks without a proper understanding of the underlying technologies, to back-end coders who don't know enough HTML to be even THINKING about writing back-end code, to the pixel-pushing PSD jockeys who don't know enough about HTML, CSS, accessibility or emissive colourspace to even THINK about calling themselves a "designer", to the SEO scam artists who endlessly rape the wallets of "sophisticated Internet investor, will give money for vague promises" ... at this point all I have left to say to all of them is a collective {string of expletives omitted for the little old ladies at the tea party} and the source they rode in on. It's part of why I've been fairly quiet the past two months (the other half being the inaccessible train wreck these forums have become, I can't keep adding custom user.css and user.js endlessly every time you add more bloat). I've had it with all the sleazeball shits not competent or qualified to be doing a blasted thing sleazing out sites any old way and propagating broken, halfwit idiotic techniques. I'm not rocking a i7 4770k with a 25mbps connection just to have sites behave slower and less useful than we were fifteen years ago on 56k dialup!
Nice and thanks. I find you pretty hilarious, your rants are epic...do you have a blog? You should consider one, on WORDPRESS! HAHAHAHA, you definitely don't have twitter cause 140 characters can't contain your epic rants! I agree with you that people visit site for CONTENT, sometimes I've seen some site and had to look for the navigation to get around, while it might woo a lot of designers, the accessibility is lacking. I saw a job advert that was looking for a developer that knew had to do parallax scrolling....hmmmm, what does that have to do with anything, this is a fad, much like splash pages, marquee texts etc. What can I say? She's such a stunner...I think they need to remove everyone's vid on that page except for hers. O.P doesn't care for criticism, he just came here to plug his company's website.
Yeah well with that choice for a landing page I expect it will hurt them more than help them. A bad first impression generally is remember longer than a good first impression.
I'm at a conference at the moment and an ex-client had a query about his membership status with the client I'm at the conference to represent. It was always going to be interesting bumping into this guy but I hadn't anticipated having an indepth conversation with him. So we ended up looking at a local web developer's site and he goes to the about us page as an example of why you'd never want to hire him and it was boring as buggery, not a name or photo to give the people behind the company an identity. Take a look at this, I said, and showed him the freshgun page. He thought it was great. His feedback included that the company had showed a lot of commitment to get the videos of the staff and to get them cut and put up and that showed that they operated at a higher level than most and weren't fly by nighters. Sometimes, perhaps, we get bound up by the ones and zeros and forget that the point of these pages is to sell to people less knowledgeable than ourselves and what they see will be very different to what we think they should see.