Two New Sites

In the past week, two sites I’ve been working on have “gone live” (we can say that now, right? ;) ).

The first is http://idealady.com . This project actually started last summer but she only recently finished migrating the content from the old site to the new one, by hand. The new site is powered by ExpressionEngine which I integrated with FW using my Actions, whereas the old site was just a lot of HTML pages.

The second is http://doziersbbq.com . Don’t visit this site if you’re hungry (or a vegetarian)! This stuff is Texas-style BBQ at its finest. (For those who don’t know, different parts of the US call barbecue different things. Some people even spell it “barbeque,” right Heather? ;) ) This is a static site, but it uses Mals-ecommerce for the shopping cart, and for various reasons I actually used the Freeway Shop Actions AND Tim’s Mal’s-ecom Actions.

Let me know what y’all think!

quote

idealady.com - I’m sure that was a lot of work transferring over all that stuff. Fortunately it’s easy to post that stuff all over with EE. I think the design is simple, easy to read, and navigable (my Spell-Check suggested this word, not sure if it’s the right one, but I want it to mean easy to navigate.) My only complaint would be that some columns have more than others which requires some scrolling on a per-specific column basis and it’s mostly the right column.

doziersbbq.com - Hmm…tasty. I like the color scheme, the layout is simple, it’s easy to navigate with “big red.” My only issue is that the logo doesn’t appear on any of the sub-pages. Perhaps a shrunk down version of something might make sense because at first glance it looked like the top part of the page was missing.

Overall great work Joe. Thanks for sharing your links.

quote

Joe, nice looking sites, I can’t see anything wrong with idealady, but there are a couple of things on the barbeque site.

On the homepage, when you scroll down to the very bottom, there’s a repeat of the base drop shadow. (in fact, just looking in the right shadow at the edge of the page I can see it repeated at the very top and behind the nav bar) On all of the other pages it can just be seen to the right of the nav bar in the main content area.

Just one other thing, and it may be part of your design, but it looks peculiar to me, on every page, except for the homepage, there is something running behind the underline under the nav bar. On the products page it’s the stars at the top of each box which I don’t mind, but on all of your other pages, it’s the page title ie: Products, In-House Menu, Deer Processing etc. It makes me think that the title has been crosssed out! However, in Firefox there’s no underline and it looks like I would have thought it should.

But I have to agree with Dan, easily navigable and lovely colours.

Trev btw, system 10.4.11 using Safari v3.1.2, Opera 9.1.2, Firefox 1.0.4

On 20 Aug 2008, at 20:05, Joe Muscara wrote:

The first is http://idealady.com

The second is http://doziersbbq.com

quote

Hi Joe, I like them both, I cannot comment on them from a web / freeway angle as I really don’t feel qualified but from a design POV they’re really nice, it’s good to see a couple of sites that come away from the website layout formula enough to get me interested in looking at them. Best Roger

quote

First of all, thanks, everyone!

Dan, as far as the logo, I agree, it would have ben better if the logo or part of it was on every page. The “ribbon” part was going to be on every page, but it was removed based on client feedback.

Trev, I’m not seeing the repeat of the base drop shadow. On the home page, I do see where the shadow of the nav bar “thickens” the shadow on the right, but that’s it. What browser and platform are you using? Can you send me a screen shot directly?

As far as your “one other thing,” are you saying that you’re seeing these items actually run under the nav bar, partially obscured by it?

quote

Doing it now Joe, you should have it any minute.

Trev On 21 Aug 2008, at 12:22, Joe Muscara wrote:

Can you send me a screen shot directly?

quote

Thanks, Trev.

None of those elements you point out are supposed to be there. I’ve never seen them in Safari nor IE6/IE7/Win, but have at times in Firefox. I’m really stumped as to what causes this to happen. In fact, I recently reinstalled Firefox from scratch and I haven’t seen it there since.

If I find out anything I’ll post back.

quote

In Safari 3, I am seeing a 1px red line, horizontal, about 12px below the bottom of the top header bar. It looks like something I saw years ago in Freeway 2, where the _clear.gif got corrupted or confused with a blue GIF, and I ended up with blue lines all over the page showing me where the scaffold was.

Otherwise, I was seriously wondering how the BBQ would taste after several days in a UPS truck…

Nice work!

Walter

quote

Walter - Thanks! They would insist on overnight shipping to you, except for the jerky. :)

It is bizarre how sometimes that line (and its shadow) show up and sometimes it is fine. I’ve never seen it in Safari myself. Opera seems to show it consistently. I’ve been talking to Joe Billings about it and he was able to duplicate it.

Joe

quote

on 20/08/2008 20:05, Joe Muscara at email@hidden wrote:

The second is http://doziersbbq.com . Don’t visit this site if

Hi Joe,

Leopard10.5.4/Intel/Safari 3.1.2

I too can see the red line just below the menu. It is at a consistent distance from the menu on all pages I’ve viewed.

Also the second header graphic [A bit of Dozier’s History] on the opening page overlaps at least one line text in the block below.

If you want image dumps let me know.

Best wishes Peter

================================ Peter Tucker, Oxford UK email@hidden

quote

Thanks Peter. I have the exact same system on my MacBook yet I don’t see it there, either. I wonder what the difference is?

As far as that overlap, I wonder if that has to do with these upper elements breaking apart and pushing things around.

quote

Joe,

On this page in FireFox, http://doziersbbq.com/aboutus.html

The left hand column “Our Story” exceeds the depth of the background box, and flows over the top.

David

On 20 Aug 2008, at 20:05, Joe Muscara wrote:

The second is http://doziersbbq.com .

David Owen Freeway Friendly Web hosting and Domains :: (Test Drive a web hosting account for Free) http://www.ineedwebhosting.co.uk

quote

on 21/08/2008 16:29, Joe Muscara at email@hidden wrote:

Thanks Peter. I have the exact same system on my MacBook yet I don’t see it there, either. I wonder what the difference is?

MacBook Pro with NVIDA 256mb GeForce 8600M GT

However it’s the same on a MacPro with NVIDA 512mb GeForce 8600 GT

However the red rule disappears on a MacMini Core2 Duo with 64mb shared memory GMA 950.

It does not appear on a klankey old [6years] PC in XP-Pro on either IE7 or Safar 3.1.2.

As far as that overlap, I wonder if that has to do with these upper elements breaking apart and pushing things around.

That’s probably the case, if I change the text size [Apple+/-] the text flows longer or shorter under the fixed graphic.

HTH

Best wishes Peter

================================ Peter Tucker, Oxford UK email@hidden

quote

Thanks for all the reports so far. Ain’t designing for all these browsers fun? :?

quote

Both sites look nice. Like the BBQ one better.

Two questions: How did you create the nav bar on the BBQ site? Mainly the one that has the drop down menu.

And how do you create that look on the Idea Lady site that has the drop shadow going down both sides of the page?

quote

Thanks.

I did the nav bar old school, using the Menu Bar Action. The table is placed in the reddish rectangle, and that has all the effects (rounded corners, outer shadow).

The drop shadow on IdeaLady is simply a GIF set as a page background, centered horizontally and tiled vertically so it repeats down the page. I actually created the GIF on a scratch page in FW. I created a graphic item the “width” I wanted the page to be, put an outer shadow on it that was positioned so there would be some shadow to the left, and then drew another blank graphic box on top of that because I only wanted the left and right sides. That’s the item I exported from FW and used.

quote