hi there, i was asked to make a site for a freind's shop as his old one was realy realy bad.

 

This is my 1st atempt at desighning anything, just wondered what you think of it and if I should try again lol.

 

any critisism / feed back more than welcome.

 

thanks in advance.

 

http://www.cranleightiles.com/home.html

i guess so lol

Its a bit amateurish, but for a first site its decent. Why did you use flash though, especially for a basic site, you don't do well on search engines, and prevent users who don;t have flash from viewing your site.

Its not bad, good ideas. something that would really improve it is changing the font.

 

That font used is not very nice at all. Personally I'd use Arial, Tahoma or Verdana.

thanks guys, im not shure why i used flash tbh. it just started out that way but i havee learnt so much now.

 

i agree with the font - going to take a look at that.

Certainly better than my first effort!!

 

You really shouldn't use flash though, especially for a full site design like that - it's more than simple enough to be coded properly in html and css. Flash will prevent search engines from effectively indexing your site, so it'll rank really badly, it'll prevent people without flash from viewing the site and it means you get that annoying loading bar.

 

If you are going to use Flash, you really need to think about using separate .swf files and loading them as necessary. I believe the whole site loads as one .swf at the moment, which means the file size is too large. There are all sorts of ways to load the extra files as and when you need them.

 

As for the text on the site, I'm not sure what's happened but it looks awful. Loads of anti-aliasing going on, which is strange because one of the massive benefits of flash is its performance with displaying fonts well.

 

Oh, and get rid of the insanely annoying noises as you hover over menu items.

 

The design is reasonably good though, so well done with that and good luck tweaking it!

If this is your first attempt at a website then hats off, mine was freaking horrendous!

 

I'm very much against the use of Flash with new features in HTML5 bringing more and more capabilities to browsers without the use of plugins or processor hogging animations made with Flash. Maybe I'm just an Apple fan boy but you can’t ignore the huge market share that iOS devices hold, which have no Flash capabilities. This also goes for Blackberry's and other mobile browsers so not only is Flash non SEO friendly, but it also limits who can actually view the site.

 

I realise you're just starting out but you could consider having a look at jQuery. It's really easy to get to grips with and can do amazing stuff, and visitors don't need any plugins to view it!

 

Hope I've helped Well done though, there's a lot worse out there!

If you are going to use Flash. I would suggest saving it down to maybe version 8. More people will be able to see your website without having to download a newer version.

 

Personally I don't mind Flash, but just not on the whole of the site. Sites that are built with HTML etc and include a few flash elements are much better!

As has been said, not a bad first attempt Quite a lot to improve on and again I would start by ditching flash. Well maybe not completely, but certainly don't build an entire site using it. You need real text for optimisation. There's no point having a site if no one can find it.

 

More subtle things you can do to help make future designs a bit more professional is things like losing the heavy drop shadow on text and harsh gradients. But these are things that you will pick up as you design more and more sites, your skills improve and you develop your own style. Your attention to detail should also improve with time as well.

Jay

well done. you should stick to plain html sites though without loading times.

I didn't wait past the loading bar. Will others?

Have a look at some other sites to give you inspiration and talk to your friend how they would like the site to be portrayed, this will give you a better idea of how it should look and function. Good luck

Hey,

 

This is not bad at all. Well done. Although I agree with the "loading" part. I guess it takes time,you should use simple HTML just like others said.

 

But overall, this is really great kind of work!

Well done i would say with the first attempt.

But what i believe it must be implemented totally in HTML to facilitate better to visitor.

i think its teetering on the edge of amateur and good! very nice first effort

 

as about try some new fonts, try a new logo at the top, the one you have looks rough

 

and redo it all in HTML/CSS

Your website layout is good but some other contents should drop website to bad. First is Text styling, use regular fonts or neat fonts. Second is color combination, this color is not looking standard. Avoid that edge fade and give a beautiful banner.