Web Site - opinions

[justinsb]

Yesterday I asked for opinions on a new web site I've been building and got some good, constructive feedback. Today I've made some fixes and would like some more opinions if anyone has a moment.

www.earthlingsunited.info

Thanks in advance for your help

Peace!
Justin

[BlueEyedSon]

1. Would be better if it worked.

[justinsb]

4. Sorry

What's not working?

[BlueEyedSon]

6. Seems to load now, sorry for the false alarm

[justinsb]

9. lol, no problem

my heart is beating again.

[NMDemDist2]

2. i don't know how hard this might be, but maybe

add a space or alternate text color on the news links?

[justinsb]

5. Thanks

The links on the right or the links on the bottom?

[NMDemDist2]

11. actually both, but for sure the one's on the right n/t

[freedom_to_read]

3. looks nice

my only complaint, visually, is the fading in symbols in the upper left corner. kind of annoying IMHO.

[justinsb]

7. Yes, I get that alot

But people in the group really want them there, otherwise I would just delete that.

[nostamj]

8. i'll go further... very annoying

maybe if they cycled MUCH slower...

[displacedtexan]

10. Love it!

Did you create the quote box code?

I'm still to stupid to do that!

Here's my blog:
http://ascrivenerslament.blogspot.com/

[justinsb]

Actually

None of the Codes I tried worked properly on all browsers, so I created an animated gif for the quotes. Feel free to steal it - it's a single file. :)

[Sporadicus]

12. A Minor Point

I think the newslinks cycle too quickly. It would annoy me to line-up on a story I wanted to read, only to have it switch at the last moment to another set of stories.

On edit: good website. Its goals are worthy of praise.

[justinsb]

14. Thanks

I would love to fix that, and take out the sports stuff - unfortunately it's fed externally and I really don't have any control over how fast it cycles. :shrug:

[mstrsplinter326]

13. as a journalist and designer

I would advise against using times new roman on the site for anything bigger than 10pt.

Perhaps Verdana, Franklin Gothic Book, or Arial would work better for your "eIraq" headlines, if you can change the code they gave you.

Other than that - it looks good.

[justinsb]

15. Thanks for the advice

I appreciate it, I'll play with the fonts during the next round of polishing.

[mstrsplinter326]

18. anytime! n/t

[welshTerrier2]

16. a few comments ...

you're off to a great start ... no website is ever finished though ... here's some feedback:

1. in the "what's new" box, the text is too close to the left edge of the box ... be consistent ... indent it like you did in the box called "welcome" ... also, "welcome" has space above it and "what's new" doesn't ... make them the same ...

2. the boxes on the right side have the "heading" in some type of graphic or color ... you have the "buzzflash" logo and the "in the news" has a black banner ... you should probably do something similar for the left side box headers ...

3. it would be great if next to the "in the news" header, you could offer a button called "pause" and another one called "scroll" ... or just one button that toggled the text based on which state it was in ... that way, users who wanted more time to review the headlines could pause the scroll ... OR ...

4. perhaps there are alternatives to the scrolling headlines ... for example, it might be easier to take divide all the headlines into groups of say, 6 or 7 ... then, display the first group for maybe 15 seconds, then fade in the next group and so on ... the text would be much easier to read if you didn't have to hit a moving target ... with a forward and backward arrow, the user could advance the groups manually if they didn't want to wait for the timer ... and a pause/restart button would allow them to freeze any given group ... there's an example of this on the NY Yankee's website ... here's the link: http://newyork.yankees.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/index.jsp?c_id=nyy
notice the large graphic box near the upper left corner ... the graphic changes every 10 or 15 seconds automatically ... but the "vcr controls" in the lower right corner of the graphic box allow you to manually scroll (either direction) through the graphics sequence or even freeze, then restart the scroll ...

5. it's not clear, at least to me, what the difference is between the scrolling "in the news" headlines and the "what's new" headlines ... perhaps the "what's new' wording could be clearer ... what are those links and why are they different than the headlines from "in the news" ??

6. the current time thing is OK but does it display the time on your server or the user's local time ??

hope this helps ... keep up the good work !!

[justinsb]

17. Thanks for the advice

Parts of this I can fix and parts of it I can't really - there are 3 different news feeds going onto the site. I don't control the content - merely picked the providers, so my control there isn't great. In some cases all I could do would be to remove them.

You're right, no site is ever really done, but I'm trying to nail the obvious stuff now. Thanks again for all the feedback.