Please preview my design change

**SagaLore** · 09-25-2002, 01:39 AM

I've decided to change my ad bar I have on the right column. It was a solid black bar, with a curve that merged with the header. Here is the new design I'm working on:

www.hawgbuster.com/nextversion

I think this way I can reduce the contrast, make the page more open, and give better focus to the special. Somebody actually told me whenever they looked at my site, their eyes would actually avoid the black column - they didn't even notice it was there. that was bad news!

This will also make it easier to incorporate some of the member's page stuff into there... you can see the previous design at www.hawgbuster.com

thanks

**Criper2000** · 09-25-2002, 02:26 AM

I see what you meant by the contrast.

The black border was hard to look at. It looks much better with the yellow border around the items.

**Pol** · 09-25-2002, 06:02 AM

From what i can see its about fishing bait,...why not make it more..fishy..

some greeny blues n stuff

**SagaLore** · 09-25-2002, 09:53 AM

The color scheme has to be yellow/black, that's the company colors. We're not just a reseller, but rather the manufacturer of the product. The main purpose of the site is for prospective vendors to get more info about our product... as well as sell to those who don't have a local vendor with our product yet.

**Pol** · 09-25-2002, 11:49 AM

Ohh, ok

dont get me wrong, It does look good

**SagaLore** · 09-25-2002, 11:57 AM

No problem, I know exactly what you mean.

When I first took over the site when it was in it's ugly condition (www.hawgbuster.com/original), I created a mockup that included greeny blues, etc. Well, the owner pointed out pretty quickly that he wanted the site to match the packaging so my choices are: black on yellow, yellow on black, or black and yellow around white. Guess which one was the best option.

In fact I have my first site attempt at www.hawgbuster.com/firstredo for comparision... and the previous version just before the current at www.hawgbuster.com/secondredo

I can safely say I'm getting better at this.

**Zoram** · 09-25-2002, 12:48 PM

Sorry to be repeatative but i think that the shadow could either be made lighter or smaller... it still seems too much shadow. Also, on the menu, you might try either putting about a pixel in between the individual buttons or something so that you don't get such a hard line between them.

Just MHO

Great Job on the right side though!

**SagaLore** · 09-25-2002, 12:53 PM

Yep I'll probably redo the shadow tonight or maybe tomorrow night. Easy change.

Funny thing... I had the buttons separated, and one of my biggest webmaster mentors told me to get rid of the space because it was creating too much contrast between the buttons.

I think I'm going to just redo the whole menu anyway, and I'm going to put them into categories with headers... maybe even keeping the actual links just text for faster loading.

If I keep the buttons I'm going to soften the black outline around them to a more golden, per someone else's recommendation...

thanks for the look

**Zoram** · 09-25-2002, 04:47 PM

That is a good idea, an easy fix would be to have your whole menu in a table and in the first column have the start of your buttons, you would have three graphics for each side :

1 for the top left, 1 for top right, 1 for all the middle left, 1 for all the middle right, 1 for the bottom left, 1 for the bottom right. On the middle one you just need to make it so that it either doesn't have the black separator on the bottom or top and plan your (cap) top and bottom graphics to have the missing line... pm me if this doesn't make sense...

then you would just have one graphic for the background behind your text... it's actually easy once you understand it and it makes it easy to update and change the menu...

Good luck!

**SagaLore** · 09-25-2002, 05:12 PM

Yep, I know what you're talking about. Take a look at the way I did the ad bar sections on the right.

But for a menu redo, I was thinking more in terms of a table, with header cells that contained a graphic that said "Products", and then another "Shopping", and then another "Fun Stuff", etc. these would probably be black with yellow font... then underneath each header would just be cells with text links.