[Trawlerman]

http://www.arcticcorsair.f9.co.uk/jacinta

My new website is almost ready for launching. I've spent the past 4/5 months writing a detailed website on a Stern Trawler (big fishing boat) called the Jacinta. I'm hoping for it to become the definitive reference for this particular vessel and others like it. I'm looking at doing an official launcg around easter time to coincide with the re-opening of the vessel.

I'm hoping that a few of the members here could have a look at the site and give me some constructive criticism on what I have done so far. I want the website to be right before I show it to the owners.

Personally, I'm not too happpy about the site navigation. I also feel that graphics on the site leave a lot to be desired as i'm not a graphic designer.

So.... what do you guyts thinkof this? http://www.arcticcorsair.f9.co.uk/jacinta



BTW, The name is yet to be decided but I was thinking of registering the url of sterntrawler.com or co.uk

 

[braillediver]

How about making the first page picture smaller. When I first looked at it I wondered where the website was. Sort of a round emblem of the ship and an “enter” below it.

The green color of the link text blends in too much with the lined background.

How about a small picture of the trawler on each side of the title on the main page or something like that? A picture to the left and one to the right. One could be a picture and one could be the moniker of the restoration group?


Fleetwood's Heritage Trawler
X MT Jacinta (FD159) X
Stern Trawler Virtual Tour

The links on the left look like only 5 links. Like Recommended Reading should be separated to indicate its 1 link not part of the other 5.

I’ll look more and make suggestions if you don’t mind. We have a few nautical restoration groups here in Seattle. It’s a real shame the skill and knowledge is being lost.



Mitch aka braillediver

 

[archosman]

Pretty cool site! I like it.

 

[Trawlerman]

Quote:

Originally posted by braillediver I’ll look more and make suggestions if you don’t mind. We have a few nautical restoration groups here in Seattle. It’s a real shame the skill and knowledge is being lost. Mitch aka braillediver

Please do. That's why i'm asking.

BTW, I wrote the site with a 1024x768 screen resolution in mind to give the best possible resolution to the photos and diagrams.

 

[spaceman]

Quote:

Originally posted by braillediver How about making the first page picture smaller. When I first looked at it I wondered where the website was. Sort of a round emblem of the ship and an “enter” below it. The green color of the link text blends in too much with the lined background.

I agree with Mitch here, especially regarding the front page. I did click on the image to get into the site, but you would be surprised at the number of people that would think that was the only page. Very inforamtive site, though. Can I ask what part of England Fleetwood is in?

 

[Trawlerman]

I've changed the first page a little, the picture is now quite a bit smaller.

Fleetwood is in Lancashire on the west coast of England. Blackpool is about 3 miles to the south and is the nearest major town. Fleetwood is not too far from both Liverpool and Manchester.

 

[pank2002]

you should consider changing the background pic to a either another less "interfering" background, or just a plain color.

You should also consider adding a css (context?-style-sheet) to give the page a littile more life. Like for example add ahover effekt to the links (like we got on head-fi

)

Maby adding ½ or one line between eachline, or adding some kind of bulletpoint outside each point to make them more clear from eachother. or a |> kindda thing, you know.

You should consider making the links an the background diffrent colo(u)rs, cuz they're kindda hard to tell from eachother, at least for me. Might just be me.

I would add a a 1 or 2 px border around each image. Again you can do it in a stylesheet.

FAQ link's dead...

You should proberbly make a index page with all the pictures in "quick tour." There's a great freeware program to do it, but unfortuantly i cant remeber what's called right now..

The bulletpoint, on the front page, are a littile big, if you ask me.

Well, I hope htis help.
- Rasmus

 

[Trawlerman]

I've dropped the stylesheet that I was using and have gone with the defaults in Frontpage.

How does that look now?

 

[Alexa]

Justify the text... it looks a lot neater.

I dont know if this bothers anyone else, but the link colour dont show up too well on the background... you should either get the link colour changed or the background changed, or... you should get your desiger to add a div tag so that the background for the links are different. Like <div style="background:#FFFFFF">

You should also keep the link sizes uniform... they're huge on some pages (http://www.arcticcorsair.f9.co.uk/jacinta/main.htm) and tiny on others (http://www.arcticcorsair.f9.co.uk/jacinta/history.htm)

You should also get your designer to add a doctype tag and validate the coding (http://validator.w3.org). Sorry... I'm a validation freak.

Get the sizes defined in px or pt rather than just numbers. Depending on the browser settings <font size="1"> can appear as size 8 font or size 48 font, but keeping it as px will make it the same for everyone.

I don't know if this is considered advertising, but if you have the money, you should definitely put up a competition on designoutpost.com there are some really good designers there... at least better thanwhat frontpage can come up with.


EDIT: For the e-mail us link... it'll be better if there's some sort of warning, like "E-mail: blah@blah.com" or a link to a form. People don't appreciate their e-mail programme opening up without warning. Plus many people these days use webmail, hotmail or the like.

 

[eyeteeth]

Im a fussy person regarding visuals. There is too much white for me on the pages, too bright. But this may be good & function well for those interested in trawlers.

I prefer two other pictures in your image gallery for the opening page.

http://www.arcticcorsair.f9.co.uk/ja...ery-fyldea.htm But there is pixelation apparent so a higher resolution version would be needed.

or

http://www.arcticcorsair.f9.co.uk/ja...ery-norena.htm The top yellow pic. But flip the ship & have it travel left to right.

Better contrast & I prefer the ships coming towards the viewer.

 

[eyeteeth]

I flipped the Norena & the letters are backwards. OOPS

 

[eyeteeth]

I did a quick redesign of 2 different front pages with one Norina & the other Fyldea, Just as a suggestion. I prefer the Fyldea, I don't know how to post the images here though

It took me a grand total of 15 minutes!

But it's nice working with images again.

 

[Trawlerman]

Quote:

Originally posted by eyeteeth I did a quick redesign of 2 different front pages with one Norina & the other Fyldea, Just as a suggestion. I prefer the Fyldea, I don't know how to post the images here though It took me a grand total of 15 minutes! But it's nice working with images again.

If you can send me what you have done i'd be grateful... i'll take a look.

My personal email is mick(at)corsair(dot)karoo(dot)co(dot)uk


I've done a little redesigning of the pages myself also. I've only done the main pages so far, still have have the In-Depth pages and the Gallery to redo.

I downloaded a program that automatically formulates thumbnails and creates galleries of images so i'm mesisng with that and will probably use it for the Quicktour.

 

[eyeteeth]

Quote:

Originally posted by Trawlerman If you can send me what you have done i'd be grateful... i'll take a look.

Sent.

 

[lini]

Pretty cool, Mick - but is the font change on the lower part of the general description page intended? And maybe you should include a FAQ section: My first question would be, whether MT stands for motor trawler. And I'd also like to know where the name Jacinta originally comes from (apart from the ship with the same name before...).

Greetings from Munich!

Manfred / lini

P.S.: Some smoother fonts and a more marine color scheme could be nice, too...