Design vs useability

[cevans]

I'm developing a new corporate website for our company. I'm looking for feedback to this site. This project is still in progress and most of the pages are not complete. But if you could go through the pages and tell me what you think of the design and the navigation.

Thank you

[baseiber]

Well, the navigation being on the bottom and on the bottom right hand side isn't very instinctive.
People are use to things being on the left or at the top.
I don't like the mouseover to get to the sub-links. If I want to see the stuff in About Us and accidentally
move the mouse over Portfolio then I have to go back to About Us again to get the links I want.
I should be able to click on About Us and have the links stay.
On the other pages some of the content doesn't seem to fit.
The partial green border on the left hand side creates a boundery.
It looks strange when pictures are on top of it.
Content pictures look out of place next to the header.
The links are also a little hard to see.

On the good side:
It looks professional.
I like the color scheme. It's soothing not bright and aggrevating.
I like the fading pictures.

You might want a seperate JS file for all the javascript.

[cevans]

Thank you for your post, I couldn't agree with you more about the navigation. Which border are you refering to on the left hand side that looks strange with pictures are on top of it. Just to be clear what content pictures look out of place next to header. Which page are you referring to, is it under the portfolio section.

Thanks again, your imput helps a great deal

Carrie

[baseiber]

I was referring to the elementary schools and the green border is some type of green vertical line on the right hand side.

[cevans]

That line is on all of the pages, it divides the submenu.

[baseiber]

The elementary school page is the page where a school pic is either on top of the submenu divider or right next to the top header.

FYI. I am viewing it using IE 6.0 at resolution 1024 X 768

[Jayhawk]

I would agree with baseiber that navigation is located awkwardly. People browsing web like to be able to click things instinctively.

Also, I personally like for the visual to be centered when viewed in a larger resolution. The 800 width is a good move, IMO, as many viewers use that size monitor and horizontal scrolling is awful. But many use 1024 width (as I do) or more, and centering the visual is more attractive to those viewers.

[hastalavista]

I think you are ok when the submenu is not at right hand side but above the corresponding capitalized main menu-item. The image can bear it. A bigger problem, design wise, is that it is a 800*600 design aligned left top. On a 1024*768 screen, the white space on the right completely blows the way my eyes travel over the canvas. The man we see in the back should be right of center. Why dont you try to have the design to be relative to the window size; set all the div positions and measures in percentages?


good luck