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 I would really appreciate it.

Thank you

[rapid]

your splash page is a waste of time and bandwidth, especially as its not that different to your home page.

your menu text is too pale for visitors with visual difficulties. and your text is of fixed size so there is nothing your visitors can do to enable them to see your menu to be able to navigate your website. its also not clear what the visitor is expected to do with your menu, most would hover over the about us link, see the text displayed on the right, assume it gave a contents list of the about page, click on the about us link, find its not working, and get a bad impression of your site. the menu is the most important part of the home page, much more important than a photo of the back of someones head.

the links to the current page should be disabled to prevent visitors accidentally clicking on the link to the page they are already on and having to wait while it reloads. this is especially important with such a complex menu as yours.

your images need alt tags.

if the browser window is reduced in size the design degrades. the background images cant be seen and menu at the bottom overlays but requires horizontal scrolling (which is a big no-no). would be better with one image of the classroom on the left with the menu listed below, get rid of the image of the head, move the 'creating places to learn' text up the page and put homepage info below it (such as how to use your menu).

its not so much design vs usability as poor design without usability.

[Sir Jake]

Is the slash page suppost to look like the site is being built right infront of our eyes? Not a bad idea except when it flashes revealing the real site and it looks as if the site is having problems loading. Kinda self defeating I think. Unless you did the splash page with a grey background (rapid's diff image) and when it flashes showing the real site with the white bg it may look intensionally cool. Maybe too flashy for a corp site though.

As for usability, there is none at all. even if the pages aren't complete you should still make the nav work so all could see your theme and a little content. (With 'more to come' added of course.)

Your nav is too pale for sure but it's a lot better than the one in Fanny/Howey CIV ENG DIV. That ones really hard to read, (bad spacing and tiny tiny drop downs).

Looking forward to your updates.