Dante's Pasta

[Green-Beast]

Hey guys,

Just made another site, this time for an Italian restaurant. The client hasn't seen it yet, but they did ask for something richly-colored and warm. I think they'll like it. It's really quite accessible (lots of features meant to make it so). Warning, it's a tad image-heavy, not unreasonably so, but I thought I'd mention it. Once loaded, provisions were made to make the site function well for dial-up users, and there is a style changer on the Site Info page. Your thoughts? Dante's Pasta (http://adagiospa.com/_dnt/)

Thanks.
Mike

[Ness_du_Frat]

It's really cool !!!! I like it a lot ! Exactly the Italian feelings !!! (and I know, because I'm half italian...).
You have everything : the colors, the italian mood, the friendliness... I'm sure your client will love it !

[LiLcRaZyFuZzY]

hi mike,

great design,
however i noticed that the area around the flame on the bottle is very noisy, you might wanna smooth that out.

[JPnyc]

Nice work Mike. Graphics and overall look are excellent. Why does the top menu item "home" jump on mouseover?

[LiLcRaZyFuZzY]

what do you mean? what browser are you using?

[thewebman]

very nice site! I like it a lot, and using valid xhtml is always a plus! keep up the good work!

[tmcthrill]

Good work man!! Awesome job with the layout and the graphics! Was the whole site done with PHP?

[WebJoel]

I like it! -Makes me wanna eat a pasta dish! ;)

Yeah, that candle flame could be 'smoothed' a bit.

-And it would be kewl if you could get the content to scroll a bit smoother. It's kind of jerky with my browser (Fx, using cable modem).
I looked over the code, -thinking that I might spot something that could be causing this (like alot of javascript, etc), but did not see anything amiss right off.

What I mean by 'smooth scrolling' is better demonstrated here:

http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/css/edge/complexspiral/demo.html

This guy's page style has got it goin' on!

....................

Excellent work on the site, -I'm sure the client will love it!

-Joel

[Green-Beast]

Thanks for all the feedback guys.

The flame/bottle is a bit weak. I've never really used PNGs like this (trying new tricks). In IE it doesn't stay fixed and there's no shadow or flame glow. I understand that I can apply some opacity filters to the CSS for IE but it'll invalidate it. I just found some JS that might serve to replace the CSS part.

Not sure about the image jump. I did have to change something in the banners and I'm suspecting that the site was being visited while this was happening thus the shift. Can you confirm that it is no longer an issue please?

The scrolling thing is due to the fixed background I suspect. Because of that it has to re-render on scrolling I think. And thus it gets a little jerky.

Thanks again guys.
Mike

[KDLA]

Hey Mike -
The coloring of the little guy on the front page is quite off. He looks like he's suffering from a third-degree sunburn. Definitely need to reduce the red channel (and possibly a touch of blue) there.

As pointed out previously, the candle/wine bottom is really pixelated. Also, it looks like there are bits of green background around the wick. You might consider blurring the outline of the bottle a little, to soften it up.

[This is a really picky comment, so disregard if you're not a perfectionist: The candle's perspective is off from that of the bottle. The candle is tilting towards the viewer; the bottle is sitting straight on. For the candle to actually be inside the bottle, it would need to be at more vertical angle (or else it wouldn't be able to be in the bottle's narrow opening). You can fix it somewhat by adding wax drippings around the bottle's top, obscuring the angle a bit.]

As always, a nice site! I'm officially starving for Italian food, now!

KDLA

[LiLcRaZyFuZzY]

I'm officially starving for Italian food, now!
Allow me to take you out for a succulent pasta dish (if you come here)

[Green-Beast]

Hey Mike -
The coloring of the little guy on the front page is quite off. He looks like he's suffering from a third-degree sunburn. Definitely need to reduce the red channel (and possibly a touch of blue) there.

Agreed. Most of images you see are slated to be changed (they're placeholders). The site owner said he had all sorts of new images, but never gave them to me so I took the ones off his old site (are some are Googled) for the time being. Hopefully the new images are better quality.

As pointed out previously, the candle/wine bottom is really pixelated. Also, it looks like there are bits of green background around the wick. You might consider blurring the outline of the bottle a little, to soften it up.

That'd be a great fix for Firefox and whatnot, but unless I do something for IE, I think that fix will have bad results for those users. The softening might end up being an unsupported transparency making the bottle worse in IE. I'm seriously considering add a litle that says "remove bottle" and make the thing user-selectable.

[This is a really picky comment, so disregard if you're not a perfectionist: The candle's perspective is off from that of the bottle. The candle is tilting towards the viewer; the bottle is sitting straight on. For the candle to actually be inside the bottle, it would need to be at more vertical angle (or else it wouldn't be able to be in the bottle's narrow opening). You can fix it somewhat by adding wax drippings around the bottle's top, obscuring the angle a bit.]

I'm picky too. I picked up on that but justified it in my mind. My thinking was the candle isn't burning evenly and the the viewer is seeing more bird's eye exposure due to the irregular burn. Some dripping wax from the low point would probably solidify the illusion as I saw it.

As always, a nice site! I'm officially starving for Italian food, now!

Thanks man.

Mike

[KDLA]

That blasted bottle --
Have you considered maybe going into your image editing program and creating an 1px outline around it (red,top; black, bottom) as a "top" layer? Just to even up the edges. I've done that when I just can't seem to get rid of the pixelation.
KDLA

[Green-Beast]

That blasted bottle --
Have you considered maybe going into your image editing program and creating an 1px outline around it (red,top; black, bottom) as a "top" layer? Just to even up the edges. I've done that when I just can't seem to get rid of the pixelation.
KDLA

You know what, that's excellent idea. I do that with GIFs all the time to keep edges smooth. I don't know why I did think of this. It'd be smooth in IE without losing any of the goodness the other browsers support.

Thanks KDLA

Mike