Thread: Restaurant ready for review!

Hi everyone, just finished designing this new site for my restaurant, www.canelayclavo.com A lot of work went into it so any tips will be greatly appreciated. P.S, the english version is not active as yet.Also for some reason the horizontal lines appears dragged downwards a couple of cm when viewing in firefox.Internet explorer shows it as it is soposed to be, any advice how this can be fixed?Thanks!

Your site is nice, very nice.

Hi, the site is real nice. I find the lightbox takes a while to load. I have used it a few times but have tried not to use recently for that very reason. It does look really nice and elegant but I think BV needs to work on the time it takes to load the pictures initially. I have the same horizontal line problem in firefox... My only fix is to not use it in my design. I have tried using a shape tool and making the box really thin. U may try that and see if it works for you.

www.sadada.com/wedding

Excellent!!!!

Congratulations... So far the best site I have seen so far. I can believe when you say it took some time.

All I see for this site and restaurant, is Success....

Once again congratulations...

Success Regards
Honey G

Hi, nice looking style of site. I'm afraid you cant do much with the FF problem except to compensate for the different spacing FF renders.
You could help with the page loading times be also reducing the background images by about half with no real degrade in quality.
The gallery is a little slow loading, but it is at nearly 2meg in size. I would look at a different way of displaying this many images.

Nice site, well thought out. I would ask you to give us un option to turn off the music :), as Chris comments your background images have to much quality. Bring down the quality of the images, more than 72pp on a computer screen is not appreciated.
Enhorabuena un página muy interesante.
Prepara una Paella para dos que voy esta tarde.

Bonita pagina y la comida parece buena siceramente!
Si paso por valencia un dia hechare un vistazo. Enohorabuena

Very nice website, looks very professionally done. My only comment would be to either turn off the music or at least give someone the option to turn it off themselves. I have done some research on websites and music seems to be the new major no no right now. I kinda like it but from what I have heard most people don't.

I am just new to the whole website building thing but have been looking into it. How do you get the pictures to fade in to the next picture?

Hi everyone, thanks all for the feedback!greatly appreciated. I will have a look at reducing the amount of pictures in galery and perhaps reduce the pic sizes as well, that will speed up loading time. Not so sure about reducing the background pic size, if I do it starts ``doubling`` the image again when viewing in any given browser.My page with is set at 1024x600.Ive read that this is more or less standard size for viewing?Then again, not sure about this.Regarding the music, I would love to have a option for viewers to turn it off if they wish, its just that the media player when shown on page just completely breaks the harmony of the index page. To get past this problem I have published my index page as a stand alone page, which means that in order to enter the website it opens in a new window. This way the music stays on while browsing the website. The index page can be closed (and music turned off) without affecting the overall website viewing. Any idea how to get past this issue without using BV media player? I made the fading flash pictures using FLASH SLIDESHOW MAKER PROFESSIONAL. Usefull standard flash tool for basic flash presentations. Thanks again all for your comments, greatly appreciated!

Hi, on the images, it wasn’t the physical size. It was to reduce it in kbs.
Try taking this url http://www.canelayclavo.com/IMG_0071%20(1450%20x%20967).jpg & putting it in this page for a reduction on how it will look.It should come down about 50%, but it will give you a load of images to choose from.

I know its not nice looking but if you reduce the size of media player to 40 pixels by 20 pixels and put it in corner at least you give some control over the music. Maybe your falsh slide show has some sound options and you can embed it on a blank swf.
The psychology behind having music on your page can be good and bad, if someone at work is viewing your page and suddenly the volume is to high, he or she will automatically close the browser and in their mind remains and relates the name of your site with having to--get out--, quickly.
Well thats what some people think, whatever....

Hi everyone. Thanks for everyones valuable advice!I have taking into consideration all that has been posted and have now amended the following:

1. I have reduced the quality of the backgrounds by minimum 40%, max 60%, reducing more on some pics distorts it too much. Hopefully the pages will now load quicker.

2. I have redisigned the `gallery` page that was taking ages to load. I have reduced the number of pictures and also resized all of them to 600x400. Instead of using LIGHTBOX to display the images I have used a flash gallery. Hopefully the page will now load quicker.

3. Regarding the music, I have been unable to find a suitable music player for the index site. I really dont want to use the BV music player as it breaks the harmony of the index page if displayed. To get around this issue I have temporarily cloned the index page with the clone not having the music imbedded on it. I have added a `music off` link that really just redirects you to the cloned page.Hopefully this will do while I look for a permanent solution to this problem.

4. unfortunately I found out way too late that the font I used `SEGOE SCRIPT` is not preinstalled on XP systems...users with windows XP looking at my site only sees normal text and it breaks completely the page layout. I have now converted all my text to images (unfortunetely Ill be loosing out a bit on search engine results) but have not been able to convert the main text menu at the bottom to a image. The text are linked and when converted the links wont work. In order to keep the font more or less similar I have used for the text menu ´ITALIC RAGE`.Hopefully the page will now be displayed as it should to both XP and VISTA users.

5. Im still working on the english version.

Thanks again for everyones opinions and any advice and help will be greatly appreciated!

I think the best way to get through the sound issue is to embed it on a falsh file and use the same music on/off option on all the pages. You have lots of tutorials on youtube.