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about our new site for Artedomus (and scope-creep & code-rot)
It has taken an age but our new website for Artedomus, Australian stone and bathroom specialists, is almost ready to go live: http://artedomus.com.gladstone.soho.aussiehq.net.au/
The site is largely targeted at architects and interior designers, and so we took a couple of things on-board with the design:- make the most of any large screen sizes: a fluid layout attempts to maximise the layout to full-up your screen
- Mac users see rendered Truetype font headings, Windows/Linux users see server-rendered fonts (using zem_ir plugin)
The site has brought to a head one of my big problems in web-development: how to prevent code-rot. In all but the simplest of projects, I find that scope-creep inevitably gets in the way of my best intentions: over time my neat, carefully structured code always denatures into something that does its job but is a nightmare to administer without Web Developer plug-in for Firefox or Safari’s web-inspector i.e. it could be tighter/more elegant. Now that the project is about ready to go live I find myself wanting to ‘re-build the lot again, but better’… nice idea, but impractical for most projects.
I was wondering how everyone else fares – how do you cope with scope-creep and resultant code-rot on complex projects?
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Re: about our new site for Artedomus (and scope-creep & code-rot)
It’s pretty cool, but quite heavy too (well maybe it also because I live another side of the planet) so it takes some time to load, in example the couple animations.
I was just wondering, if the photos of ceramic titles would be done with backgrounds insted of images. Then they would place correctly and won’t show alt-message etc. before the image is loaded. Just wondering.
The layout is really white, I found it whiter than white actually, because it just looks so white. I think it’s a good color choise for targeted people, architects. It takes the content to the front, and shows it up clearly, as art-galleries do in the real life as their walls are white too.
At minus, there is sometimes too much of background shapes and tiles, which sometimes look kinda messy.
Cheers!
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Re: about our new site for Artedomus (and scope-creep & code-rot)
Hi Gary
Unlike Jukka, I found the loading very fast from here. Maybe that 1800miles difference between Cyprus and Finland does make a difference:)
I played with the resolutions a little and noticed that even at 1024×768 the site does not display the whole content. I normally use a 1600×1200 size which, i guess, displays everything but at 800×600 the layout definitely seems incomplete.
Another little observation. On the register page the horizontal band is omitted in the page title area. I wouldn’t have minded it if the rest of the links were “separated” in similar manner but as it only appears in the ‘register’ layout it seems like an oversight to me.
Being an architect, the site does appeal to me and white is indeed a very appropriate colour. As always with your work. Great!
Yiannis
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NeMe | hblack.art | EMAP | A Sea change | Toolkit of Care
I do my best editing after I click on the submit button.
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Re: about our new site for Artedomus (and scope-creep & code-rot)
Thanks, Yiannis and Jukka.
I played with the resolutions a little and noticed that even at 1024×768 the site does not display the whole content. I normally use a 1600×1200 size which, i guess, displays everything but at 800×600 the layout definitely seems incomplete.
Oo-er. It looks like I need to do another run of testing. Those items of information not showing up at 1024×768 don’t worry me too much (the missing info shows up when they click for more detail), but the 800×600 size needs to be fixed…
I suspect I can either:
- live with a hoz-scroll bar for those visitors with small screens
- or I’ll deliver the non-javascript version of the site (basic css styling only, but everything accessible)…
and (eventually, at some future revision of the design) do it all again, this time with more perspective, getting it ‘more right’, until the next bit of scope-creep…
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Re: about our new site for Artedomus (and scope-creep & code-rot)
Oo-er. It looks like I need to do another run of testing. Those items of information not showing up at 1024×768 don’t worry me too much (the missing info shows up when they click for more detail), but the 800×600 size needs to be fixed…
Would this help?
Last edited by colak (2007-11-11 06:22:15)
Yiannis
——————————
NeMe | hblack.art | EMAP | A Sea change | Toolkit of Care
I do my best editing after I click on the submit button.
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Re: about our new site for Artedomus (and scope-creep & code-rot)
Would this help?
It would (it will ;-). It is essentially what I started off with – only I didn’t load in alternate stylesheets – I apply classes to elements on the fly using javascript.
Problem is, scope-creep ended up breaking my initial design parameter choices – the aforementioned code-rot again.
Nice script, though…
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