What do you think?

[UptonAu]

Hello all,

Last summer, I designed a site for the Jackson Lab at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, commonly known as where DNA was discovered by Watson and Crick. My skills have improved since, and only recently was I able to insert the content into the site.

Please note a few things. The target demographic for the site is that consisting of post-doctorate researchers/ science faculty whose institutions operate at resolutions of at least 1024 x 768 and have broadband internet connections across the board.

Despite this, the site (except for the homepage) fits in windows under 800 x 600 resolution, and all images have been optimized for download speed (the nav buttons however, need to be further optimized).

I won't have the time to make changes as I have other projects waiting, but I just wanted some feedback on what is arguably my most "big name" url to date.

Visit: http://jacksonlab.cshl.edu

Thanks.

[JR]

Very Nice. I am going to give it a 4 though because there is horizontal scrolling at 800x600, which I can't stand.

Good work, and welcome

[splufdaddy]

Nice lookin site, I like the photography. If I wasn't on dial-up for this week, I'd give you a 5, but it took a little while to load for me, so I give it a 4 too.

[Brak]

Very nice, the only thing I might change is the flare on the main page... it's just too attention-grabbing in all that saturated green

[UptonAu]

Thanks for the feedback, everyone! Because the site uses a Dreamweaver template system, I may be able to shave some more pixels off the content well so that there's no scrolling in 800 x 600 resolution. Spluf-- sorry it was slow to load for you; but you can only compress such (relatively) large photographs before the quality suffers too much. Brak-- believe it or not, that's exactly the way the image came out from my Sony DSC F707-- no retouching was needed.

[filburt1]

Originally posted by JR
Very Nice. I am going to give it a 4 though because there is horizontal scrolling at 800x600, which I can't stand.

Good work, and welcome

Ditto, it's spectacular except for that one problem. I'm a sucker for good photos in a website

[buntine]

great photography! it can be hard to make photography look good in a website but you have pulled it off.

some suggestions:
- preload your mouseovers
- it gets a tad boring after you get past the header on the content pages. Mayby you could run an image down th side of the page just to liven it up a bit.

good job

[UptonAu]

Hello,

Thanks again for all the constructive thoughts-- those who are not really into design either hate a site or hit the other extreme: oohing and aahing with little else to say.

Except for header in the Projects section, I personally took and processed all of the photos, so I'm glad you like them.

Buntine-- as far as I know, everything that should be preloaded is. Could you take a look at the code and give a shout if that's not the case?

[smoseley]

Beautiful design.

• The photography is not only bright and bold, but pertinent to the topic of your site.
• Not only that, but the banner image cleverly fits the width of the page with a liquid layout that has the feeling of a fixed-width layout.
• The graphics are subtle, yet striking at the same time.
• The content is legible and well laid out.
• You use fonts, bolding, and italics well.
• The navigation is easily discernable. Your sub-navigation is reiterated in the content.
• And it even fits into 800 x 600 nicely !!

I can't think of one negative thing to say about this site. I think we all should look at this as an example of what to strive for in our own designs.

[smoseley]

Actually, i found a couple negatives (minor though).

1) You're caching your rollovers, but they're still loading slowly (sometimes not at all). I think you should look into your JS a bit and see what problems you're having.

2) on the splash page, your links are too low-contrast, and tend to disappear into the photo montage.

Despite these minor things, I gave you a 5