WWW.AP3D.COM
A professionnal website by Kier Darby, and a review by "Pimptastique"
Description: "Alternate Perspective 3D have been producing quality
animation and visual media for the corporate, multi-media and broadcast television
industries for three years. Calling upon a comprehensive set of disciplines,
skills and equipment, AP3D can bring both the professionalism and talent to
your project to maximize the potential of your ideas."
Look and Feel: The color scheme is a fairly bland gray, but it works
well. Too many people try to make their site look good by using all kinds of
colors, but to me a simple gray is a good choice since its easy on the eyes
and allows people to focus more on content than look and feel. The real issue
I have with the look and feel is that it takes up a lot of valuable real estate.
The top and right frames cut between 1/4 and 1/3 of the screen from being used
for the main purpose of any site - content. I've always felt, and I am not alone
in this, that you need to focus on content as few people will visit your site
to see your lovely use of colors or frames. People come to your site seeking
something, and the more you focus on that the better your site will be. Sometimes
you have to sacrifice neat graphics or cool menus, but its worth it because
people will stay at and return to your site because of what you provide and
not because you have the coolest javascript, image laden menu system. (They'll
probably only rip that off and never come back anyway! *right-clicks to view
source* :) )
Site Architecture: The categories are clear and contain appropriate
content. Besides eliminating frames and better utilizing space, AP3D is well
laid-out. As I talk about below I would suggest a link review as most of the
client related links don't work and also links to return the right-side menu
from the client to the normal menu does not work.
Content: The splash page is very simple, but serves the purpose of a
splash page well. The intro page, however, is a big disappointment. There is
a small section about clicking on the news archive, which has not been updated
in a YEAR, and not much else. Part of the problem is that its centered in the
frame area and looks very small, hardly a good first thing to see. Another point
of contention is the use of frames, I know that people like these for their
ability to customize the look, but it not only limits the browsers which can
be used to view your site, but also prohibits the bookmarking of specific pages.
Also it decreases the amount of useful space for the main body of your content,
which leads to more scrolling. Scrolling is BAD, because people do not like
to read huge amounts of text on sites typically. Mostly people will give your
site 15 seconds before they decide to stay or go, if you have lots of scrolling
its a safe assumption that they will be going. Using tables you can get the
same effect as frames, but with none of the drawbacks.
The gallery is driven from a cool looking right-side menu. It has thumbnails
which, when clicked, load the image in the main frame. Unfortunately, if the
number of thumbnails is greater than 5 you cannot see anything below the 5th
thumbnail. A better way to present these would be to make the categories on
the menu load the thumbnails in the main window, allowing either more thumbnails
visible, or in the case of a category with only a few images you could display
bigger thumbnails. When you load an image you get a really cool menu which uses
mouse rollovers to change images, the downside being the small size of the images.
The images are quite nice and are really well done, but at roughly 4 in. by
3. in they are far too small.
Under the characters section, we find a female character who is naked. Now,
being of legal age I am not offended by this, however as there are children
of all ages on the Internet I would think at least a warning about nudity would
be appropriate, yes its only a CG image, but still its nudity. This female character
is a perfect example of why frames are bad, about 1/3 of the image is unviewable
without scrolling to the right. Were the content area to be larger there would
be no need for a horizontal scrollbar (which you should NEVER have on a site).
The tutorials section on AP3D is very good for beginning Lightwave users. Many
of the tutorials are practically required reading if you are a Lightwave beginner.
These are some of the best written tutorials on the web as they are built so
that the first ones are step-by-step guides with lots of pictures, the later
ones assume you know more (otherwise you should go back and read the previous
ones) and the more advanced ones are structured for people who pretty much know
what they are doing. I find tutorials tend to be either too advanced for their
audience, or far too simplistic. These tutorials are great because they build
on the previous ones and really teach useful skills a Lightwave 3D'er will use
forever. This is definitely a highlight of the site and worth the price of admission
alone. I would even recommend advanced users read all the tutorials as they
might get you out of a few bad habits you picked up by doing things the wrong
way from the beginning.
The content also appears to all be at least a year old. Given that this is
marketed as a professional website, the assumption would be that it was kept
up-to-date. The odd thing being that until about a year ago updates appeared
to be fairly regular and frequent (according to the news section anyway).
Not all of the links work (including nearly all the client links), and some
of them load new websites within the frame which is a big no-no. Simply using
a program like Dreamweaver would help with the broken links, I like to use notepad
to code and then either check links by hand, have someone do it for me (QA person)
or fire up Dreamweaver and check it that way.
My Conclusion: This site really suffers from a lack of attention. First
the webmaster(s) need to update the content, then pay attention to the links
within the site. After a thorough revision I would like to think that this site
would be an 8 or 9 out of 10. Right now I would only give it either a 5 or 6.
Remember, especially if you are a company, that your website may be your first
impression to a potential client. As cliché as it is, you only get 1
chance at a good first impression, so keep your website current and working.
You wouldn't meet a client in ripped jeans, a T-shirt and unshaven, so why give
that impression via your website?
If you guys want me to review your site ( if it is a startrek site , don't bother asking ), well just post the URL at the forums and i'll see what i can do !
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