Review my Site? :)

[Victoria7]

I know you all are probably very busy, but I would appreciate some feedback about my site. It's about the last imperial family of Russia, and entitled "Grandanor: Remembering the Romanovs." The URL is http://www.geocities.com/grandanor1/index.html.

I'm specifically looking for the following information:

1) How my graphics appear - are they blurry, grainy, ugly, too large?

2) Do my pages take too long to load?

3) If you were browsing for information on this particular topic, do you think that this site answers all of your questions? (OK, this one will probably be harder to answer. :)

4) For you Mac users, does the page appear without trouble?

Sincerely,
Victoria B.

[cowax]

All I got was an ugly yahoo page sayin "Whoops! We can't find your page!" :)

[Rodie]

Well, I'd probably lose the background music. It looks like your site would get a lot of hits from people doing research, and if someone in a school or library went onto the site, it might be enough to get them to click off of your page. Also with mp3's and all these days, it might conflict with people listening to their own music.

Other than that, it has a pretty simple, yet elegant layout. I like it.

You might also consider changing the text to something other than the default. It would do your page some good.

But again, the page looks pretty good to me.

[gthorley]

Victoria your site is quite good and very interesting. While you must have cut out the music a soft Russian Melody might be nice if you could give users an off button.
I also would change the fonts possibly you might try arial or verdana in the narrative sections.

Found the music it only plays in IE5 not Netscape. Needs a volume control and off button.

The correct url for those trying to find the site is
http://www.geocities.com/grandanor1

[Fred]

Suggestion is to remove the music.

[Victoria7]

Thanks, everyone! I'll definitely consider redoing the narrative text in Arial.

I have considered forgetting the music, or putting a softer tune in. What do you suggest, aside from controls? (I am, of course, assuming that embed src works with both Netscape and IE...I'll have to check that out.) In your opinions, should I let the music play at a low tone (if it's a softer tune), or add a bit of text stating that they can click to play this music? I'm leaning towards the latter; only it would end up being at the bottom of the page, and people rarely scroll far down.

Some enterprising free services company should offer special controls that you can customize for your music...it would be a big hit, I'm sure, since no one likes little grey boxes cluttering up page design.

Also, just curious...what do you think of my *design*? Bad...good...horrible?

[Nick]

I'm going along with everyone else and saying remove the music. It is quite aggrivating when I'm listening to New Found Glory's CD and all the sudden a piano starts playing :p. I wouldn't change anything else. It might be plain but that's exactly what I want to see when I'm looking for information for a school paper :D.

[Koolguy]

Besides streaming video/audio etc. the web is a silent medium. If a visitor wants to hear music they will by their own free will open the file. Also if you have your speakers turned up very high and you are not expecting background msuic it can be very startling.

[Victoria7]

Thanks for all the feedback, guys. I'll definitely redo the pages with optional music. (These HTML and JS whizzes really need to start making customizable audio players, so no one is forced to have ugly grey boxes on their sites. :p

[Koolguy]

Thye have, here is an example.

http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex11/midiplayer/mplayer.htm

[Victoria7]

Thanks for the link, Koolguy. Now if only everyone would upgrade their computers, connection speeds, and browsers, the world would be a happier place! :)