Topic FreelanceKillers.com - Review

Donkey

Well this site has been up for 2 years now, I still have plenty of work to do on it (well it really is never ending now isn't it). The site is basically a team site but it has a lot of news focused around FPS type games and some others. It also has the beginnings of a Strategy and Planning section. Anyways take a look and tell me what you like, dislike, or what I should improve.

http://www.freelancekillers.com

Thanks

-HAL-

Hi Donkey, good to see that someone's eager to start posting in here..

I don't have time to create a long review right now, but my first impression is that it's quite graphics heavy, and because of that it will be very slow to load on anything else than 1+ Mb broadband.
The background picture is very nice, but that one alone is over 100kb, so I personally would have changed that one into a (much) smaller one, to keep the page size down and increase the loading speed.

You can use this site to check/analyze the page size on your sites:
http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/
The size of this web page (1695566 bytes) has exceeded the maximum size of 1000000 bytes.

But it refuses to analyze yours since it's over 1Mb..
(probably because of the media you have there)

Your Strategy page has 785763 bytes of images in total, and that's quote a lot.. (total page size 812912 bytes)
http://www.freelancekillers.com/strategy/


I'll get back to this one later when I have some more time available..

mmarsh

I had no idea you were involved with freelancekillers. I have been on your BF2 Server loads of times.

Donkey

Yuppers....

Stop by anytime

-HAL-

Haven't tried your server yet, but I'm taking the Milforum server offline soon now so I'll try to stop by next time I'm online w/BF2..

Donkey

I'm working on a whole new style for the site....

http://freelancekillers.com/

Give me your thoughts....Keep in mind this is a work in progress and has yet to be optimized....

Please note it currently is only best viewed in FireFox...not so bad in Opera and terrible in IE (go figure)

-edit
It's being deployed through out the site...however it still has glitches in certain browsers and on certain pages...Oh and as always it is a work in progress....

-HAL-

It's looking (much) better, great work so far!

But you still very graphics heavy and got a very large background image (over 100Kb)
The total size of the images on your index page is over 240Kb so it will take a while to load that page on slower/dial-up connections.

And the CSS validator link displayed at the bottom of your page shows several errors:
http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/v...llers.co m%2F

Other than that I like it very much..

Donkey

Yeah well said to say it isnt really ment for dial up (I know I know), since I mean most people that are into online gaming are going to have a fast connection that is really my target audience.....

As for the CSS yeah well I'm having issues with everything working cross browser (damn IE) and I have some stuff that is just quick coded into it to get the point across....

It is far from done...I will work on the background image though I'm willing to bet I can crank down the size....

Basically this is my testbed for my next set of projects one being http://www.freelancegamer.com

Which is far far far away from even being anything....However I upped one of my servers to 10 gigs of storage so it is a start....Speaking of which if anyone is interested in helping out with freelancegamer.com drop me a pm...it isn't much yet but we like to think big

Also does anyone know how I can get a div color background to show up transparent in IE???? Look at the page in the newest version of Firefox and IE7 (6 distorts a lot) and you will see what I am talking about...

Thanks for the input

-HAL-

You should at least remove the link to the validator until you get it fixed..
cross browser compatibility really su*s sometimes...

I'm not sure that I understand what you're asking about here..
Can't see any difference in IE or FF on that page???

Found a page on CSS opacity on a quick Google search now, don't know if that helps at all:
http://www.mandarindesign.com/opacity.html

Donkey

I leave it because it helps me trouble shoot and it keeps me reminded that it isn't valid every time I or someone else clicks on it

Yeah I have seen that page before, the problem is the opacity on the Grey bars is not working in IE like it is in Firefox...More trial and error I gues