Thursday, January 14th, 2010
I mentioned a few months ago that a new website design was in the process. Well finally the process is complete and the new site us up and live!
The actual content of the site is essentially unchanged at the moment. I intend to create new webcasts and new sets of images in the new few weeks as time allows. Let me know if you spot any teething problems such as broken links.
January 14th, 2010 at 2:08 pm
Download link on main menu from Blog page is giving page not found error. Thanks
January 14th, 2010 at 2:49 pm
Thanks. That should be fixed now.
January 14th, 2010 at 10:34 pm
I don’t know if there are some bugs preventing me fom seeing the site in all it’s glory or what, but the new design is just ugly.
Is this the site you paid $2000 for some pro to do? I would have done a better job for half the price. And I know amateur kids that would have done a better job too.
I’m not a professional webdesigner, I’m a freelancer webdesigner and wedeveloper and I can tell you that the current design is not worth even $500. The previous one was 100 times better. This design is just unprofessional. And the errors in the code? So many… Totally unprofessional.
Hopefully, there’s somethign wrong with my browser or the site itself because I can’t believe this is the site you got after this request:
http://www.componentfactory.com/blog/2009/08/web-designer-required/
I didn’t even answer that request because I though it was too much for my skills, but I now see that it wasn’t.
January 14th, 2010 at 10:48 pm
I agree with Ricardo Amaral, sorry
January 15th, 2010 at 12:03 am
Pl re-visit the new design once again and make it much professional like previous one.
January 15th, 2010 at 2:56 am
Have you tried looking at this Blog in Firefox? Can’t say I am a fan of the new design.
January 15th, 2010 at 3:56 am
I’ve got to disagree with DavidS and Ricardo Amaral, the new look website is much more professional looking than before, it’s very well laid out and incredibly clear.
I think the designers you got to do the redesign have done a great job, but maybe the bold headers could come down a font size or two. It makes all the other text hard to read.
This web site show of a great deal of professionalism, Well done Phil.
January 15th, 2010 at 4:57 am
Well, this design certainly leaves room for improvisation within the actual concept itself,could’ve been more sparkly like the ones you see with your competitors. Previous design had the advantage of being the “Old design”.
For me this look exactly like a modified dreamtemplate (www.dreamtemplate.com) site. I’m sure you’ll be making this better…
January 15th, 2010 at 6:01 am
Can I add that I use Google Crome to view the site, all the text is Times New Roman and looks like you typed the site up on a 1930’s typewriter, also I am using windows XP so perhaps I don’t have the font your designer selected.
January 15th, 2010 at 9:45 am
Can’t say I care for the new design. Kinda boring.
Also, it doesn’t seemed to be designed for wide resolutions (1600×1200). I’m seeing some gap/alignment issues.
January 15th, 2010 at 7:33 pm
It’s the font that scares me. It looks like Times New Roman on a plain white background (the top and the bottom of the page looks fine, but the simple white space doesn’t look that good).
I think that changing the main font could polish the look a lot with a small effort.
January 15th, 2010 at 7:43 pm
The font is correct at http://www.componentfactory.com/product?id=3 so I think there is an issue with the css not being picked up by certain browsers.
I am posting in firefox, and the rest of ther site is ugly “times new roman” so check the css in the page I have linked to above, you may need to apply that to the rest of the webpages.
January 15th, 2010 at 10:44 pm
I’m getting some weird alignment issues in the top and bottom of this blog post page, using Firefox on XP/SP2. For example:
http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/8154/86684454.png
I echo the comments about fonts: they aren’t very imaginative. This isn’t 1996. Other than that, I quite like the front page.
January 15th, 2010 at 11:11 pm
Ouch, the background is too contrasted with the black text. It hurts eyes to read the text. Please use some softer color, like #fafafa or something in that area. Overall layout seems nice (awkward because different from before). But main problem for the eyes is the background color, causing too huge contrast and making reading the text painful (seriously).
January 16th, 2010 at 2:15 am
@Gary
You are welcome to disagree and I respect your opinion, but I have to say this… If you call this design professional, than you know nothing about webdesign, seriously. This could be called a professional design back in the 90s, not today.
@Retheesh
Of course the concept could be improved, a lot as matter of fact. This is a known and common concept nowadays. The problem is in the implementation of that concept and the care for little details (like Phil has with it’s controls) that’s non-existent.
@vesuvius
The font maybe correct in that page only at same places, not overall. That just proves how horribly thought and design this site was (not saying it’s your fault Phil), there’s no consistency at all, no care for detail.
This may be just me but I believe the website plays a big part on all your future clients. This unattractive and unprofessional design will just draw them out of your product. Krypton is a very professional an polished .NET control. Everyone that reads your news/blog knows that, we can see how you care about making Krypton the best at what it does. However, the current website doesn’t represent that at all.
If I didn’t knew Kyrpton and how good it was, I would probably never download it now if I came to this new site. I would close the page as fast as I opened it. But like I said, that may be just me.
P.S: I’m sorry if I may sound harsh sometimes, it’s not my intentions. But since English is not my main language I may have some difficulties expressing myself. But I also kinda feel a little indignant with this so called “professional webdesign” as I’ve been doing that for many years now and this is everything but professional looking and it sure doesn’t fit the quality of the Krypton Suite.
January 16th, 2010 at 3:52 am
The site looks awesome! of course like ay new product there are a few things that need to be fixed. Most of us got used to the old website but it’s time to move forward and improve the new one.
January 16th, 2010 at 8:35 am
Well, I have to admit that at first I also wondered if my browser did not download the entire CSS styles for the new design… then I just realized it did… :-(
Can’t be good for a first impression, sorry I don’t mean to criticize but I too like Krypton and I feel that the previous design was much more professional.
Overall, I think that most of the followers of this blog are people interested in good-looking/well polished UI since they use Krypton in their App’s :-D so the negative feedback is certainly due to the very high expectations we are all used to have about Krypton… Once you love neat UI, you can’t live without it… :-p
I would be interested in what Phil thinks about it, there is always room for different opinions, but no closed-minds.
Good luck with the new website!
Mike
January 16th, 2010 at 8:38 am
One more thing, I also just noticed how the comment section alternates font size… It makes the comments harder to read…
January 17th, 2010 at 8:54 pm
Lots of comments… ;)
First of all, I think the overall design is in the spirit of current modern website. That’s a good point !
But as mentionned above, there are few things that make the design not so good and I think they can be quite easily corrected :
- the font : times new roman is horrible, use something like “font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;”
- the size of fonts is too much big, that really disturbs me.
- the background with the little grid is a good, but the current result does not look good.
January 18th, 2010 at 7:38 am
I think once the fonts are fixed it would be really good. Font’s like Times Roman etc etc only look good when they are really big – I mean like 14 point big!! Stick with arial style… Try a html/css validator etc
PK :-)
January 18th, 2010 at 8:20 pm
Hello,
Well the site looks horrible, and as stated above the whole CSS/HTML is a mess. There are several errors with the HTML like there should be only one H1 tag… and that either the logo (Component Factory) or the page title (Blog, Krypton Toolkit).
Second the colors and fonts are wrong. Some colors are too dark and some to white (like this background). Use a font like Arial, Verdana, Trebchuchet or any sans-serf; Try to match a current Toolkit theme.
Set the font size in “em”
Don’t use “«” use images instead. Also some bullets are just wrong. They’re a gold/brown like color. Use something in blue :)
Compress your CSS and JS. Also enable gzip compression.
The good part is that the whole concept is quite OK, modern and stylish, but with the changes above.
January 18th, 2010 at 8:24 pm
p.s. the brevel on the logo is ugly. remove it and give it a little glow or shadow.
January 19th, 2010 at 12:39 am
I like it, can’t say which I like better the old or the new. But there are still a few issues with the CSS or something that make things look funny. Especially the forum, it seems all distorted and messed up on both Firefox and IE 8.
January 19th, 2010 at 3:28 am
The forum is pretty much unreadable now.
[IMG]http://i47.tinypic.com/345mwy0.jpg[/IMG]
January 19th, 2010 at 4:39 am
Sorry Phil,
as much I appreciate your components I must admit
the new site is desastrous …
forum is unreadable, yes I have IE 8, but a new site should handle it !
the blue header ist much too big, half of the height would be sufficient …
If I come to your site I want to see content not blue header …
The fonts are also too big, I think the whole design is blown up in size,
maybe it would look better if the site would be smaller …
the blog part has smaller settings, the font is ugly but the size is better,
also the smaller header is better but 2/3 would also be sufficient …
January 19th, 2010 at 4:43 am
Ooops, Forum is unreadable in firefox too …
January 19th, 2010 at 1:33 pm
Ok, forum is now workin again …
but header/footer (including used fonts) is still to big for my opinion …
Maybe it detects screen resolution and resizes , but header on forum is 200 (Header mainpage 480 px) , footer is about 320 Pixel … I have a screen resolution of 1920 x 1200 and half of my page is coveredwith header and footer
January 20th, 2010 at 1:43 am
The first page of the forum is good but choose a sub forum and it is unreadable in IE 7.
January 21st, 2010 at 5:27 pm
The font seems to be corrected and the site looks much better now. Good work!
January 21st, 2010 at 6:21 pm
header is still much too big, if you set Zoom to 75% you get a feeling how size should be …
Text is too small then, I know … its just to have relation between header, footer and content …
I come to see your content, not your header :)
January 21st, 2010 at 6:22 pm
well some fonts are in em some are in % and they should be corrected.
also it’s a good idea to put all .js in a single file and minify it. this goes for the .css as well.
January 21st, 2010 at 7:51 pm
Your so called “NEW” web site design look & feel is not as professional as your components!