Freedom Kilts Web Site down!

[McMurdo]

Sounds good Steve, I know what you mean about coders not being designers, as a graphic designer I can tell you it goes the other way as well, can't wait to see the new site, I agree a classic timeless look is perfect. Best of luck with it.

[walkerk]

We're dumping the Ruby on Rails language the current site is written in and going back to PHP.

Smart move.

[starbkjrus]

Yea, Stan, but you'd have to catch me first.

The site is up and running in it's original configuration.

The next step is to start the re-design. Because I have had so many problems with web designers in the past I approached the new guys with a 16 page, very detailed description of what I want done.
I included mock-ups of pages, full text, and even descriptions of color and spacing.

Just because someone can write code does not mean they know anything about graphic design. This has been my problem all along.

We're dumping the Ruby on Rails language the current site is written in and going back to PHP.

I have only the measuring video on my site that may give dial-up guys a problem. I'm not looking for an MTV version of a website with all the cute new bells and whistles. I prefer a classic, timeless look.

I couldn't agree more. Websites that are TOO elaborate annoy me. (I"m a production support manager for our company's intranet portal.)

I would make one hesitant suggestion though...not a criticism mind you...just add a tad bit more color. I understand that your flagship product is generaly in the beige range BUT your original website is just a bit too beige in my humble opinion. A little bit more background color would add a bit of er...OOMPH in my opinion.

Good luck with the redesign. I am well aware of how daunting that can be.

[The Wizard of BC]

Dee, I couldn't agree more. The washed out look is the result of the last code experts attempt at graphic design. He seemed not to understand the difference between bright and rich when talking about colors.
A good example is the first page when you enter the on-line store. He put washed out window panes behind everything and it gives the entire page a look like bleach has been spilled on it. And it seems that the color I want is one of the hardest to duplicate on a computer screen. It's the color of Oak or Ash wood that has been lovingly rubbed with Tung oil.

[Fox]

Yeah, sounds good and accessible. Alt tags for picture links and longdesc tags are real nice for us blind guys. Even flash can be made accessible if developers would use the hooks. Sorry for the semi-hijack.

Yea, Stan, but you'd have to catch me first.

The site is up and running in it's original configuration.

The next step is to start the re-design. Because I have had so many problems with web designers in the past I approached the new guys with a 16 page, very detailed description of what I want done.
I included mock-ups of pages, full text, and even descriptions of color and spacing.

Just because someone can write code does not mean they know anything about graphic design. This has been my problem all along.

We're dumping the Ruby on Rails language the current site is written in and going back to PHP.

I have only the measuring video on my site that may give dial-up guys a problem. I'm not looking for an MTV version of a website with all the cute new bells and whistles. I prefer a classic, timeless look.

[sputnik]

And it seems that the color I want is one of the hardest to duplicate on a computer screen. It's the color of Oak or Ash wood that has been lovingly rubbed with Tung oil.

One of my favorite design tools when working with a client that is having a difficult time arriving at a color pallet is this

http://kuler.adobe.com/

you can search for pallets that other users have created as well as use the tool to arrive at your own. Essentially, the tool does mathematically what a good designer does intuitively.

a quick search for "ash" or "hard wood" might yield a good jumping off point.

[The Wizard of BC]

Oh, I know what color I want. I use it all the time for my company. I even know the Pantone numbers for it. But that's in paint. The color does not come across well on a computer screen though.

Try it. See if you can find a solid color like oiled Oak that works on a monitor. You can do it if you use a series of different colored lines as they would be in the grain of real wood, but if you try to find a single solid color it won't look even close to the same.

It has to do with the different between the color of pigments and the color of light. Basic Physics.

[sputnik]

Oh, I know what color I want. I use it all the time for my company. I even know the Pantone numbers for it. But that's in paint. The color does not come across well on a computer screen though.

So it would seem that your issue then is making a choice between the color you want and the color you can have.

My advise then would be to not get your pleats wrinkled over it. Even if you nail the exact color you want, your going to have to deal with it looking different on every monitor, let alone the difference between color rendering on ie7, firefox, and safari.

[wsk]

... I refrain from using flash animation, realplayer bits and other such bandwidth hogging extras because they are not necessary to have a good website.

And, flash doesn't play nicely with older versions of itself. I gave up on flash when I started seeing the "you must download the latest version of the flash player ..." messages. Flash is great for things like youtube. Use it for that. If you MUST use flash, NEVER use it as a navigation tool. That's what standardized markup languages are for.

When you link to a flash animation, say that. Also specify how large the animation file (or any large file for that matter) is so that those who are still on dial-up can decide if they want to make the time commitment.

... I stick with HTML 4.01 compliant html only.

I vote for xhtml 1.0. I like that it forces me to use css which makes maintenance a LOT easier. Also, use the Markup validation tools at w3c for [x]html and css.

We're dumping the Ruby on Rails language the current site is written in and going back to PHP.

I use PHP extensively in my own web site. It is a great tool. For example, each document of my site starts with a simple one-line script that figures out where in the tree structure it is so that I don't have to figure out how many "../" sequences need to prefix the path to referenced files. I also keep a single separate header file that I include() in every document. That included file contains common style sheet paths, common meta tags, the link to my favicon etc. Makes maintenance so simple.

[kilted_brewer]

Oh, I know what color I want. I use it all the time for my company. I even know the Pantone numbers for it. But that's in paint. The color does not come across well on a computer screen though.

Try it. See if you can find a solid color like oiled Oak that works on a monitor. You can do it if you use a series of different colored lines as they would be in the grain of real wood, but if you try to find a single solid color it won't look even close to the same.

It has to do with the different between the color of pigments and the color of light. Basic Physics.

About a year ago (maybe longer, time seems to fly for me the past few years), I read an article about the common wisdom around color choice for web design changing (basically that more and more designers were doing away with idea that the limited cross-platform palette of, what, 216 colors? was all you could design in) because a very high (I don't remember how high, but more than 60%) percentage of users would correctly display the color the designer chose. Browsers and monitors have come a long way in the last ten years, I guess.

If you're looking for a specific color, have you considered the admittedly "old school" technique of using a background tile (made of a photographic image)? Perhaps something like this?