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Archive for “The Showcase”
Optimalworks
The Optimalworks site immediately impressed us with its crisp visual image and sense of purpose. The visuals were big, bold and clear with a large readable font size and good use of supporting images/icons — all of which contributed to a strong design that was both bright and cheerful. Then we switched images off and, to our surprise and delight, the site still looked good! We also noted the extensive meta text — another demonstration of good attention to detail on this site from the ground up. With the odd exception, keyboard navigation was an absolute breeze, thanks to the very clear onfocus link highlighting. No messing about with subtle changes here or unintuitive tab ordering either. The link highlighting hit us right in the eye (even on graphical links) and the tab order was exactly as expected given the visual display. All of which made navigating this site by keyboard a real no-brainer. All in all, the kind of keyboard friendly site that should be the norm — not the exception.
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Lotus from the Mud
The Lotus from the Mud site immediately impressed us. Clean lines and whitespace, professional, and really great looking — a really sophisticated, artistic site. Smiling from this initial impression, we dug deeper and were both delighted and saddened by what we found. Like most sites we grade, the turn-ons were countered by some turn-offs. We didn’t find anything that couldn’t be fixed with ease, indicating this site has a good foundation on which the developer can work from.
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Bernard Herenmode
The Bernard Herenmode site has paid a lot of attention to accessibility, which is a rare thing amongst commercial sites. Pages are well structured with sensible use of headings and lists where appropriate. Links within content have been made clearly visible, although slightly overused. Text resizes without breaking layout for the most part — logo goes wandering a little. Page titles and meta data are specific to each page and a favicon helps for all those tabbed browser users. With 13 tabs open, yes, favicons help!
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GeoFeat
The GeoFeat site is a fine example of a site with an effective brand — “the directory with a difference.” The first visual impressions gives the user a very good idea of what the site is about and what it’s trying to achieve along with it’s complimentary content. The brand is further amplified with the site’s clean and earth-like design. As well, the site also demonstrates strong semantics and a strong layout of the content.
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