VO-BB - 20 YEARS OLD!

[JBarrett]

The first iteration of my web site is up, and I would love to hear your thoughts on it.

http://www.justinbvocal.com/_index_test.html

My goal was to keep the design simple and clean. I chose to put everything on a single page, using JavaScript to handle animation and a bunch of other under-the-hood stuff.

So far I've tested it Firefox and Safari on the Mac, and in Firefox and IE on Windows. Firefox never has any problems. In IE on Windows, I get a "broken object" indicator instead of the audio player in the Demos section, and in Safari on the Mac, the Demos section won't even open. I'm using the ever-popular Wordpress audio player, but not quite in the same way that's described elsewhere on the forums here. The player is dynamically added and removed via Javascript, which was the only way I could think of to turn the player off when moving to a different section.

All comments about design, navigation, etc. are welcome. Thanks!
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Justin S. Barrett
http://www.justinsbarrett.com/

[JBarrett]

Whoops...just found a bug with the Video page. It was showing "Undefined" under the video after clicking the link. That's now fixed.
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Justin S. Barrett
http://www.justinsbarrett.com/

[Lance Blair]

Maybe the Alt text should say more to help drive you SEO. Otherwise it's nice and clean, but it doesn't spell out "voice over/voiceovers/voice overist) what you do on the front page. Maybe have some text to help your SEO?

Whoooooah...you're the voice of Boom Blox? My family LOVES that game, and we specifically tool on the poor helpless creatures just to hear your noises. Thanks!
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Skype: globalvoiceover
and now, http://lanceblairvo.com the blog is there now too!

[JBarrett]

Thanks for the comments, Lance! Re: opening view, it does have my name and "Voice Artist" below the main logo, and that text remains on the page while all the other stuff slides around. I haven't added any other SEO-centric bits, though. Need to get on that.

As for Boom Blox, I only did the critter voices for the TV spot posted on the site.
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Justin S. Barrett
http://www.justinsbarrett.com/

[samowry]

Very nice and clean. Almost a bit too simple. It sits very small on my screen. Good samples. Maybe a few more credits listed, if you've got 'em. Everybody has their own opinion as to what works. I always like to know where a person is located, especially if you don't have ISDN or will be doing phone patch sessions.
Good work on the whole and good luck.

[bobsouer]

Justin,

It looks very clean to me and using Firefox in WinXP SP3 works perfectly. The only thing I noticed is that you don't have any kind of "home" button to take me back to the original page. Not a big deal, of course.
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Be well,
Bob Souer (just think of lemons)
The second nicest guy in voiceover.
+1-724-613-2749
Source Connect, phone patch, pony express

[Jeffrey Kafer]

Works great in Firefox and chrome.

Dude, I freaking love that your site feels like Flash, but is all javascript based. You code that yourself?
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Jeff
http://JeffreyKafer.com
Voice-overload Web comic: http://voice-overload.com

[Deirdre]

I agree with Jeff! That is a sweet way to make your stuff work.

1 question about the placement of your video box— it's offset to the right when it drops— think it's possible to make it display in the center/

That is a seriously cool way to move between parts of your site.
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DBCooperVO.com
IMDB

[donrandall]

Using Firefox, it appears to me that the graphics are all a bit too high. Since that is the worst thing I could come up with (and that is more personal taste than anything else), it would seem to me as though you have a well thought out and well designed site.

Putting myself in the place of a potential consumer of voiceover artistry, I like the ease with which I can (1) Access your demos and (2) Contact you .

Good job!

[JBarrett]

Thanks everyone for the great feedback so far!

Sam: Definitely need to get some credits and location info up there, probably on the About page. Re: the "small" feeling you described, I've been toying around with the idea of using a simple background color "border" for all but the main page content, similar to the design of my animation web site. I'm thinking of a very light variation of the blue used for the "off" state of the navigation buttons. What do you think?

Bob: At one point I debated whether or not to have the small logo (the one that appears between my name and title once you've clicked one of the navigation buttons) shift everything back to the home layout. However, the home layout on my site acts more like a splash page, so there's no need to return to it.

Jeff: I did code all the JavaScript myself. It's the farthest I've personally tried to go with JavaScript in terms of making a page more dynamic, and I'm happy to have achieved a Flash-like feeling with it.

DB: The reason I moved the video box to the right is that there will eventually be several links to different videos on the left. It does feel a tad lopsided with only one link there now, but there will be more coming (hopefully) soon once the studio decides to release the next round of Webosaurs vignettes. Considering that I wanted to reserve the space below the video box for brief comments, I felt that putting the links on the left gave me more room compared to putting them on the top.

Don: In light of the possible addition of a border to the whole thing, there's a good chance the content will shift down a touch. When viewed on a larger screen, I agree that it does feel a little high. That could be a side-effect of the fact that most of my development is happening on a MacBook, where the content feels like it fits pretty well in the available screen space. Gotta work on striking a better balance.
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Justin S. Barrett
http://www.justinsbarrett.com/