Feedback Wanted: novell.com Relaunch
Wednesday, 12 March 2008 @ 13:02We, the designers at Novell have just relaunched Novell.com and we are looking for some feedback from the design community. All comments are welcome and encouraged. Thanks.
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FEEBACK?
I have fixed the typo.
Thanks.
I really like it. The old site was classic, but the left-justified, 800 wide site was limiting for sure. The new size and layout is definitely more modern. The little rollover are nice as well.
The logo on black is an interesting direction, but it works. On the drop down menu, there are a few little bugs in Safari, when I roll over the text, parts of it ‘disappear’ and reveal some of the image beneath.
I have always been jealous that the executives at Novell have let the web team get away with such small fonts all these years. The logo was the first thing that caught my eye as well. Not bad; just different. The home page feels a little flashy to me. My biggest criticism though is the lack of branding and inconstancies in the interface. Where did the red go? About the only thing on the site that is red is the logo. It feels like blue is the new company color. There are some pages that feel disjointed with some odd inconsistencies and/or grids, but I imagine that you are still in the process of converting pages over to the new format. I do like the feel of some of the product pages, such as the one about SUSE Desktop Linux.
We have been slowly moving away from the red for the past few years, in fact the logo was white in most of our comps but got shot-down by the big wigs at the last minute.
Micah, why abandon the red? Seem like an odd choice to me. In fact I have one of your old red branding guideline books at my desk right now, and I’ll be darned if the entire things isn’t red!
You won’t see Omniture abandon the green ever, in fact we keep getting asked to do MORE green! :)
We aren’t abandoning red, the main brand and logo color is still red, we are just trying to reserve it more for high level corporate stuff. I think that if you overuse a brand color it begins to lose meaning. So all of our solution areas have a specific color to represent them and all of the products that are under those solutions, but at the same time those colors still go with the Novell red.
I guess we aren’t “moving away” from red as much as working within a different hierarchy of colors, each of which represents a various aspect, function, or division of company messaging.
All I can say is that John Mccain would have a much better chance of getting elected if he chose Pete Hawkes as his flash-savvy running mate.
The people in the Flash movies need slightly better masking - the flashes of white against the solid colored background as they move can be a bit distracting. The goldfish movie has a subtle but noticeable “horizon” line after the fish leaves the bowl which suggests that there are indeed boundaries and location contrary to the message. And I keep waiting for the hand of the engineer to move and actually write on his pad of paper. Clicking on the front page link for the PlaySpin acquisition news takes you to a page that carries a significantly different look and feel. That may disorient users - I know I was wondering what happened to the primary navigation menu. Otherwise the site is very nice. Good work!
Ben, I agree with you for the most part on your observations. I need to give the disclaimer that the Linux Virtualization stuff (with the green diagonals) was all done by a firm in Boston. That’s why it seems so different (and in my opinion, not as good).