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Aardman

Current rating: 5.4 (507 votes)

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  • Added: 22 October 2004
  • Designer: Aardman

Review:

I never thought an animation studio website like this could be this accessable and well made. Aarman proves that web standards can be adapted to a wide range of sites, not just blogs and web design studios. The most interesting thing about this site, besides the fun playful graphics and unique style, is the image map graphics on each section divided by positioned divisions. The print stylesheet does not include theese graphics, which makes the site look good in print as well. Unfortunately the graphics look quite bad whithout the stylesheet, I guess they could have included some of the graphics as background images instead. Navigating can seem a bit confusing at first because of the unorthodox structure, but the breadcrumb nav holds everything in place. The site does also have a . Can you feel the fresh burst of air blown into the web standards community?

Reviewed by David Hellsing

There are 13 guest comments so far.

commentat 18:36 on 22 October 2004, joos wrote:

Many things wrong with this. The text only vesrion is hidden up the top right hand corner and easily mised. Too much Flash and I find it hard to believe you can say it is 'so accessible' in the same sentence as 'navigating can seem a bit confusing'. No I certainly ain't feelin a fresh burst of air. This site is very confusing and far from obvious to a person with disabilities and falls at the first hurdle. It's just a mess as far as accessibility.

commentat 18:43 on 22 October 2004, mark wrote:

nasty use of flash that jumps in and out of html content - the site is disjointed and makes bad use of bandwidth gobbling flash as interim menus? the anims aint even that good - id have through thered be more touches and more use of anim in a productive - brand building way :(

commentat 19:07 on 22 October 2004, wendy wrote:

I concur.It's not accessible and it's very confusing.

commentat 19:20 on 22 October 2004, David wrote:

It's confusing - but it's fun and truly original! I think it's a great addition to the web standards community and a proof that web standards can be applied everywhere.

commentat 20:27 on 22 October 2004, Sebastian wrote:

It's great! Despite some weak points it is more than fresh.

commentat 01:49 on 23 October 2004, Cody Lindley wrote:

What? Looks nice but.......

Just on the homepage alone.

Total HTTP Requests:30

Total Size: 228k

Compared to the next to last entry.

Total HTTP Requests:14

Total Size:104k

Not impressed.

commentat 01:20 on 25 October 2004, Ben wrote:

Seems like a table-based site, where they just switched the table cells for div elements. Why not have a single background image instead of carving it all up like that? Layout bugs in FF. Not up to the standard of their animations!

commentat 04:56 on 26 October 2004, Fernando Dunn II wrote:

I agree with Ben. It was a total waste to use image maps for what could have been a background. As stated before, it also makes the 'no-styles' version look horrific.

Aesthetically speaking, the site is a great compliment to Aardman's work. I would have liked to see some of the popular characters incorporated into the design, instead of just on the character sites page.

This is a great looking site though, allowing you to get a feel of the artist's persona.

commentat 18:00 on 26 October 2004, steve wrote:

fun, but totally confusing! Its a nice idea to be able to switch between flash/html, but for me, the idea of using html is to avoid the need for a text only version!

Interesting to look at, but I developed a passionate hatred against iframes far too long ago to be able to truly enjoy this site.

commentat 19:28 on 26 October 2004, Brady J. Frey wrote:

The design is unique and you can tell it was done from professional designers. The code and the coding practices leave much to be desired.

commentat 06:37 on 01 November 2004, Andrew Krespanis wrote:

Decent design, but done in a very 1996 kind of way. 'Mystery meat' navigation and an entirely <img /> based design is the very last thing the standards community should be encouraging...

commentat 02:23 on 04 November 2004, Tom wrote:

There isnt a :hover for the map, How am I to know whats a link and whats just background sex? If you comparse the menus with the flash version youll get what im talking about.

btw:

http://www.aardman.com/shortsandtv.asp, rex the runt, what a show!

commentat 16:43 on 15 November 2004, Jon wrote:

The comment limit restricts me from replying to all of your points, however I'd like mention the following:

We decided that the site would be *primarily* designed in flash, but to keep the site accessible to all we would also provide html and text versions.

- iframes I'm working on removing. They were included due to issues we haven't yet had a chance to fix.

- a:hover - I see your point.

- No image maps. We used CSS, FIR and ASP. One background image wouldn't downgrade to text w


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