Hellgate: London

Wow... just when you think the gallery will include nothing but white backgrounds, and blog-like layouts.

A doozie pops up, with a dark background even!

Good job!

I'm glad to see a Flash site on Stylegala. Too often Flash is vilified, when if used properly it can exist in great harmony with CSS.

I love this site, I like most web.burza designs though, so might be bias. It would be a bit of a dream come true to get to work with such awesome graphics, and get to play with flash animations. Design eye candy.

Wow. That's one of the best sites I have ever seen (at stylegala or else where). Good job web.burza.

All these FPS sites look the same since Doom II came out. I hardly see anything inventive at this site - neither design, nor UI provide something new or better what we haven't seen someplace else.

Actually I think the typo overall is pretty boring in context with the subject. I am also missing some sound effects or music to enhance the mood of the site.

Also the many lists and boxes spoil the mood as well. I expect something with demons and loads of chaos no to look like an Excel spreadsheet. Please think more outside your (CSS) boxes ...

But I don't want too sound toooooo negative. The site is well done, good work, but nothing out of the ordinary.

I love the use of flash in this site, and it's a great thing to mantain accessibility even with javascript disabled.

Very good work.

It's refreshing to see something different. The graphics are tastefully done, the theme fits with the subject perfectly, and the flash is not overwhelming. Excellent work!

I'm glad web.buza's m8s made it, there the only one who I think could do it, and they couldn't done a better job, congratz m8s!

I think they shouldn't have used flash for links. Having flash 20 pixels lower and leaving main nav as HTML links would increase usability a lot (opening in new tab anyone?)

But it's very nice to see that they were thinking about graceful degradation and accessibility basics, even on a gaming site.

it's a very nice site. i was wondering though people have been raving about the flash, but i don't really see anything rave worthy. is it something other than the headers and flash video previews?

Just my two cents, but i dont think you are ever going to find a site, 'thats out of the ordinary' as long as you are dealing with the medium of the web, it has limitations. Now true things could have been handled differently, but then they would simply remind us of some other web style or trend.

I like to enjoy a site on its own right, not judgeing it based on wht everyone else is doing. true we need to get out of our 'css boxes' but untill more creative designers make the switch, and more inportanly more developers/bloggers/standardistas become more openminded to exporatory design where standards and accessibility are concerned, we will continue to see 'familiar'/ similar styles/trends on the web. IMHO

The (really big!) header gets a little bit boring after a few pages since there is always the same „knight“ on the right side. I would have liked it more if the character would change maybe on each main area. Other than that it’s a very well done website!

Thanks to everyone for all the encouraging comments and to Alen for this in-depth analysis.

@kL: Yes, we were thinking about this issue a lot, but considering the target user group, we decided to go with Flash. However, we implemented SHIFT + click, CTRL + click and middle-click to open links in a new window from Flash. Most of the visitors configure their browser to open new window links in a new tab anyway, so I guess we can live with that.

One of the most inspiring CSS designs that I have seen on the web in a very long time.

It can get very tedious looking at CSS designs comprised of little boxes looking like, well, little boxes. Whilst, by the very nature of CSS, this is still little boxes, it just doesn't look it to the viewer. There's an absolute wealth of exciting colour and content to draw the eye around the entire page.

An acid test for me is to see how quickly my eye darts around the page. Most pages are so dull that my eye just wants to leave my head and go on vacation. This one actually excited my eyes.

Excellent work.

I must be missing something. It's not a bad site, but it's not an amazing site either. The 3D renderings are cool and well done but other than that it's all pretty standard stuff.

This is one of those few website which make me wish I knew flash. The design is obviously gorgeous and a fairly decent amount of text content is laid out well in its surroundings. The site does not comply to standards, which is a shame, but never-the-less the intention is to attract the interest computer games players and sell on the new media market, which I am confident it will to great success. Well done!

Steve Tucker said:

"The site does not comply to standards, which is a shame"

Could you please explain this? We're really interested in how we can improve it.

This site's CSS Validates just fine and there are minimal issues with the XHTML of the site...

http://validator.w3.org/

Just enter your domain name and it will let you know what the issues are. They are very minor.

I have to agree with Seth Aldridge. Either this is a case of the emperors new clothes where nobody wants to go against the flow and admit this site isn't as cool as everyone is saying, or nobody on this site has ever seen flash used properly before.

This website isn't that great. Don't get me wrong, I like it. But it isn't "One of the most inspiring CSS designs...". It is just a nice site, not a DaVinci. Lemings.

However, kudos to web.burza on a job well done. I look forward to seeing what you produce in the future.

im still trying to find this holy grail web site everyone is looking for? did i miss the DaVinci that every one is compareing other sites too, please show me this incredible site so that i may inderstand why all thse other sites pale in comparison... bit of tongue in cheek there.

but really, I must be missing soemthing because time and time again style gala has put up sites and i dont think one of them has not meet with this same basic critisim.

" is good but not great" well wehre are the great sites? i have not seen any on other galleries, the other galiers have similar comments, which leaves me to beleive there was one a great site and i missed it... and not i cant enjoy other sites because they dont measure up to some standard of greatness that I missed. truly sad, I am (yoda).

omg, please excuse my horrid typos and misspellings. and this is my first language ;)

@maratz: I'd like to hear your thoughts (if you have a moment) concerning delivering content contained in Flash when Javascript is disabled.

1. The intro paragraph on many of the top-level pages is contained in a background image when javascript and CSS are disabled. Why not deliver the paragraph in HTML in that scenario?

2. The three boxes on the homepage - Cabalist, ClusterRifle, and Stalker - link to content pages when Javascript is enabled. When Javascript is disabled, the Flash element is replaced with an image, but there are no links present. Why not provide links along with the image?

And a pretty insignificant note: why include a "Skip to Main Navigation" link when the very next bit of information is the main navigation? If the skip link wasn't there, they would already be at the main navigation, yeah?

I'm always a little suprised by how well you all work between cutting-edge and standard practices behind the curtain to produce unique, elegant, and memorable ex

periences on the front-end. Always deserves a second, and closer, look.

Accessibility is important important, but isn't knowing your audience important also? What gamer is going to be on a browser with javascript disabled?

I'm in agreement with David B. I'm all for constructive criticism, but I challenge any of the naysayers ("good but not great") to show me a better gaming site, or what your standard for a "great" site is anyway.

@Seth Aldridge: Yes, we know about the validator, but conforming to validator is not the ensurance that a web site is designed with web standards. As far as I know, a table based layout can also pass validation.

@Drew McChesney: 1. & 2. You're right, we might work on an adequate alternative.

@Maratz: Well, like Seth said my intentions were to highlight the none validating code, primarily by the validator. However I now see that the homepage has been corrected and now standardises to transitional. Some internal pages do not. Take a look at the HTMLHelp validator (dont forget to tick 'Validate Entire Site'):

http://www.htmlhelp.com/tools/validator/

There are also a few other factors that imperfect the code and structure. Primarily the presence of inline javascript. Most of this is kept within the HEAD tag, but there is also some within BODY too. Separation of a page's structure and it's behaviour are part of what makes up the fabric of web standardisation. This is why we have split structure from presentation with CSS usage. Like you say, tables do validate. Technically they are correct, morrally they are wrong, like inline styles, like inline JS.

As I said in the previous post, this site effectively does what it intends to do - it catches the attention, and ul

....continued....

As I said in the previous post, this site effectively does what it intends to do - it catches the attention, and ultimately sells the product. However as a mutual critic I'm only highlighting these factors because [a] they are an important aspect of web design (in some circles) and [b] you asked me to ;)

Hope this somewhat clears up what I meant.

S

Ste,

We fixed most of it. At the time of this writing only the ampersands in links are not passing the validator, which is pretty much fine by me.

Inline JS is necessary, but only with image galleries, where we're passing dimensions of the large image variant directly from the database.

Sometimes we have two thumbnails 50x50, but their large variants are not the same. In fact, most of the time they are completely different.

Yes, we could place this info in a rel attribute, but that would be markup for behavior, I'm sure you'll agree. Plus, with so much scripting going on on every page, it would be non-sense to deploy another function which would count all the image popup links in a document and add onclick event with values read from the corresponding rel attribute.

I think this is a good example of a site that would typically be done with a lot of flash and no attention to accessibility, here implemented very nicely. I want to offer some constructive criticism if it is allright:

1. The flash navigation at the top is duplicated at the bottom with html images. It seems a little silly but I see why flash was used at the top (it's part of the flash header). What I don't understand then is why the two navigation sets don't use the same colors (top is orange/white, bottom is gray/orange).

2. The breadcrumbs at the top (on the homepage, it's "You are here: Home | News") are good, but having a link to the current page in the breadcrumbs is not so good.

3. The big header is really heavy and every page I go to has to load another flash object in it. It takes a while too.

4. The 5px text (navigation, headers on the content) is way overdone. I guess the gaming community is used to it but as a gamer myself I do not think I ever will be!

Anyway, those are really small things and I hope no one takes it as a dis on this site.

Now everyone has been talking about the flash but I don't think that's the best stuff about this site. Some great stuff that hasn't been mentioned and really should is:

1. The "Hello Computer" section on the right side of each content page. It's really really slick and probably the best sorter I've seen on any game site or other site.

2. The Javascript expansion on the lists was a great idea and it functions very well. It even seems loads the content after the section is expanded, so you don't have to load a ton of images and videos on each page but you also don't have to visit a new page to view info about an item or deal with popups. Very, very well done.

3. The borders on the images are done with CSS as backgrounds images. Nice.

And like others said, the site functions incredibly well without Javascript.

And one last thing, I have to agree with David B., anyone wh

wow, 1000 chars is really not enough!

... anyone who says "good but not great" needs to show us the "holy grail" of web design because you have to admit, it doesn't exist. You will find things you don't like about every website, that doesn't mean there is something out there that is perfect.

I am very happy to see something different on stylegala, I have never seen such site on stylegala since the day i have started coming on stylegala. This site is seriously designed keeping the user in mind, very easy to navigate, and emphasized on the important things. Its a pretty nice website.

@Maratz: Yeah I understand exactly where you're coming from. As I said earlier this site does what it needs to do and my critisism is coming soley from a critics point of view. I sympathise with the problem at hand with the database, though im sure there would be another way around it to avoid inline JS (how about parsing JS with PHP?), but the site does what it was intended to do well and in this case, judging by the amount of work that apears to have been put into it I would not complain at all (I gave it an 8/10).

@Christain: Well put. You're right, there is no "Holy Grail" and there never will be. People's tastes are just too different. I see minor problems with this site but I would still call it a great example of quality web design.

"I sympathise with the problem at hand with the database, though im sure there would be another way around it to avoid inline JS (how about parsing JS with PHP?)"

Excellent design!

I love it. Keep up the great work!

it's a very nice site.

What gamer is going to be on a browser with javascript disabled ?

Maszyny Budowlane

I like this template!

This is an excellent template. Would love to be that creative...

I find it difficult to do all the great flash objects you have in your layouts. It's great!

One of the best sites I have ever seen, i love this design.

Congratulations!

it's a very nice site. Congratulations!

Excellent design - great work!

Really much flash-work, but it looks great...

Excellent work, jealousy rules.

One of the best templates!

I find this to be an amazingly done website, being a dial-up user (I have no other choice) I usually shy away from Flash or Graphics heavy websites, but this one loads quickly and smoothly on even my snail's pace connection. It's well done, completely accesible, and really nice to look at. I don't see why anyone would say it's not an above-average design.

if you are looking for more information about Webmaster or SEO and how to optimize your site just have a look at http://webmaster.nietzsche.at it´s just for germans but soon the blog will also be availuable in english

this site is deffinitelly ready for the web 2.0 future. great example.

Great work - i like it! Go on like this and you'll get an award ....

gjtyg jhgtf yft

A impressing design and a excellent website!

Greetings from Germany

Fantastic Design/Template. I hope the Game will be so good like the Website :)

It looks really super! Photography has gained the interest of many scientists and artists from its inception.

Great! Thanks!

All digital cameras process the images they take to sharpen them. In consumer cameras, a high degree of sharpening is applied, to provide prints around normal enprint size with an extra-sharp 'snappy' look. This is fine until you want to make larger prints, when you can see dark and light lines at edges caused by the sharpening.

Looks perfect

Every month, I select one of my new photos as photo of the month, being a photo of a remarkable or otherwise beautiful weather subject. Photos of the month are usually added in the first or second week of the following month, when I process new films.

One of the best sites I have ever seen, i like this design.

omg, please excuse my horrid typos & misspellings. and this is my first language !

I am in agreement with David B. I am all for constructive criticism, but I challenge any of the naysayers ("good but not great") to show me a better gaming site, or what your standard for a "great" site is anyway.

periences on the front-end. Always deserves one second, and closer, look.

I do aree with David B. I am all for constructive criticism, but I challenge any of the naysayers (good but not great) to show me a better gaming site, or what your standard for a "great" site is anyway.

A very interesting site, I think. The Idea of Technology was new for me but worth to be read and thought abot it (although I'm not a native english-speaker and have some difficulties whith this language)