Hey guys I was putting this website together for a company and have come to some differences of opinion. The clock on the middle left of the screen, do you think its too distracting? They were suggesting maybe going to a system font, insted of the hand drawn gifs. I just think that the digital look is what makes the clock worth having there? What do you think? Also any other comments about general site layout are welcome. This is the first major site I built from the ground up solo. http://www.trilogysolutions.com

I forgot to mention, its best viewed in IE with JS enabled but I made as much effort as I could to make the site fully functional in netscape/firefox and without JS enabled. If you are using non-IE and notice anything "odd" I would love to know about it.

Although it is cool, it is definitely too distracting. It the first thing that is noticed when the page loads, even before one notices the company's name and/or logo or navigation. The best I can figure out, it has nothing to do with the company and its business. It takes the viewer's attention away from the main focus of the page which should convey something about the company. Designwise it neither blends with nor compliments other page elements. It comes across as a cool effect only for the sake of a cool effect. If that is your purpose then it succeeds.

If you really want it, put it up in the bar with the nav links, but at the far right in the silver part.

I'm going to be the odd man out here and disagree. I don't think it's too distracting at all. What I would ask though, is what purpose does it serve??? I see absolutely no reason for having that clock there. In fact, I really don't like any websites that put the date and time, etc. on their pages. If someone wants to know the date and time, they'd look. So I'd remove the clock just for the simple fact that it serves absolutely no purpose. Oh, and regarding the site itself, I think it looks nice. Good job.

The site is nice and looks professional. And it works in Firefox. I think the clock has purpose, because it denotes continuous time/service and that appeals to military types and beaurocrats (a generality of course). It is decoration, not function. So the old story goes, the first IBM mainframes had no IO status lights, until an executive found it too boring because the machine looked like it wasn't doing anything. Probably fiction, but anyway... Here's what I would do (I know, easy to talk about it): Cosmetic... The clock sticks out too much. Somethings we can do to change this might include: - Change the color. I would do this before trying anything else. Just make some static images and draw colors off the logo's green shades. As a side, to support this color change, you might make background accents for the title text (like current news). Something faint but colored might balance the color differences. Green, like blue, is a color people like to see in different shades - possibly because it reflects the natural world. I usually try working with grey/white/black and blue/lightblue/grey for simple color arrangments. - Give the clock a frame of some sort. Even simple, faint definitions would fit it better. Perhaps a round, elongated container. Take some cues from watches (which tend to be more slick). - Consider changing the font. The font is tolerable, but too squared (yes, I know this is how clocks look). The squareness is too strong when paired with that light green (which itself is in contrast to the black, remember).

"If that is your purpose then it succeeds." I never really had a purpose, they said they wanted a green on black digital clock, so I made one. Once made there were concerns that it was too distracting and they wanted the text in it to be thinner, which is impossible to do while keeping the digital feel. "In fact, I really don't like any websites that put the date and time, etc. on their pages. If someone wants to know the date and time, they'd look" Well the one thing that makes this clock kinda different is that it reports time in Zulu time or GMT. While the computer the user is at most likely reports local time. This was one of the reasons for the clock. A majority of the software they make and are developing is for collaboration and this was sort of to hint at that. "So the old story goes, the first IBM mainframes had no IO status lights, until an executive found it too boring because the machine looked like it wasn't doing anything." This is absolutly the case when dealing with alot of these kind of people. In the software they are developing now animated .gifs had to be added for no other reason then to make it look like something was happening. To the higher up/non tech militart types, if they dont see a light blinking or a line moving back and forth they think its broken or atleast they dont know its working. I had advised them that the look of a digital clock, which is what it currently is supposed to resemble, should be green on black. I think if you get away from that then it loses its "coolness". The font cant be made smaller or slimmer because to get the digital look the lines which make up the numbers/letters have to be 3 pxs wide. This was a rather limiting factor. I think if i move away from the old school digital readout look that it will become little more than "a cool effect only for the sake of a cool effect." Like "look at me i found the date function in js". Thanks for all the comments, they will certainly play apart in what happens.