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Cravattificio.com
Current rating: 5.7 (167 votes)
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12345678910Added: 07 September 2007
Review:
This website is simply gorgeous. From the outset it's clear you're looking upon the result of many hours labour by a seriously talented individual/team. Rarely will you see a site encompass as many features as this, and yet still retain its clean, minimalist form. That alone, as you probably well know, is a tremendously difficult goal for a designer to achieve.
At no point whilst browsing Cravattificio.com does the site ever feel bland or boring. Everything is placed exactly where it works best; from the text resizing and print buttons, to the colourful masthead images that work so well in contrast to the largely monotone branding and content. Don't worry if you don't speak Italian either; the site has also been made available in English, French and Spanish.
A major brownie point here goes to the excellent navigation demonstrated. All the page links can be found at the head of each page, elegantly categorised under three clear headings 'Who we are', 'Our work', and 'Contact us'. And for those golden surfers out there who tend to get lost easily whilst shopping for their formal attire, the site also provides a crumb-trail navigation to boot. But again, at no point does this site ever feel cluttered.
The main content has been well thought out, jumping seamlessly from a three-column layout on the homepage, to two-column layout on interior pages. The masthead image also shrinks on these interior pages, allowing more space for the content above the fold. Various elements have also been added to improve the aesthetics and user experience, including Google Maps, sIFR, and a flavour of Lokesh Dhakar's Lightbox.
From a techie perspective Cravattificio.com doesn't disappoint. The markup, whilst not perfect, is still very clean, and the site validates to XHTML Transitional throughout. Semantics are in place to a good degree and the majority of the site works fine without Javascript. The only real problem I could find was with the contact form, which unfortunately does require Javascript to operate correctly - a little disappointing given that this is such an easily avoidable blemish.
Nevertheless, with all this said, and if you've taken the time to read this far, then I'd sum Cravattificio.com up as the best example of a great all-rounder website I've seen in a long time. It's a working model of excellent design that we can all be inspired by.
Reviewed by Steve Tucker