Code
I wanted to see if the search area filled the screen the same way we worked with navigation in WFED 1, and it basically does. The area remains off-screen via a negative transform until it's needed, and it even fills the viewport like my one navigation menu from WFED 1. The icon change happens differently by using pseudo-elements rather than SVG, and the transforms in the CSS are a lot simpler than for the hamburger icons although it is a simpler animation. The scrollbar disappears upon opening search, which normally wouldn’t be much of a problem, but since the search button is all the way to the right of the page, it looks weird. I assume that the cause is absolute positioning being toggled somewhere because I remember that being the cause of scrollbar appearance in the site from WFED 1.
UI
My favorite design feature on the site is the collection of cubes on top of all the pages. Being the straightforward and logical person that I am, I’ve always enjoyed geometrical designs more than anything abstract. By removing many of the cube sides, it flows well into the rest of the page. As a bonus, the cubes move with your cursor. While they have other fun designs, I instead want to mention how boring the rest of the site feels due to the white background. While less can be more, I feel they could have either picked a better color or not put so much space between their content. For example, the picture below is all I see at a certain point on my laptop.
UX
One little feature I appreciate a lot about the site is the ability to easily access cookie settings via the icon in the bottom left. Sites that make it difficult or force you to accept without summarizing what you’re accepting are simply annoying. Besides that, the “insights” page only loads a certain amount of posts at a time which may be for the purpose of optimization, but that also means you need to choppily load the entire page before you can scrub through at a consistent pace. Also, I have a problem with the loading transition for multiple reasons. First, it makes it feel like the pages take longer to load than necessary, and while that may not be the case, there’s no way to know unless the animation is removed. Second, opening a different page through the Envy tab then backing up into Envy causes the page to freeze on the animation. Refreshing fixes the problem, but I shouldn’t have to take that extra step.
Summary
For a company whose services solely focus on the web, their website has a lot more problems than it should. At least some designs are what I find to be visually appealing. If I were ever in need of such services, I might still give them a chance because of those designs, but I would probably end up quality-checking the work as well. However, the site freezing is definitely something that should’ve been fixed by now. Overall, Envy doesn’t necessarily own a bad site as I still think it’s a very clean-looking site, but it is lacking in areas it shouldn’t be.