What kind of things would you look for...AND would a left aligned site opposed to a center aligned site change your opionion on the site?

Design is often subjective. I prefer centered web sites but I bet there are lots of people that would prefer left aligned or full width sites. Things you could look for would be design consistency, how hard the site works for it's target audience, whether the colours go together, code quality, whether the graphics could be represented with gradients or colours instead of full page images etc.

I hope that helps a little bit. I would need to know more about the competition.

It does help. The competition is really open ended... We were given a topic (in this case a site that lists part time jobs/internships for 16-18 year olds in highschool) and thats practically it. I made a full page design, but my brother said he thinks smaller designs look more professional and sent me a few job searching sites he used and they are all smaller, and center aligned. I can't make mine center aligned without redoing the whole design, so I'm trying to get others opionions.

Here's my design (in crappy and shorthand code, so ignore that part XD) http://flames-world.webs.com/testingskl2.html

As Mug said already, design is very often subjective, moreso than objective. And as such, a lot of variety occurs. Personally, I would say that designs for main pages and whatnot should be fluid, whilst forums should be fixed width.

Also, as a side-note, add some padding-bottom to your main container. Would be much better than cutting it straight off.

I can't make mine center aligned without redoing the whole design, so I'm trying to get others opionions.

After looking at your code, that really isn't necessary. All you need to do is add a "wrapper" div around the whole thing (except the backgound), give it a fixed width and use margin: 0 auto: in your CSS to center the entire thing.

By the way - that would also replace the deprecated div align="center" you have in there, which should be done with css anyway, not the "align".

Originally Posted by Flamewhisker

What kind of things would you look for...AND would a left aligned site opposed to a center aligned site change your opionion on the site?

Firstly, Usability. Is the site easy to use? Is it clear?
Secondly, Functionality. Does the site contain the necessary functions to be effective, and do they work
Thirdly, Layout. Is the structure clear and logical.
Fourthly, does the design communicate the appropriate message?

After that comes the lipstick. Probably I'd look for quality of production, does the site achieve it's target and also the completeness of the design: do the graphical elements work well together?

I will first look for a good design. The next priority would be the text color and size and meaningful content. After that comes the logo and layout, alignment, after that comes the menus.

Originally Posted by LadynRed

After looking at your code, that really isn't necessary. All you need to do is add a "wrapper" div around the whole thing (except the backgound), give it a fixed width and use margin: 0 auto: in your CSS to center the entire thing.

By the way - that would also replace the deprecated div align="center" you have in there, which should be done with css anyway, not the "align".

Well why I say that I'd have to redo my whole site if i centered it is because the left side just cuts off and I think that would look awkward just floating out there in the middle of nowhere

And yeah, i know align="center" is dead... I always design in what I call short-hand (aka, using crap code) then once i got what i've wanted, I go through, clean it up, and make sure I have no mistakes when retyping it... I'll prob stop this if I ever do something really big XD




and thanks for the comments everyone, they are helping =D

I will check the basic frame and the sites' contents . for these things are the basical of the site .

first,I will take from the overall structure of the site design to judge good or bad.
The overall effect of design work is essential,
Never make the design of isolated components scattered
It would make an dendrite showing a confused picture and the messy results.
I think a good website should achieve such an effect:
Visitors can quickly find what they want to find information and content,
Each page has a separate title, and the title of the page contains a valid keyword,
There are specially META tags design for each page,
The graphics and text stacked framework is oderly and obvious.