Website Review and Suggestions

**Motosaki** · 10-04-2008, 02:05 AM

well my layout is pretty much done, i have just hit a wall with new ideas to add to the site. i think it looks decent but is kind of dull at the moment and needs more pizazz. any suggestions would be appreciated

**davemies** · 10-04-2008, 03:45 AM

gradient background from black to a burnt orange??

you have some coding errors in your non breaking-spaces
"coding ... using ... notepad, the right way :P"

**hartofalyon** · 10-04-2008, 09:50 AM

your company name, contrail designs, is the same size as your other font. imo, it should be at least bigger to stand out.

i'm not a fan of a black bg with white text. after reading, the text always seems to "burn" into my eyes and i can still see the text after i look away.

i think your navigation could be snazzed up a bit instead of using just plain text.

i never understood why people put the "best viewed in so-and-so resolution." the user is not going to change their resolution just to view your website. you should either make the layout fluid or catered towards the most common resolution used - 1024x768.

take a look at some of the sites at cssremix or cssmania for some inspiration and ideas. right now, your design is just a big white box, and i don't know how you could improve on that w/o changing everything completely.

**davemies** · 10-04-2008, 10:56 AM

ditto the white text

oh yes and write in paragraphs too!

**Motosaki** · 10-04-2008, 12:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hartofalyon

i never understood why people put the "best viewed in so-and-so resolution." the user is not going to change their resolution just to view your website. you should either make the layout fluid or catered towards the most common resolution used - 1024x768.

take a look at some of the sites at cssremix or cssmania for some inspiration and ideas. right now, your design is just a big white box, and i don't know how you could improve on that w/o changing everything completely.

simplicity is what inspires me. i don't like websites that look "busy". simple layouts with easily accessible content, and clean colors, those are the things i want when i go to a website.

as for stating the browser and resolution, its more about stating to the people still living in 1998 that they need to update their browsers and screen resolutions. there is no reason to still be using IE6 or anything before it, or to use anything smaller than 1024x768. this is a personal website, i don't represent a large company that needs to be accessible to as many as possible, so making my site viewable to those people is the last concern of mine. i know its considered a bad design attitude to think like that, but my target audience isn't the type that will be using IE6 and 800x600. i understand it eliminates a huge chunk of viewers and im okay with that.

**Motosaki** · 12:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by davemies

you have some coding errors in your non breaking-spaces

please explain, what browser etc etc did you see the errors in

or was it just coded incorrectly

basically just elaborate what you said.

i should have written in my post that i am new to web design (if it wasn't made obvious :P)
i did some light design 5 or 6 years ago and back then i used <pre> tags instead of nonbreaking spaces. whats considered the xhtml/css standard compliant method of doing this nowadays?

**davemies** · 10-04-2008, 12:59 PM

should be as in the attached (i'm browsin in latest firefox in windows)
but if you want space around elements then use padding and / or margins , defined in your css

i don't see anything in your layout that would be hard to get looking ok (not necessarily identical!) in IE6, to not do so might lose you a job or 2 and it makes you look a bit lazy/like you're not sure how to make it ok for ie6. of course i wish all IE6 users would shrivel up and die too, but not all users may have the choice: their machines may be locked down by strict IT policies, or could be public machines such as library ones or internet cafe ones.
as far as screen res goes i might have a monitor that goes up to 2000 px wide but i might only have my browser set to 900px wide so it fits in with some other open windows...

also firefox isn't the only mainly standards compliant browser out there: there's also safari, opera, chrome, IE8 (ish, hopefully) and mac browsers/linux browsers such as camino and konqeror.

if you're offering your design services then it's not a personal web site and should be as accessible to as many people as possible - both in the spirit of the web and in compliance with Accessibility laws that apply to your location.

as it is, it looks the same for me in ie6 anyway (at least in IEtester, i'm on ie8 beta 2 on my machine) so i don't know why you even put that in there anyway.

**Motosaki** · 10-04-2008, 01:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by davemies

should be as in the attached (i'm browsin in latest firefox in windows)
but if you want space around elements then use padding and / or margins , defined in your css

i don't see anything in your layout that would be hard to get looking ok (not necessarily identical!) in IE6, to not do so might lose you a job or 2 and it makes you look a bit lazy/like you're not sure how to make it ok for ie6. of course i wish all IE6 users would shrivel up and die too, but not all users may have the choice: their machines may be locked down by strict IT policies, or could be public machines such as library ones or internet cafe ones.
as far as screen res goes i might have a monitor that goes up to 2000 px wide but i might only have my browser set to 900px wide so it fits in with some other open windows...

also firefox isn't the only mainly standards compliant browser out there: there's also safari, opera, chrome, IE8 (ish, hopefully) and mac browsers/linux browsers such as camino and konqeror.

if you're offering your design services then it's not a personal web site and should be as accessible to as many people as possible - both in the spirit of the web and in compliance with Accessibility laws that apply to your location.

as it is, it looks the same for me in ie6 anyway (at least in IEtester, i'm on ie8 beta 2 on my machine) so i don't know why you even put that in there anyway.

thank you for the feedback