Review please.

Hi all.

This is my first time here. I am designing this site for a friend who runs this company. I'm doing it for the love, (not manlove! and not money) and for the tutorial effect it's having on me.

www.thunderin.co.uk/shaun/v3

It has been verified both in HTML and CSS. The only errors that show in the HTML are for the javascript which was generated automaticly for me by this site...

http://www.hse.gov.uk/new/rss.htm

http://www.hsenews.com/feed2js/build.php

I have designed it using Firefox 2 as a viewer, and also looked at it in IE7 and Opera 9.10. I don't have any earlier versions of IE on my machine, but I suppose I should install one. [1]

The pages go nowhere yet, I just need to finish the look of this page to use as a template for the others.

So, please could you pass on your comments?

BTW, I'm going away tomorrow for a short while, so please excuse me if I don't get the chance to answer your comments quickly.

Many thanks.

Mike.

[1] How does one get and install IE6 / 5 alongside 7? What others should I look at it with?

I like the color scheme, it's pleasant. The header block is ok, but the logo and text don't really match up. A dark green logo and then a silvery 3D text image. I'd rather see either a dark green 3D text image that matches with the logo, or no text at all, or maybe a nice graphic up there. Maybe a graphic that incorporates the logo? Also the text image has an issue with jaggy edges because it was created using a black background but is placed on a light blue background.

The menu I really like. I thought I didn't like it at first, but the more I played with it the more I like it! I can't explain that. :p Maybe the larger text size threw me off? Or there's not enough padding in each menu element? But I like how it behaves.

There's not much that I like about the newsbar. I don't like the scroll bars (they are pointless) and I don't like the red colored text. The color red is supposed to say "HEY LOOK OVER HERE AT ME I AM IMPORTANT!" but the entire text of the news is all red, and tiny, so I look over there only to be confronted by a thousand tiny words that don't speak to the importance of the color and are difficult to scan through. I would suggest making each news headline a large bold font, not red though, and then the text smaller but not so small it's hard to scan, and put a space between each blurb. And get rid of the scrollbar-- let the news items extend the page down-- it's ok that the page gets long, we don't mind that.

Oh I just figured out what is unnerving about the menu-- the font size in the dropdown boxes is larger than the top menu item font size. If anything it should be the reverse.

Lastly you may want to put some subtle 3D effects in to bring out the page's content. There are plenty of examples on the web to look at-- I like this website here (http://www.webdesignfromscratch.com/3d_effects.cfm) for inspiration and information.

The green is a good background color. It's almost silvery on my monitor, but the silver logo is a bit too clunky. I think it could be reduced in size or done away with altogether.

The photos change at a very good pace. I appreciate that -- they don't flash or flicker. They seem to fade out and that's enough to draw attention without being overwhelming.

I'd change the link text color from that bright blue to a mid-dark green that harmonizes with the background.

Fumigator -- thanks for that link, BTW.