First Site - Design Reviews Please

[kaiiak]

can anyone review the design of my site, in terms of accessibility cross-browser, visual design etc...

and can any1 give any tips to improve it, the contents of the site is largely incomplete but the basic structure layout etc is all there....

also when i create the login buttons and put it on anything that is not a white background i get the weird scrappy white bits around it... im using .gif files...

thank you- any constructive criticism is welcome.....

<<Click on Signature to View Website>>

[Tranix.net]

can anyone review the design of my site, in terms of accessibility cross-browser, visual design etc...

and can any1 give any tips to improve it, the contents of the site is largely incomplete but the basic structure layout etc is all there....

also when i create the login buttons and put it on anything that is not a white background i get the weird scrappy white bits around it... im using .gif files...

thank you- any constructive criticism is welcome.....

<<Click on Signature to View Website>>

Your site looks great, clean but a bit too wide for 800x600 screen resolution users. :thumbsup:

[blain]

actually its too wide at 1024 x 768

[mark87]

Hmmm can't make my mind up on the design front here. The overall colour scheme and title graphics are nice but I think the menu is a bit of a let down. I expected the whole 'block' to be a hyperlink not just the text - and of course, some links are not there. Perhaps some icons near them? Or catergorised more?

I'm not sure if you realise but the design is not centered at 1280x1024, so it looks a bit odd. I also feel there's too much whitespace; some more images wouldn't hurt either. :)

I just noticed you're using self closing tags (/>) but you are not using an XHTML doctype.

[Ranger56]

It's WAY too wide.

[kaiiak]

Hmmm can't make my mind up on the design front here. The overall colour scheme and title graphics are nice but I think the menu is a bit of a let down. I expected the whole 'block' to be a hyperlink not just the text - and of course, some links are not there. Perhaps some icons near them? Or catergorised more?

I'm not sure if you realise but the design is not centered at 1280x1024, so it looks a bit odd. I also feel there's too much whitespace; some more images wouldn't hurt either. :)

I just noticed you're using self closing tags (/>) but you are not using an XHTML doctype.

1. the missing links is because as i said it is far from complete in terms of content... so this will be dealt with in due cause....

2. the (/>) tags shouldnt be there and i need to edit it them out because its meant to be in DOCTYPE Transitional, so these /> should be rare errors... thanks for for noticing it.....

3. i have tried to better align the page and resize it.... better..? although its a fixed background so it may look different depending screensize....
i tried having main bit seperate (in a div with background) but couldnt get round the fact that each page would hav to have a different size container length (height:....)

4. also added a more interactive menu with changing block colours as mentioned... may try and work a bit more on that later...

any suggestions on how to improve the middle format of boxes, i just feel that it could b a lot better but not sure what to do...

PS how do i get the blue chunk to left of main block to get smaller as screen resizes like the right side does, like on the msn homepage and like on your spiderseatbabies site above...

[Pennimus]

It took me a while to establish what this site is for (other than an a banner repository that is), and that's never a good thing when there are so many other sites to look at.

Your layout breaks on the sub category pages; the nav hops out to the left to make way for all your affiliate banner ads. But then I wouldn't have thought the design and layout really bothers you all that much does it, since all you want is for people to hit an ad?

If you really want people to use your bookmarking service you need to sell the purpose of the site much more clearly, at the moment there are only some tiny images telling me what to do.

[kaiiak]

yep sorry i readjusted the first page so it was more centred thats why all the others are unaligned.... all pages will be like the front page.....

just need to add the <div id="contents"> to other pages....

good point, ill try and focus the front page more around the favourites and make the other boxes smaller..... its meant to be a favourites site after...

do you think it would be better if i made the sub-categories a bit more discreet, and maybe put them all under a popdown style menu, so it focuses more on the bookmark issue

or made favourites menu option more prominents some how

[Pennimus]

I'd remove the affiliate banners entirely, but that would be based on my ideology for the website, not yours. It depends what you want to do with the site. If you get a successful bookmarking service going there are many other ways you could monetise it without resorting to affiliate ads from every topic under the sun and those ways could be relevant to the main function of the site or it's users and not annoy them. Right now it looks extremely spammy and I doubt anyone would be particularly excited about signing up to the service with such a transparent attempt to monetise it.

[redhead]

Firstly, I dig the fact that you've gone out with an idea and made a site based on something you want to do (ie, provide a web based bookmark management system, nice one). That's refreshing to see.

With designing, maybe focus on just the first page initially and get that perfect, and then use it as a kind of template for the other pages? It makes the whole thing more consistent and easier on you and the user.

I'm not 100% sure what fonki dusk means, and the What is a Fonki page might well have confused me even more, but that's irrelavent ;)

I couldnt make my mind up about the random facts at the bottom, but after consideration I guess that if you are visiting your site regularly (which is of course your aim) then some crazy facts are justified.

I think the side menu needs some work, as do the very boxy boxes at the bottom. These look out of place, because you have the gradient colours in the big logo image, and you have the bouncy font being used also for the logo and the smaller bits of text here and there... Which makes the very square bits look slightly out of place to me. Perhaps just making an image using that font and using it in the blue boxes (eg, quote of the day title) would make it more consistent.

You could also try lightening up the navigation menu, as it seems a little dark to my eyes! pspdownloads recommended this, but maybe making the background of the links white and keeping the text dark could work too? Experiment and see what works.

I'll be honest, I guess you've done plenty of R&D into this, but I can't see you selling many pixels at a minimum order of $100 unless you start getting some serious traffic... Why not make it a service first, and if it takes of make it an earner second, otherwise you'll be distracted from upkeeping a service to maximise revenue, while all your visitors are leaving because the service is deteriorating? Suddenly you'll find your advert space won't be so desirable any more. It's worth considering.

[ns1987]

Ok, so the header is fine.
(You're abusing divs, but whatever)
Navigation colours are bleh.
Pixel advertisment advertisement is a pain to look at.
I get a horbar on 1024x768.

Yeah, I guess that's it.

[Mike Darling]

Kerning for the bubble text. Put more breathing space between those letters. (opinion of mine sorry)

the pixel adverts are hard to read (text) font and colour are a ...uhmm a choice i would not use.

A different roll over colour would make those roll overs stand out even more.

Maybe a Serif font would balance a Non-Serif font.