New portfolio

[VIPStephan]

Hey gang,

Well, I'm giving you an exclusive preview to my newly created portfolio and I'd like to hear your opinions, especially on my english (tyops/incorrect spelling...).

I'm planning on having more stylesheets that will be switched at a specific time of the day (this one is for the afternoon, as you might have guessed :))

So here's the link: http://vipstephan.de/webdesign

Cheers y'all! :cool:


Oh and if some guys with a Mac could give me an opinion too, that would be great. I'm pretty sure that there will be some work 'cause I couldn't test it on Mac so far

[kewlceo]

Really nice work my friend! And as far as your English goes, you do better than we do in the states. :)

HOME PAGE
Everything looks great here, and works well with all browsers and all resolutions from 800px wide and up. The layout is professional, very pleasing to the eye, and unique.

One nit would be the orange text is slightly hard on the eyes, but this is only a minor nit because there isn't an abundance of text, and at least the font size is generous. You've made sure that the text size can be adjusted in all browsers, and you've put in some conditional rules for IE, which is a good touch.

The only other minor thing on this page is that the list text should start with a capital letter. Perhaps this was an intentional styling choice however.

PORTFOLIO PAGE
The first thing I noticed was on hovering over the link to your Portfolio, it tells me that Alt + P will work as a keyboard substitute. Neat! It worked well in Firefox, but did nothing in IE. Opera uses this combination for its Preferences. In IE7 this opens the Page menu. Since Alt-P only works in Firefox, I'd vote for eliminating it to avoid confusion.

Once in the Portfolio I'm very impressed by the beautiful rounded boxes and easy-to-read descriptions. I can go to the actual sites to check your work by: clicking the picture, clicking a verbose link, or clicking some linked text. Nice to have choices!

Without going into a review of each website in your portfolio, I think they are all professional and impressive, especially the first two. The last link (the one to your own page) takes me to an "under maintenance" message, but obviously this is on your To Do list.

CONTACT
The Contact link is simply a mailto: device. I'd be happier with a contact form, or at least a page with a mailto: link and some basic contact information. Of course that info is available in your cool mouseover tag, but I feel that three pages is not enough. In fact, I would encourage you to make a testimonials page as well.


Overall, very impressive work with a genuinely beautiful design that is crisp and clean and validates for XHTML Strict as well as CSS with no errors.

GREAT JOB STEPHAN! :thumbsup:

[VIPStephan]

Wow, now that's a cool review. You took your time for this, did you? :)
Great to hear that you like it.


HOME PAGE
[...]
One nit would be the orange text is slightly hard on the eyes, but this is only a minor nit because there isn't an abundance of text, and at least the font size is generous.
[...]
The only other minor thing on this page is that the list text should start with a capital letter. Perhaps this was an intentional styling choice however.


Well yeah, the text... I already chose a color that isn't too bright but I could make it a little darker. I just thought about a good contrast and somewhere I read that yellow on black background is considered accessible design so this (orange on dark brown) seems to me like a good compromise.
Thanks for mentioning the thing with the capital letters, I'm gonna change that.


PORTFOLIO PAGE
The first thing I noticed was on hovering over the link to your Portfolio, it tells me that Alt + P will work as a keyboard substitute. Neat! It worked well in Firefox, but did nothing in IE. Opera uses this combination for its Preferences. In IE7 this opens the Page menu. Since Alt-P only works in Firefox, I'd vote for eliminating it to avoid confusion.
[...]
The last link (the one to your own page) takes me to an "under maintenance" message, but obviously this is on your To Do list.


I did a research on access keys and the Opera help gave me the idea to provide a page explaining how to use access keys, so I added one.

And yes, my website will be up again very soon.


CONTACT
The Contact link is simply a mailto: device. I'd be happier with a contact form, or at least a page with a mailto: link and some basic contact information. Of course that info is available in your cool mouseover tag, but I feel that three pages is not enough. In fact, I would encourage you to make a testimonials page as well.



Yeah, I'd like to have a contact form too, but my hosting plan is the most basic (and cheap) one and therefore doesn't allow for server side scripting. But I think I'm gonna add a page with one or two sentences and the contact info.

Thanks for taking the time and for your constructive criticism, kewlceo, I appreciate it. :)

[kewlceo]

Yeah, I'd like to have a contact form too, but my hosting plan is the most basic (and cheap) one and therefore doesn't allow for server side scripting. But I think I'm gonna add a page with one or two sentences and the contact info.
Bravenet offers a free email forms service (http://www.bravenet.com/webtools/emailfwd/index.php) which I use when a client is on a server that doesn't allow server-side scripting. When you register for it, obviously un-check any "special offers" lol. The only downside is that you'll get one email per week from Bravenet for the rest of your life, hehe, but you can easily filter that into your spam box.

Here is a demo form (http://www.bravenet.com/demo/bravenet-demo-area.php?service=emailfwd) to check out.

[VIPStephan]

I've tried the email form service and it's cool but I get ads after confirming my submission (before I can go back to the website) which I find pretty annoying and doesn't look very professional. I think I'm gonna stick with a regular mailto: link and two sentences on the contact page.

[QBall777]

If I was you I would get the web pages in the portfolio page to open in a new window. Sometimes users get lost this way they can always get back to your site.

[harlequin2k5]

guten mittag - well at least it's still mittag here *chuckles*

the site gives the feeling of an indian summer sunset - fantastic use of colors!!

I love your rounded call out box on the home page and I love the rounded boxes on the portfolio page - you must share your secret one day ;)

my only questions are:
Menu - did you mean for it to be offset the way it is? I like the way it looks - just so used to menus either on the left or centered on top

Font Color - that color is a lil difficult to read

but everything blends together so nicely and is so very pleasing to they eye

guten arbeit!!

[VIPStephan]

but in your post there is one: it is typos, you wrote it as tyops...

:D What irony... :o That wasn't because of my bad english but just because I didn't have control over my fingers temporarily. :)

Danke, harlequin. :) Hm, you're the second person mentioning the font color... I should probably brighten it up a little.
You know, the colors I used are almost all taken from the sky of the title photo.
And yes, the offset of the navigation is intended. I like it like that... to me it looks very natural. And why should we always have a centered menu? :)

QBall777: You're kinda right. After thinking about it I changed it. But I had to use JavaScript in order to keep it valid XHTML since a simple target attribute isn't allowed with strict doctype.

Thanks folks for all your constructive criticism. :thumbsup: