Website critique

vodkadub

I'm working on a site for a pr company, just looking for some critique on it. It's my first working example of css/xhtml.

http://ryans-designs.freehostia.com/ace

Many thanks

forbairt

personal thoughts ...

menu too far down

Spade is too fat

fonts for your headings isn't working for me

MENU written vertically doesn't work for me

(as I said though .. they are personal thoughts)

vodkadub

Ok but do you think it's functional?

forbairt

if its a PR company I don't think its high impact enough ... or understated enough or which ever angle you're going for ...

The text is all quite plain on your main pages...

colours aren't quite working for me either ...

I didn't actually read any of your text ... so I can't comment on that

vodkadub

forbairt wrote: »

if its a PR company I don't think its high impact enough ... or understated enough or which ever angle you're going for ...

I agree with that, this was the clients spec for the design, I would think being a pr company it would need to be more colorful and less boring, the company is based in galway and she wanted that image of the pillar there. I will need to consult with her more as it's not going in the right direction

kcim

Hi vodkadub

You are the designer here, she isn't, so you should know best...

dkell

I think you should get rid of the scrollbar in the Background section on the About Us page.

The design itself feels a bit squashed - if you made it a bit wider, with some more line-height in the text it might help. I'd also increase the font size - I'm finding it difficult to read...

I'd agree that it's lacking a bit of impact too, I don't know if it's because it's too dark, or just missing something..

p

A few thoughts:

Good that you're trying to go down the route of XHTML/CSS. It's not pretty good for a first attempt at that.

You're doing some odd things with scroll bars on this page: http://ryans-designs.freehostia.com/ace/about.html I'd suggest only having the overall content areas scroll.

The position is a bit weird. Surely you should center the whole thing. Currently it's slightly off center which is weird.

There's no need to slice up all the images the way you've done it. If you look at relative and absolute positioning in CSS you'll be able to just use 1 single photo as the background rather than slicing it to pieces. The logo would just be able to sit over it. Here's some tutorials on positioning.
http://www.brainjar.com/css/positioning/default.asp
http://www.barelyfitz.com/screencast/html-training/css/positioning/

Don't say menu on the side. It's obvious it's a menu, and saying that just adds visual clutter. Similarly, putting XHTML/CSS at the bottom is a waste too. It's nice to be proud, but it's useless to your clients, so I'd ditch it.


Overal the design is still a little basic. The site works, but it's nothing special. The typography in the nav is awful, the images are uninspiring, and look like they're be resized badly and the general attention to detail need improving.

g'luck

Axwell

Heres my few thoughts

Site is too narrow and squashed together, needs to be centered

Services page, main image is a pixel or two shy at the bottom leaving a blue line.

No need for the word MENU it should be obvious enough what it is.

Homepage too sparce needs filling out.

Scroll bar needs to go or else make the whole section scrollable.

For a PR company it needs to be more in your face and high impact as forbairt said.

Also their slogan sounds terrible i think,

"Dont Gamble with your image...leave it to us" - when i read it i just thought it reads like i am leaving it with them to gamble with my image instead which didnt sound too appealing to be honest

MOH

Doesn't work in IE6:

- as I mouse over each menu option, it gets replaced with a blue bar which stays after I move the mouse off
- all kinds of weird things happen to the menu if I alt-tab to another window while the mouse is over it, then switch back and move the mouse again
- the headings on each page are spill out of the containing box. And the text on most pages runs off at the bottom into the black background
- there are no contact details?
- I can't see the validator links below the main body of text
- the 1-pixel blue border across the bottom isn't straight

[edit]
- It resizes jumpily if I switch between menu options. Don't know if it was doing that from the start, I may have changed the window size to be a bit smaller.

vodkadub

MOH wrote: »

Doesn't work in IE6:

- as I mouse over each menu option, it gets replaced with a blue bar which stays after I move the mouse off
- all kinds of weird things happen to the menu if I alt-tab to another window while the mouse is over it, then switch back and move the mouse again
- the headings on each page are spill out of the containing box. And the text on most pages runs off at the bottom into the black background
- there are no contact details?
- I can't see the validator links below the main body of text
- the 1-pixel blue border across the bottom isn't straight

[edit]
- It resizes jumpily if I switch between menu options. Don't know if it was doing that from the start, I may have changed the window size to be a bit smaller.

I haven't really considered IE6 when designing this, these bugs are present in IE7 also I've included a script in the source which adjusts everything once IE7 is detected. I will maybe work on IE6 compatabillity, is this design for the scrap heap? or is there anything I can salvage, is it worth correcting all these problems if the design is not on par?

p

vodkadub wrote: »

I will maybe work on IE6 compatabillity, is this design for the scrap heap? or is there anything I can salvage, is it worth correcting all these problems if the design is not on par?

Probably about 60% of your visitors will use IE6, so it's critical that all sites work on that.

The design isn't terrible. It's basic and simple, ad given you're still learning design it's not bad at all. I wouldn't throw it out. Most of the comments are to do with implementation, and fixing browser bugs rather than the design. Address the issues as best you can, and at least you'll have a site in your portfolio. No point throwing everything out, just aim to get better with each new project. Better to move forwards than backwards.

vodkadub

MOH wrote: »

Doesn't work in IE6:

- as I mouse over each menu option, it gets replaced with a blue bar which stays after I move the mouse off
- all kinds of weird things happen to the menu if I alt-tab to another window while the mouse is over it, then switch back and move the mouse again
- the headings on each page are spill out of the containing box. And the text on most pages runs off at the bottom into the black background
- there are no contact details?
- I can't see the validator links below the main body of text
- the 1-pixel blue border across the bottom isn't straight

I'd say these are all IE6 issues, it's not 100% compliant with this version as I've mostly used IE7&8/Firefox for testing, I can make the changes easily for IE6

MOH wrote: »

[edit]
- It resizes jumpily if I switch between menu options. Don't know if it was doing that from the start, I may have changed the window size to be a bit smaller.

This is due to the Javascript detecting your resolution it pushes everything over if your resolution width is greater than 1024

Stab*City

the photography could be of better quality.. the picture of the church is quite blurred..