Topic: Analyze This

Ok, I'm ready to be raked over the coals!: http://www.chechome.org/preview
The first four pages (button links) are the only ones I'm concerned with, and only the 2nd level deep. So there are only 4 pages to critique.
The others will follow later, so don't bother analyzing them now, if you don't want to.
Thanks!

TheDude

With all due respect, you need a serious lession on not using "cheap effects." Allow me to name a few that you've used and you *really* shouldn't:

1. A large, unnecessary pixelated animated gif that is likely to give someone seizures
2. Page transitions
3. 3D button effects
4. Inconstent bullets
5. "last updated" text

The latter is less of a cheap effect, but is rarely a good idea. That's because there are two possibilities in the future:
A) You'll update frequently, and people will recognize that and visit frequently to see the updates, so the "last updated" text is unnecessary.
B) You'll hardly ever update, and the "last updated" text will clue people into that, so they won't bother coming back again.

In addition, the colors are completely saturated and should be thought over.

At the *very least*, remove numbers 1 and 2, or we'll be forced to kill you. =)

I am not a web designer by trade (hopeful for the future, but realistic about the present), so take these comments as viewed by an average user as much as a fellow coder.

THE PRAISE:
I liked the sizing of your intro paragraph; text that runs from end to end really bothers my eyes. On that note, the font you chose for the intro paragraph was very clear, and I would stick to that throughout the site. The navigation was simple to use, and I never had any trouble finding my way back to the home page. Also, I didn't notice any spelling errors (a big pet peave of mine on sites), which is essentially important given the content of your site. Your choice of a white background is probably best, especially considering that you have several things that home educators might want to print.

THE CRITICISM:
1. I think that you should settle on a few distinct colours and work off of them instead of five or six. In my opinion, sites look more uniform and complete when a designer displays a "theme palette", so to speak. Taking the OZONE site as a reference, you can see about three main colours on the page (and the same on each page). I counted five different shades of blue on your site alone (if you consider cyan in the same family). It doesn't add to your site, so I'd find your favourite 2 colours and work off of them.

2. I don't think you need the blue background behind the td class buttons for the menu. They are shaded, so they shouldn't pose a problem for users to find. Again, I am a believer in "Less Is More" for design, so I'd go for no buttons at all and opt for tables with the cell backgrounds shaded instead.

3. I agree with the previous poster (a name I forgot at 2:45am, sorry!) about the transitions and the animated gif's. To me, that simply says "I did this site myself!" Considering the content of your site, I am sure you'd rather visitors be impressed with your professionalism and organized structure. I would use actual photographs to add visual interest instead of animated gif's (as long as they load quickly). Again, thinking of your content, photos of families or children would warm the site up a great deal.

4. On that note, I am a homeschooling mother myself, and I would rather see a site that appears really professional and organized, to encourage me in my plight for the same thing. I think you could work some more on your logo (don't recall if you mentioned doing that in your post or not) - something more than just a casual, san serif font against a plain background. I expect that CHEC supports many families in the Northern Kentucky and Cincinnati area. I think your logo and design should reflect this degree of impact that you have on communities in your area. I would try to design this site with the concept of creating a national educator's site, or a publisher's site, that sort of feel. This, I know is purely personal, but I thought it might have some merit coming from a homeschooling mother.

5. You may not be done with this page yet, but I didn't quite understand the purpose of your notification form. I assume that it will be used to submit to the Dept of Education as notification that a parent is choosing to homeschool instead of enrolling them in public school. That wasn't outlined in the text, and the word FORM made me look for a SUBMIT button (perhaps out of habit) at the end. Did you want parents to print this out?

Those are my thoughts. I know that most of what I posted could be considered design "opinion" and not design "law," but we are here to give our impressions as well as our learned edicts.

Take care,
~Nethermind




~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
If we listened to our intellect, we'd never have a love affair. We'd never have a friendship. We'd never go into business, because we'd be cynical. Well, that's nonsense. You've got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Thanks for the advice. I guess if you use special effects, you have to be creative, eh? Because people get tired of seeing the same ones after a while? (I know they can also increase download time.) I thought mine were cool, but maybe because they were new to me.

Slime,
Interesting. I got the button idea from a site that won an award. (Although they had different buttons.)
What are saturated colors?

Nethermind,
> I agree with the previous poster (a name I forgot at 2:45am, sorry!)

You can scroll down when you're posting and look at the previous posts and names.
As for the logo, someone else is designing that so I'm waiting on that.
The notification form is what you say. (Actually it goes the the local school district, not the Dept. of Ed.) I inherited that from the previous site design. I will add an explanation.

All,
Here is my new version so far. I know it's kind of plain, so give me your suggestions. I will get pictures in later, and probably do something with the vertical bar at the right, and bottom bar.
Should I have links at the bottom as well as the side, like many sites have? This may be helpful for long pages. Or should I just put "Back to top" for those?
No links are there yet, I want to settle on a page design first.
http://chechome.org/preview2/

Is a fixed background ok here? I know sometimes that can make it harder to read the text, but in this case the background is very subtle. (To me, white is boring, so I wanted to have a bit of a background presence.) And, I like the fixed background effect, but let me know if that's just another "cheap effect".


I kept the old one, so people will know what the previous comments were about: http://chechome.org/preview

Thanks.




TheDude

I think this design is much cleaner and easier on the eyes. I don't have any problem with fixed backgrounds as long as they don't distract the viewer (and this one doesn't). I still think you have too many shades of blue/cyan on the site, however.

If you're putting up photos or logos with images, I'd be interested to see what that looks like.
Keep us updated!

~Nethermind



~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
If we listened to our intellect, we'd never have a love affair. We'd never have a friendship. We'd never go into business, because we'd be cynical. Well, that's nonsense. You've got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.
~Ray Bradbury
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Dated.

Dated, is everything about this site. It looks like a web page that was designed in the early 1990's by one of those really basic online HTML editors. Tripod type service.

The design needs to be brought back into the 21st century.

Ok trying to help here.
Maybe i sound a bit harsh but that is not my intention.
The yellow bar at the right side is iritating and draws all the attention to it. That would be cool if there was something to do but since it is just decoration it should not draw the attention to it. The menu and the text should have the most attention. I think the menu is better in the second version.
I realy like to drop some links for you.
First DmS story: What's behind the great designs?
Also you might take a look at the guru's pages for the coding tutorials

Now let's get on with the review. Personally i don't like backgrounds. You could use a color as background instead, don't be shy and try a darker color as background and some bright one as foreground (text). You are right white is boring...

I do like the blue bar at the bottom, it breaks the page a bit. You might consider putting text links in it.
I also don't like the fonttype in the blue top bar with the yellow text. The 'brush' makes it a bit childish, use google to search for some free fonts and experiment with them (if you find a nice one you can always look for a paid version). The font should be easy to understand and clean but not 'sterile' At the Larabie fonts page i saw this Sofachrome font but this might be overdoing it since it's very fat. Also the Eden Mils font could be nice. It is one of my favorites very clean but not boring.
If there will be fonts in the logo, you maybe could use the same font at the top bar. This will give some consystency to the site.
I hope this helps

"Freedom of speech is by no means freedom to insult others" from the Razorart goodbye letter.



[This message has been edited by Rinswind 2th (edited 02-25-2003).]

<edit>ooooops double post<edit>

[This message has been edited by Rinswind 2th (edited 02-25-2003).]

I agree with Rinswind about the font choices. Another good resource for free fonts is AcidFonts.

~N

Um, I really have to agree with Dan on this one.

I've spent some time teaching non-native speakers of English how to write proper essays in English. They generally do not have a perfect grasp of grammar and spelling, and their essays are often riddled with mistakes. Most often, though, my first critique of an essay does not make a single mention of grammar or spelling. Why? Because, for the moment, grammar and spelling are not their biggest problems. Their biggest problem is that they don't know how to write an essay. So I go over the basics of essay writing with them and point out where they lack unity or coherence, "big picture"-type things on which the success (or failure) of an essay will hinge. Once they have an understanding of the basic principles, then I go into the grammar and spelling.

OK, so what does that have to do with the site at hand. Well, basically, for me to say that I don't like the animated GIF or the background image would be like focusing on spelling and grammar when your essay has major coherency problems. You are currently about a decade behind the latest design trends, and no amount of tweaking is going to save this design.

If I were you (which I'm not, so take what follows for what it's worth), I would scrap the design, do a little roaming on the great, wide plains of the Internet, familiarize myself with current design techniques and trends, and then sit back down and try to come up with something a bit more modern. I'm not saying you need to use the latest, greatest whiz-bang technology, but you do need to get a grasp of what works and what doesn't (and why).

So, anyway, that's why this "review" is not very specific. I hope I didn't come off overly harsh... I really would be interested in seeing what you can do with this page.

Suho i agree with you, that is why the link to What'sbehind the great desings is there

"Freedom of speech is by no means freedom to insult others" from the Razorart goodbye letter.

Rinswind: Actually, my comments were in no related to or inspired by yours... that's just my personal philosophy, that's all. It's also another way of saying I don't know quite where to begin.

And those were very helpful links you provided up there. I checked them all out.

Not much that hasn't already been said, but I need to address this -

quote:

---

I got the button idea from a site that won an award

---

Well, I suppose this may not be intuitive to someone new to the web, but uh...the "awards" you see on web sites are generally given *by* people who are complete morons *to* people who are complete morons, and have absolutely no bearing on anything even remotely related to competent web design.

Just so you know...

Yeah, I was kind of wondering about the validity of some of the many awards that are given out.

Anyway, thanks for the comments, everyone.

I would like some more opinions on these 3 effects, from anyone (experienced designers, average users, whatever):

From Slime's message:
> 1. A large, unnecessary pixelated animated gif that is likely to give someone seizures
> 2. Page transitions
> 3. 3D button effects

Here is the site again: http://www.chechome.org/preview
Include comments about if they are bad for all sites, or just certain sites, like this one.
Thanks.

TheDude

[This message has been edited by TheDude (edited 02-25-2003).]

My humble opinion: very dated and sophomoric. Any design element that is added simply for a "whizz bang" effect without any true purpose reminds me of fuzzy dice adorning a car.

I think Suho has the right idea; you need to do some more study online. If you want to look for sites that have the same target audience, try going to national organizations that revolve around education. These sites are usually designed by professionals, and they contain less cheezy graphics and gimmicks than the local ones.
I went to the National Education Association's site (without looking at code), and it seemed a good starting point for you. They use colour, nice transparent imagery, and a smart navigation system:
http://www.nea.org/

Just my thoughts,
Nethermind



~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
If we listened to our intellect, we'd never have a love affair. We'd never have a friendship. We'd never go into business, because we'd be cynical. Well, that's nonsense. You've got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.
~Ray Bradbury
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Ok, how about this?
http://chechome.org/preview3/

Don't bother trying the links, they're not there yet.

TheDude

[This message has been edited by TheDude (edited 03-03-2003).]

My first thought is: Ow, my eyes! That neon-like blue is way too intense (at least on my monitor). You might want to check out the :FAQ: for some resources on color to help you out in that department. Other than that, well, it is improving. I still don't like the background image--I think that contributes a lot to the amateur feel of the site.

I agree about the colour scheme ( one of the blues is too bright=00e6ff, I think that 7777bb is much nicer to look at for a length of time). However, my main thought when I went there was that the site looks much better now. You're on the right track, I think.

1. You're using arial, a sans serif font for the content text and an unknown font for the menu and title of the site. What is Eden Mills? I don't have that font, and you don't specify in your css any other options (you have Eden Mills as a font family). Put sans serif as your font family in your style sheet to match the arial; otherwise, you'll have people like me who have two font families on the site and it's bothersome on the eyes.

2. I would address the sidebar menu and give it the same attention you gave the other parts of the site. I wouldn't center the text down the menu like that; instead, I'd put them into tables and left justify for a cleaner look on the eyes.

3. I agree with Suho about the background image. You gain a great deal in removing that for professionalism on your site, especially with the redesigned border graphics.

That's all I have. Great perserverance!
~N

Nice Sig.

This should be easier on the eyes.
http://chechome.org/preview3/

Still, let me know if there is a better color to use.



TheDude

Yess yess now you are getting somehwere....good progress

~Thumbs Up~

"Freedom of speech is by no means freedom to insult others" from the Razorart goodbye letter.

This is a big improvement. The colors are compatible, the fonts are consistent, and it's a simple approach.

Two things about it could use work:

1. You rounded a lot of corners with that quarter-circle graphic. Admittedly, this is better than leaving it looking like a bunch of rectangles. (I must also admit that I was once a fan of this approach.) However, I encourage you to experiment with borders between the differently colored areas, rather than just rounding off everything. In addition, you might consider why you left the upper left corner white, when all the other edges of the page are grey. Maybe you should work on that area some more.

2. The menu bar could use a little extra padding on the right to keep the words from going right to the edge of the grey background.

Again, this is a great improvement over the original. Keep working at it. =)

Yes, this is a tremendous improvement. Slime made some good suggestions, and I would like to add that the rectangular title bar within the rounded gray area strikes me as being a bit off. I'm not sure if this makes sense, but the soft rounded corners of the gray area make the sharp corners of the blue area much harsher. That's just what I feel when I look at it.

I guess we're getting down to the nitty-gritty stuff here, eh?

It's a really good thing to see Suho and Slime giving you detailed criticisms! I think that this is a tremendous improvement; you're moving your site into a really streamlined and professional category, and that will communicate this image to your web visitors.

I will leave the rest of the critique to the masters at this craft and just say, Well Done, for taking the honest advice of others and using it to better your site.

Cheers!