oh, this is *so* much better than previous versions. You've done an excellent job in bringing this up to a more professional and contemporary feel.
The colors aren't going to be loved by everyone, but they work and they are fitting for the intent of the site.
The *only* qualm I have is the color for the hover on the links - it just doesn't work. You can't really see the blue on the green, and it messes with my eyes =)
Talk about progress. This is the fastest I've seen anyone catch on to design. Granted, there's still a ways to go, but this is good.
The green you have as a background on the left and right is incredibly saturated (in other words, really bright). It's very hard on the eyes. Definitely change that.
Also, the 3D effect on the buttons is ugly. One of the main reasons that it's ugly is that you used red for the borders, but blue for everything else around it, so the borders don't visually work with it. Aside from that, it's sort of a cheap effect that doesn't really add anything to the page. Simplify.
well that's Slime's quick. Anyhow I did get to puttin it in photoshop and switching the colors a bit. Purely to illustrate the point that less is more in terms of number of colors in this case =) I'd encourage you to scale the number of colors you're using back, and to not necessarily follow my example at all, that was just a quickie to show the cohesion that would come from cutting out a few things. That mustard yellow should probably be used spareingly as an accent color, the dark blue as well, not sure either of those has the feel for the site you're doing as an expanse of background color, but both can be good accents for the 2 lighter versions.
[This message has been edited by JKMabry (edited 03-13-2003).]
Ok, bye bye red and green!
I read a tutorial on how to do the button effects with CSS so I thought I would try it out.
The example she used had those 3d effects. I'll still use the CSS technique but I've removed the borders (and therefore the 3d effect.)
There is a problem though. Netscape doesn't cover the whole cell with the background color. In fact, it is ignoring a lot of my CSS. I'll have to work on that. Suggestions welcome.
I wasn't too convinced about the green either. So I've changed it to gray.
can't go wrong with grey, though I can almost guarantee your church folks will think it drab, and they may be right, for a church site.
on the link buttons problem, I ran into the same thing a while back and documented the search for an answer here. The link is the last page, 3 of 3. I think there was supposed to have been a page 4 of 4 that solved the Opera problem as well but I got sidetracked and never put it up. That last page should help with Netscape though.
I thought I'd try JK's idea to base it on the logo. What does everyone think about this?: http://www.cincychurch.com/preview
I've fixed it for NN. Thanks for the info!
JK: You got rid of the clip art in your rendition. Is it that bad? The colors for that cover such a tiny amount of area.
TheDude
[This message has been edited by TheDude (edited 03-13-2003).]
[This message has been edited by TheDude (edited 03-13-2003).]
edit: oh yeah, I like the tie in with the logo, I really do, it's the tightest presentation overall that I've seen yet. And nah, *that* clipart is not the worst I've seen but I just have a real aversion to clipart for site 'enhancers' in general.
One thing that does bug me a bit is the div class="motto" (as long as we're down to the nitcpicking now =) and the fluidity of it in conjuction with the vertical alignment of it. I'm thinkin you could turn that overly long email address into an
to shorten it up, then you could constrain into the third, narrow column and move the motto div into the middle. As it is the expanding div throws the balance of the layout off depending on the resolution, I think it'd be less apt to do that in the middle. Anyhow, good to see someone soakin it all in. After you get it how you want it ask around for us to tear through the markup, you may wish you hadn't ;-)
[This message has been edited by JKMabry (edited 03-13-2003).]
From: Den Haag: The Royal Residence Insane since: Jul 2000
posted 03-14-2003 01:01
i have missed something out here ... good job.
But i have to say i liked the rounded edge design from your last thread very well.
Though it is a clean and simple i think off it as a bit boring (compaired to the CHEC-page). But the good news is it's easy on the eyes, it looks easy to navigate and it is also coherent. These are good things.
The only thing i don't like is the white background, but that's becouse i really do not like white anyway.
Why? well i am behind my computer at night when the surroundings are a bit darker. On such moments white on a bright monitor gets really bright-white making it hard for me to focus. It is like looking into a lamp i guess. Personally i wil not use white on a light-emitting device, like a monitor or a tv, ever. But as i said this is me who realy hates white.
However if you think this site will be seen by people in a dark/gloomy room (for instance after getting home from work, they look in the evening) you might consider using a less bright color like light grey, light blue, creme, ivory or beige.
"Freedom of speech is by no means freedom to insult others" from the Razorart goodbye letter.
The issue I have now is that the colors of the page - while nice - completely over power the logo.
You almost don't notice there *is* a logo because your eyes jump directly to that bright nav menu.
I honestly think the best version of this site so far was the one you first posted in this thread. With some of the cleanups you;ve added since, it would be great.
I'm sure this is starting to just sound confusing by now - but it shows that design, while ahving some general guidelines, is a very personal and subjective issue.
Bottom line - what you're happy with, and what your client is happy with, is what matters most.
All in all, I still have to say you've done a fantastic job in moving this design from where it started to where it's at now. =)
I don't like white backgrounds that much either, but I was afraid of introducing another non-white color into the site. But if it will look good, I will probably change it to a cream color.
Other than that I like the current color scheme. Kind of reminds me of the old 'Hot Dog' color scheme in Windows 3.1.
I have to say that I *really* don't care for them.
They just don't seem to fit. Perhaps they would work included in a heading for a sub page, but they just seem to jump out of nowhere as they are now...they grab *all* the attention and undermine the relatively subtle design of the rest of the page.
perhaps they could work where they are if they were sized down a bit more, given a border, and given a few pixels of space between them...
{edit - and also, if they are going to be a permanent part of the front page, it would be nice if there could be...say about 10-20 different images and each time 4 get chosen at random to fill that space...mix it up a bit.
[This message has been edited by DL-44 (edited 03-30-2003).]
posted 03-12-2003 08:43
I'll have to work on that. Suggestions welcome.
)
oh the irony