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Your Text: Insert Slimies » Insert UBB Code » Close Last Tag \| All Tags UBB Help	Sir Glenn: Here is my review, as promised. :) There are time when I'm not certain really where to start, so at times like those I generally start at the beginning. Rather than try to organize my review into a coherent set of comments, I'm going to do this "stream of consciousness" style, which means I'm just going to type what comes to mind as I go through your site. It may be harder to read than an organized review, but it will give you a very clear picture of my experience as a user, and that can be very valuable. So, here goes: Hmm... a splash page. If you've hung around the Asylum for any length of time, you'll know that many people here take a dim view of splash pages, and I am no exception. It doesn't add anything to the site, it makes users click one extra time to get to the meat of the site, and (in your case) the user is required to have Shockwave to see something they never really needed to see in the first place. I would ditch the splash page without a second thought. Oh my, what happened to the text? It's definitely not where it's suppose to be--it starts at the same place the graphic starts, which means that it runs right over the top vertical bar of the "interface." Definitely not pretty. Let's view the tables and see if we can't figure out what went wrong here... OK, it looks like the interface is put together by a table, but then the text is sitting [i]outside[/i] of the table structure. We're going to need to look at the source for this... Ah, I think I see the problem--you've got the interface in a table and then the text in a div positioned on top of that with CSS, but you're using absolute positioning. The problem, I think, is that the ad inserted by Angelfire is pushing your interface down, but the text is staying in the same place. At least that's what I think is happening. Forget about trying to fix it, though. If I were you I would start over with the layout--use CSS to position everything, and then you won't have to worry about things getting pushed down. I would also use an external style sheet rather than having your styles inline. OK, on to the rest of the site... except there are no buttons on the interface. Well, there are buttons, but they're blank. Ah, I see. This is what is called, in some circles, "Mystery Meat Navigation"--in other words, you don't know what you're getting beforehand. Whatever you want to call it, I think it's generally a bad practice. Why not just have the labels on the buttons in the first place? You could still have the depressed rollovers. Strangely enough, the image preloading doesn't seem to work. I don't know why, but the contact button in particular hesitates for about a second or so every time I mouse over. Weird. Another thing that strikes me as weird is the order of the navigational elements--I don't think I've ever seen contact come first. In fact, I think very often it's the last element. OK, let's check out the tutorials. Whoa, where did the interface go? You obviously worked hard to get a feel going, and now you leave me with a blank page? I also don't understand the vertical arrangement of the tutorials--why make the user scroll when they don't have to? Also, you do realize that none of your "Photoshop" Tips are actually PS tips, right? The first demonstrates a single KPT filter (which doesn't come with PS), the second demonstrates a JavaScript rollover (JavaScript is not HTML, by the way), the third shows how to download fonts(?), the fourth shows another JS trick, and the fifth is a cheat page for a console game. On to Pics... well, again, the interface disappears. I also find it interesting that it says "Sir Glenns Photo Page" at the top, yet you have pictures that are obviously not yours. You may have them on your hard drive, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they're yours... I would stick with personal pictures, which are more fun to look at anyway. Ah, a complete change of direction with the guestbook... but that's common with guestbooks hosted elsewhere. You might want to see if you can at least change the colors of the guestbook to match your site. Not much to say on the links page, except that I wouldn't center everything... it looks a bit sloppy. I just noticed the date on top of the page... I don't think you need it. It's not a "last modified" date (which is never a good idea anyway), and people don't need your website to tell them what day it is. In short, if it doesn't serve a purpose, ditch it. You mentioned in your first post above that you're not sure where to go with the site. I realize that it is a personal page, but that doesn't mean you can't have a purpose and goals. What do you want to do with this site? Do you want it to be an expression of yourself? If so, think of the best way to do that, and then build the site around that idea. I'm not saying that a bunch of random stuff can't work, but if you don't have a clear idea of what you want to do when you start out, a bunch of random stuff will end up looking like just that--a bunch of random stuff, and not some ground-breaking design. Right now, your site lacks coherence--there's just nothing holding it together. You have an interesting interface on the front page, but you abandon that on the second level. And the second level pages themselves look like they were put together without a clear organizational idea in mind. I don't mean that everything has to be planned down to the last letter, but you do need to have some sort of design idea in mind. This will most likely evolve as you work on the site, and that's OK. But nothing will evolve if you don't have an idea to start with. I went through a similar soul-searching process when I made my site. I thought about what it was that I really wanted to express, and I realized that it was my writing most of all that needed an outlet. Thus, out of the three main sections of my site (there are seven navigational items, but the last four are "supplemental"), two of them deal with my writing. The third section displays my pictures, which is another area where I wanted to express myself. Once I had this basic idea in mind, it was easier to design the site. Because my site would be primarily text, I wanted to keep it simple, and I wanted there to be a large, open space for all that text. After some experimentation (and a lot of help from the good folks here at the Asylum), I ended up with what you see there now. I hope my comments have been helpful, and I hope they have not been too harsh. If you'd like me to elaborate on anything I said here, or if you have a question, please let me know. I'll be glad to offer what help I can. ___________________________ Suho: [url=http://www.liminality.org]www.liminality.org[/url] Loading...
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