Topic: please check my site ... (Page 1 of 1)

Hi guys, I've just started designing websites and this is like my first.
http://www.aloofhosting.com/silentwriter/

I need your honest feedback on it. I have no profesional art training whatsoever on this man and I like really could use your advice your comments criticims. Tell me what you think about it, whats good about it, whats bad about it, what it needs etc etc.


ps. please be gentle on the criticum guys

I'd like to start by pointing out a contradiction in your post...

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I need your honest feedback on it.

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please be gentle on the criticum guys

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So... which is it? Do you want honest feedback or do you want us to be gentle?

Aiming for the former yet keeping the latter in mind, here's my feedback:

1) Once the page loaded I immediately thought "splash page," and tried to find a way to click through to the meat of the site. Click on the image, nothing... maybe the text? Nada. Oh, look, there are some tiny little buttons on the left there... let's try those... bingo!

My major beef with this approach is that mostly everyone will see this page as a splash page and may easily overlook those buttons (especially considering the fact that they don't stand out at all from the design). Also, the buttons give no clue as to their function until you actually roll over them, and even then the huge drop cap overpowers the tiny text on the bottom--the text that the user actually wants to see. Minor beef: rolling over the letters makes them turn dark, thus making them even harder to read, but since they are devoid of meaning in the first place I suppose that doesn't matter all that much. Semantic beef: most of the "questions" that pop up when you roll over the menu buttons are not questions, and therefore should not have question marks (the only exception I see is "Offerings, you say?"--which should have a comma, too). They are statements.

My primary recommendation would be to do away with this page entirely. You don't need it. Instead, make the front page something that introduces the site and/or you (ie, make it just like the other pages in the site). My secondary recommendation would be to make this page less splash-looking, mainly by increasing the amount of content (for example, you could actually have real words or phrases in a menu) and maybe decreasing the amount of space taken up by the image. If you really want to keep what you've got, at least make the buttons stand out more--make them color or something.

2) When I clicked on the A link, especially after reading the various "questions" that popped up, I expeted something a bit deeper than a resume. Is that what you really think you are? A bland list of your education, skills, and interests? Dang it, if I click on an about me link, I want to find something interesting! This is not an about page, it is a resume--call it like it is, don't get my hopes up for something deep and this disappoint me with this. Or, better yet, scrap the resume and write something meaningful.

Also: this page is entitled: "about_Me.html"--this is very bad. Why? Because urls are case sensitive, and the A button in the navigation at the top links to "about_me.html" (the text link at the bottom links to the proper page). Stick with all lower case to avoid things like this.

3) The portfolio page is looking a bit better. It seems a bit counter-intuitive to have the descriptive text as the link rather than the title--I would go the other way around. Also, the "professional experience" part belongs in a resume, not a portfolio--a portfolio is a collection of your work.

You also might want a little more contrast in the background color behind the header text... it's hard to pick out agains the black.

4) Not much to say on the education page, since it's under construction. If the sub "questions" are any indication of what the content is going to be like, though, I think you have picked a very good title for this page. I like it.

5) Ditto on the downloads page...

6) The contact page is kind of funny... what "dire consequences" are you referring to? If you plan to take legal action, you might want to be more specific (not that any spammer will ever read it, of course, but it makes your case that much stronger).

General stuff:

Proofread your text--I noticed numerous minor spelling and other errors that would have been picked up by a word processor spell check program.

Code: I've got to say, I'm not too happy to see such an elaborate table hack in this day and age, but ultimately that's up to you. I would recommend learning and applying CSS to this design. It would makes things a lot easier, and you could actually get away without having to slice that image up into a million little pieces.

Navigation: Those buttons are even harder to see here than they are on the splash page. In fact, I didn't notice them until I was on the third page of the site--up until then I had used the navigation at the bottom of the page. If that text hadn't been there, I would have been stumped.

There's a little break in the layout at the bottom of the education, downloads, and contact pages, possibly because of the lack of content. I'm not going to be wading through that table hack to try to figure it out, though. Click the link above for a screen cap of the problem.

Overall impressions:

You obviously have artistic skill--more artistic skill than I have, at least (which isn't saying much, but still). I really like the look of the site--for a black and gray site, it's actually quite lively. Very nice to look at. In the areas of usability and organization, though, I think the site could use a little work. It seems to me that, especially when it comes to navigation, you have emphasized form over function (ie, "looking cool" over "being easy to use"). These two elements should complement each other--one should not overpower the other. I would strongly recommend working on the navigation, and doing something about the front splash page.

Hope this has been helpful, even if it was a little painful. You know what they say about pain and gain, though.

___________________________
Suho: www.liminality.org | Cell 270 | Sig Rotator | Keeper of the Juicy Bits

(Edited by Suho1004 on 04-13-2004 19:57)

Ignore this

(Some freak error was causing the edit buttons in each post to be linked to the post directly above, forcing me to post this just so I could edit my previous post. Apparently this was a temporary thing, as editing seems to work fine now.)

(Edited by Suho1004 on 04-13-2004 19:59)

I guess I have overlooked a lot of important details. I have recieved feedback from people to do away with the golden blocks which Ive used for hovers up? what do you think?

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I guess I have overlooked a lot of important details.

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Don't sweat it. That's what feedback is for.

Although my post was nauseatingly long, that is probably more of an indication of my tendency to carry on like an auctioneer on crack than it is of any shortcomings on your part. I did point out a lot of little things that bothered me about the pages, but you'd probably be better off if you thought of them as little pieces of a bigger puzzle rather than separate little "bugs" or details. With a better understanding of things like usability and organization (ie, information architecture), you will see how all those little details fit into the bigger puzzle.

So, by all means, make whatever detailed corrections you feel necessary, but try to look at the big picture as well. I do actually like the site quite a bit--I just think it can be even better.

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I have recieved feedback from people to do away with the golden blocks which Ive used for hovers up? what do you think?

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Honestly, I think you could do without them, especially if you replace them with larger text. My biggest complaint with the gold boxes is that the letters in themselves don't mean anything, and they distract from the meaningful text. If you could find a way to get around that, you could probably keep the boxes, but getting ridding of them would probably be the easiest way to solve the problem.