Hi Pete. I think this thread deserves more than one response, so here we go...
quote:
I want to know what your first, and overall impression is... of the design, the look, the concept, the layout/navigation... etc.
Well, my overall impression is "mid to late 90s design." I'm going to leave it at that for now, and I'll tell you why...
quote:
We are open to any and all feedback and suggestions, but I'm sure most of them will be way over our heads, and we probably won't have the know-how or ability to do much else.
Exactly. Which is my I'm not going to make any specific suggestions on the design at this point. 
quote:
And before the critique begins, we are very proud of our project. (remember when you first started?)
Yup. I vividly remember when I first started. I built my first website in 1997, and it was glorious mish-mash of huge, beveled buttons on a tiled background with flashing text and everything. Makes me shudder to think of it now, but back then I was so very proud of my work. Of course, I was also in Mongolia and without an Internet connection (don't ask me why I was building a web site without an Internet connection), so I really had no idea what I was doing. When I got back to Korea and saw what other people were doing with web design, I was crushed.
Being crushed isn't always a bad thing, though. You can take it one of two ways. You can say, "Oh man, I could not possibly suck any worse." And then you can just give up and leave it to "the experts." Or you can say, "Wow, you can do that with a web page?" And then you can get excited about it and dive in head first.
So, why did I just tell you all that? Because this caught my eye:
quote:
too impatient to even read a tutorial
Immediately, warning sirens started going off in my head (very loud sirens, in fact). I can understand that this was your first project, and you and your son were probably very excited about jumping into it right away. I can identify with that. You don't want to waste time trudging through lengthy tutorials and other resources, you just want to get started building web sites right away, right? Like I said, that's understandable.
But you've had your moment of excitement, and now it's time to step back and assess the situation. You mentioned above not having the "know-how or ability" to do much more than you have done so far. That's fine, and that's to be expected. No one starts out with expert know-how and ability. Both of those come with time and experience. However, there is something that needs to on the expert level from the beginning: attitude. You may not have the know-how or ability, but if you have the proper attitude, everything will come in time. The proper attitude (at least the way I see it) is a willingness to learn. If you really want to get better, you need to be willing to learn more about what you're doing.
Cutting and pasting is fine for beginners--everyone starts out that way. But you shouldn't just blindly cut and paste code without understanding how it works. Take Javascript rollovers for example. Even if you are going to use pre-made code, go read a tutorial or two on the technique just so you get a basic idea of how it works. As you get better and gain more knowledge, you'll not only be able to do these things for yourself, but you'll be able to customize your techniques for the particular task at hand.
Tutorials are, of course, important. Many basic tutorials will give you a good foundation in the skills necessary to properly design web sites. Impatience at first is understandable, but if you don't slow down at some point (preferably soon) and start doing a little studying and research on the subject, you'll only find yourself getting frustrated later on.
Tutorials can only teach you so much, though. In my own experience, I have found tutorials useful at the beginning, when you're trying to build your basic skill set. They can also be useful for certain techniques that are difficult to commit to memory (ie, you can use tutorials for reference sometimes). Most of my learning, though, was done by looking at other web sites. If I saw something I liked on another web site, I would take a look at the source to see how it was done. Then I would try to apply what I learned to my own work.
Now, I may be alone in this, but I would recommend you avoid cutting and pasting if at all possible. If you see something you like in someone else's source, study it carefully and then try to reproduce it on your own. There are a couple of reasons for this. Firstly, it will force you to think about what you are doing when you are coding. If you simply copy and past a chunk of code, you don't have to think about it, and you probably won't learn as much as if you had to do it by hand. Yes, you'll probably make typing mistakes that will cause the whole page to come crashing down. But when you find those errors, you will be much more careful in the future. Secondly, doing it by hand will allow you to organically work the concept into your page. If your code is just a collection of snippets cut and pasted from various sites, you will end up with a Frankenstein: different capitalization conventions, different variable naming conventions, etc. If you want to make your code smooth, easy to read, and (thus) easy to edit, you're better off doing it by hand.
One more thing I want to stress before I wrap this up: the bells and whistles, the flashy stuff--none of that is important right now. Good design does not come from knowledge of a wide variety of coding techniques or scripting languages. Javascript, DHTML, CSS, Flash--these are all tools. It is like a carpenter building a house. A skilled carpenter will most likely be able to build a better house with better tools, but that doesn't mean that some schmoe off the street can walk in, pick up the tools, and build a house that is just as good. The tools may allow you to realize a good design, but the tools will not build a good design for you. So don't stress about your lack of knowledge at this point. Take a look at a lot of different sites and see which sites work for you. Then take a closer look and try to figure out why they work for you. Once you start doing that, you'll be on your way to forming your own design philosophy, and along the way you will acquire the tools you need to realize this philosophy in concrete designs.
Hmm... I guess that was a bit lengthy, wasn't it? Totally unlike me... I'm usually very terse and short on words. Just ask any of the other inmates around here.
Anyway, you asked for advice on how to grow, and I think that shows a proper attitude on your part. I hope what I have written here may be of some use to you in that regard. It was not meant in any way as a chastisement, but as a little bit of water and sunlight to help you grow.
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Suho: www.liminality.org | Cell 270 | Sig Rotator | Keeper of the Juicy Bits
posted 05-06-2004 23:25
