Topic: Please give a once over... (Page 1 of 1)

I don't do much on the web that I am proud of, this happens to be one of those rare occasions.

Please give it a once over and let me know your honest opinions, I do not mind harsh criticism... as long as it helps me improve then it is all good.

What I am so proud of:
...It is the wc3 stickers,
...pixel perfect between IE and Firefox (using IE hacks)
...and the fact that I have very limited ability and I believe the end result is not that bad for a muppet like me

http://www.hamhigh.co.uk/final/headertest2.aspx

Looks pretty good, but you may get a better response in Site Reviews. Moving it there ...

Cheers, made a couple of changes.

I have probably overdid it a little on the blends...

http://www.hamhigh.co.uk/final/headertest2.aspx

I like it. As you mentioned, I think the gradients could be a bit subtler (especially the white-to-blue ones in the left and right columns), but that's just personal preference. The header also seems a bit "busy" in the area around the five rings, but again, it's not a big deal. Maybe add a hover state for links?

Overall, the layout looks very clean and readable. Good to see you're using XHTML/CSS too. Nice work

This is a fairly conventional design, and one with which a lot of people are familiar, so you shouldn't run into too many problems there. The general consensus so far (if you can call two opinions a consensus) on the gradients is that they are a bit too much. I would have to agree. There's something that bugs me more than the gradients, though, and that is this: there are too many lines. All of the right-side menus are set off in their own boxes, so I don't understand why you need the big white line that swoops in from the left and then cuts down the right side to divide the content from the right-side menus yet again. Maybe it's just me, but I think the page is broken up too much. I'm also not sure about not having any left-hand borders.

This is a bit hard to explain in words, so I mucked around a bit in PS and came up with this to give you an idea what I'm talking about. Notice how removing that big white line allows the left menus and content area to align vertically with the right-hand menus. I also oonched the left-side menus out a bit from the edge. This would appeal more to my sense of balance than the original design. Just an idea, though. I just wanted to give you a slightly different perspective. I hope it helps in some way.

___________________________
Suho: www.liminality.org | Cell 270 | Sig Rotator | the Fellowship of Sup

I thank you for your input suho,

I prefer the column layout as it currently stands, I was trying to distinguish the columns from eachother giving more importance to the primary events nav and main information and less to the tertiary boxes.

I have made some changes to the header and footer area.

http://www.hamhigh.co.uk/final/headertest2.aspx

I realise that it is a bit eye candy overload but I quite like it

Well, honestly, I don't think the extra disctinction is necessary, given the contrast in color between the side menus and the main content areas, and given the fact that the main nav menu is on the left where people will see it first, but if you like it that way, go for it. Ultimately its a matter of taste.

A question: what are the two menus at the top for? Is the lower menu a drop down of the upper menu?

___________________________
Suho: www.liminality.org | Cell 270 | Sig Rotator | the Fellowship of Sup

quote:

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A question: what are the two menus at the top for? Is the lower menu a drop down of the upper menu?"

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yes, which I quite like but you probably hate....

I have a problem with it in IE on the mac in that it is not applying my styling to the ul li lists of the submenu and is just showing them as unordered lists, bloody annoying.

On my list of things to TRY and fix.

No, actually, the lower menu being a drop down is actually better than the alternative. I was about to be very worried if you had two horizontal menus.

As for the coding, I have yet to find a foolproof (works on all browsers) approach to CSS drop downs, so good luck with that. I recently tried to implement a CSS drop down menu on my personal site and eventually gave up and went with a straight HTML drop down menu. Not as pretty as a CSS drop down, but at least it works, and I just can't be bothered with all the hunting and hacks required to make CSS drop downs work--at least not when I'm not getting paid to do it.

___________________________
Suho: www.liminality.org | Cell 270 | Sig Rotator | the Fellowship of Sup

I am not going to bother sorting it out for IE mac, given that Microsoft dont support it anymore and that stats wise viewing figures for it are almost non-existant (and most of that is generated internally anyway, by all of our mac users being forced to stick with M$ IE by our IS department as they do not want to support any other browsers).

A mate has told me it works fine in safari on the mac although I have not been able to check as I do not have access to it.

http://webxact.watchfire.com/scanform.aspx?sa=1

No errors found, of which I am pleased.

Need to work my way through the manual checks and see how it stacks up.

I like it it works nicely and resizes well also, although the navigation needs to be worked on in my opinion.

When you resize the text the primary and sub navigation aren't bound by their backgrounds and flow into the below containers, it would be nice if you could slice the backgrounds and add them to the lists as two seperate background images, as they are gradients you should be able to use a repeating bg image.

When you resize the text the background will contain the the links and the flow of the page won't be interrupted, make sure you use the clear property on the main content below.

Hope this helps!

Cheers,