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Yogler.net Critique
Posted: Thu Mar 16, 2006 7:45 pm
by Nathaniel
Hey guys,
I've had this site for a while, and was wondering what you guys thought of it. It's my blog, forum, and web development business site all in one.
Please tear it apart; if there is something I can improve, I want to do so.
Yogler.net
- Nathaniel
Posted: Thu Mar 16, 2006 8:55 pm
by Roja
Not XHTML compliant
CSS can't be checked
Too much unused space on the sides (opinion)
Posted: Fri Mar 17, 2006 10:22 am
by pickle
- I'd recommed moving the menu up a few pixels - just to be in line with the top of the topmost blog entry - just get rid of the whole sidebarSpacer div
- The 'Web Development' pages, the 'Nathaniel's Interests' page, the Register page and Login page are a few pixels to further to the right than the other two pages.
- Expand the site to be the full width of the screen. There's very little need to restrict your site to 700px as the most common resolution is now 1024 X 768 (FINALLY!). Besides that, a fluid layout looks (in my opinion), a lot sharper.
- Your 'Register page is broken' - good error page though.
- Put another colour in there. This is definitely an opinion - but I'd like the header to stand out a bit more.
Posted: Fri Mar 17, 2006 4:20 pm
by matthijs
I'd recommed moving the menu up a few pixels - just to be in line with the top of the topmost blog entry - just get rid of the whole sidebarSpacer div
I agree with that.
The 'Web Development' pages, the 'Nathaniel's Interests' page, the Register page and Login page are a few pixels to further to the right than the other two pages.
I think that's just the scroll bar disappearing or reappearing. Or not?
Expand the site to be the full width of the screen. There's very little need to restrict your site to 700px as the most common resolution is now 1024 X 768 (FINALLY!). Besides that, a fluid layout looks (in my opinion), a lot sharper.
Well, a bit wider then 700p xwould be good. But I wouldn't go totally fluid. That would make your text totally unreadable (*ugh*
http://www.useit.com)
The error page is very cool indeed.
I think overall the basics are good. But what it needs- in my humble opinion - is a bit more detail and finishing touch. A nice header graphic, better alignment of text(blocks), some more contrast, some nice detailed graphics, etc. The text size can go down a notch. I do like the colours. Only the background of the main text area could use a lighter variant.
Posted: Fri Mar 17, 2006 4:32 pm
by pickle
matthijs wrote:
The 'Web Development' pages, the 'Nathaniel's Interests' page, the Register page and Login page are a few pixels to further to the right than the other two pages.
I think that's just the scroll bar disappearing or reappearing. Or not?
/me hangs his head in shame
matthijs wrote:
Expand the site to be the full width of the screen. There's very little need to restrict your site to 700px as the most common resolution is now 1024 X 768 (FINALLY!). Besides that, a fluid layout looks (in my opinion), a lot sharper.
Well, a bit wider then 700p xwould be good. But I wouldn't go totally fluid. That would make your text totally unreadable
At risk of going off topic, I humbly disagree. This site doesn't look unreadable at full screen.
My website is fluid and doesn't look unreadable. I am disappointed when I see pages that don't stretch because my gut reaction is that the developer didn't want to bother with making their website as usable as possible, and could only get the webpage looking the way they wanted, if they restricted it's width. That's just a gut reaction and nothing personal is ever meant.
Certainly that website you linked to is ugly as sin, but that should by no means be used as the ruler by which all liquid layouts should be measured

Posted: Fri Mar 17, 2006 5:08 pm
by matthijs
I humbly partially agree

My remark was a bit oversimplified. Of course fluid layouts can be very usable. In fact, I do agree that in principle a fluid layout is better. Thinking about the new mobile era, the small and big monitors people have. But I do understand it when a designer wants to design his pages with some kind of proportion. Say, a main content of 45em, a side bar of 20em. That way, line lengths are very readable and the proportions of the design are nice. For this reason I have experimented with elastic layouts and fluid layouts with max-width.
So for Nathaniel's website, maybe a percentage width would be an idea, coupled with a max-width to keep it from expanding too wide on someone's 30'' cinema display? (lucky bas**s).
Posted: Fri Mar 17, 2006 5:19 pm
by pickle
Ok ~Nathaniel - ~matthijs and I have come to the agreement that you should have a fluid layout, but one that isn't 100%

Posted: Thu Mar 23, 2006 10:27 pm
by Nathaniel
Ah, you guys got me with the XHTML compliance. The site is compliant, but I had some HTML in a blog post that borked the page.
pickle's first post:
1. That does look nicer.
2. Yes, the scrollbar disappears in Firefox. I tried the hack to make it always show up, but couldn't get it to work correctly.
3. I'll address this below...
4. Ah, yes. Thank you.
5. Any suggestions on what color, in general? I tried a blue, and a dark brown, and neither really did much for me.
matthijs's first post:
Making the text's background lighter is much nicer. It makes for more contrast, I think. Thank you for that suggestion. I reduced the text size a pixel, and that is nice too.
pickle wrote:I am disappointed when I see pages that don't stretch because my gut reaction is that the developer didn't want to bother with making their website as usable as possible, and could only get the webpage looking the way they wanted, if they restricted it's width.
That is somewhat true. I could only get my curved borders if I set the width in pixels, or used tables (as you did). I like my easy to read HTML. If you notice, I only have one "unneeded" div tag (div id="main") on the entire page, to get the sidebar to float to the left of the content. Because I have a page that isn't fluid, but is always 700 pixels wide, I can use
this header image to get my curved border effect. I'm not sure what benefit a fluid layout has to justify using tables to get my curved borders. Am I missing something?
Thanks for all the tips, guys.
- Nathaniel
Posted: Fri Mar 24, 2006 10:01 am
by pickle
How about something like
this for a header?
Personally, maybe a bit less red would be nice, but whatever looks good for you.
I think my propensity for a fluid layout is entirely a personal choice. I don't think I have any technical reasons - it just seems like a waste of real-estate. Also, I'm not as die-hard against using tables in layout as others are, so I don't really see that as a down side.
Posted: Fri Mar 24, 2006 11:58 am
by matthijs
Curved corners are possible with a flexible layout without tables. It only takes a tiny bit more effort

And sometimes 1 or 2 extra "hooks". But often the existing code already has enough hooks. Like for example a #header with an h1 and a a:link (that's 3!) at the top, or a #footer and #footer p at the bottom.
Or you could even use javascript. Search for "Nifty corners". Of course there are arguments about js not being meant for adding visual elements to a page. But if it's a tiny script which leaves your html and css clean, I guess it's ok.
Posted: Fri Apr 07, 2006 2:33 pm
by Luke
I like the site a lot. Only thing I can recommend is maybe to design kind of a generic logo or something (not a logo, but something a little more graphically interesting than just Yogler.net) and on your interests page rather than bullets, use a background image with like green squares with rounded corners. I think that'd look nice.
Posted: Wed Apr 12, 2006 9:13 am
by Nathaniel
Hmm, I probably should style up the Interests page. I just kinda threw it up one day.
The more I look at my header, the more I realize that it is kinda blah, NSG. I'll have to look into sprucing it up somehow.
Thanks!

My two cents
Posted: Sun Apr 23, 2006 11:58 pm
by strive4impact
I really like that you added the very useful tool, the hyperlink generator.
I questioned the logo when I first ended up on the page... What exactly does
"We Kick the Monkey's Donkey" mean?
Posted: Mon Apr 24, 2006 7:59 am
by Nathaniel
Hey, thanks.
I used to love monkeys, and my whole personal website was built using monkey-related phrases for names of different pages and such. I've grown out of it, but one of the phrases that stuck around was "We Kick the Monkey's Donkey", donkey being a euphemism for @$$, and also being only one letter different from monkey.
Hopefully that sort of makes sense.
Posted: Mon Apr 24, 2006 9:39 am
by jayshields
Well, most of the design issues have been addressed.
A few things I want to add are:
- Possible usage of gradients in the main frame background, the page background and the nav bar background. Just add some really subtle ones darker at the top and going to the colour you have now at the bottom, obviously don't do all 3, just play around, it could make it look nicer.
- When you click on a blog entry title it takes you to a page with just he blog entry. Why? Only logical explanation I can think of is incase you want to print it out, in which case, you may aswell send to a text only page. Also, without the nav bar and everything else you have to press back to get out of the page, maybe include a 'back' link at the bottom of the page.
- Possibly improve pagination. Blog numbers would be nice at the bottom, and also a total number of blogs. Maybe change the amount per page too. What you've got at the moment is better than nothing, though.
Some good points:
- Nicely themed forum skin, looks good.
- Smooth layout, I like the fonts, font sizes and rounded edges.
Generally a visually pleasing website, nice one.