Finished my personal site - critique

It doesn't matter if you do all the error checking in the world, or if you have the most beautiful graphics, if your site or application design isn't usable, it's not going to do well. Get input and advice on usability and user interface issues here.

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Luke
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Finished my personal site - critique

Post by Luke »

I just finished my personal site. I think the wording on it sucks, but then again I am not a writer. Other than the writing, what does everybody think?
http://vod.digitalflux.net/
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onion2k
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Post by onion2k »

Design wise, it's bold and strong. It easy to navigate, and logically laid out. Good stuff.

Comments:

1. The left and right "pillars" feel constricting. I'd keep them, but make them less prominent.

2. The font .. reading large amounts of text in a monospace font is tiring. As dull as Arial and Verdana are, I wouldn't recommend straying so far from them.

3. Great colour scheme, it's organic and easy on the eye .. but the grey borders around the boxes doesn't quite gel with it in my opinion.

4. At the bottom of the main text block there needs to be a little whitespace to seperate it from the footer.

Nice site.
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Benjamin
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Post by Benjamin »

Looks great. I might have gone with a larger font size, maybe 1 or 2 pixels larger. A sans-serif font, and a different color scheme, but other than that it's a great design.
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pickle
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Post by pickle »

Looks pretty sharp. I'll agree that the monospaced font is a little tough to read. Maybe make it just a tad bit darker so the contrast is lessened.
The 'Work in Progress' section has the arrow on the opposite side as everyone else.
It's a static width layout, which I personally view as bad - I prefer a liquid layout. But, to each his own ;).
Real programmers don't comment their code. If it was hard to write, it should be hard to understand.
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feyd
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Post by feyd »

Lets get the basics out of the way:
  • VALID XHTML 1.0 Transitional
  • VALID CSS, not many warnings.
  • PASSES 508 (with a bunch of things not checked)
  • MIXED Mixed results of the WAI test: Pass on most tested, but there was a fail and two warnings in there.
All that being said, it's a somewhat interesting design. The striped sides doesn't really feel like it fits with the radioactive theming of the content areas. I think there could be some more whitespace at the bottom just before the footer and the "recent work" box.
Roja
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Re: Finished my personal site - critique

Post by Roja »

The Ninja Space Goat wrote:I just finished my personal site. I think the wording on it sucks, but then again I am not a writer. Other than the writing, what does everybody think?
http://vod.digitalflux.net/
Getting valid code is step one.
Getting good design is step two.
Getting accessible design is step three.

You did all those, and did them very well.

Taking some chances with design, like using a unique font, and a unique color scheme, can be another step.

Personally, I'm not too fond of the shadowing on the title graphics, the font isn't my first choice, and the color scheme isn't what I would have chosen.

None of that changes the fact that I have to look at your site and admit that it is a bold, unique, and unarguably well-designed site.

Looks sharp, takes bold chances, and doesn't hurt anything to do it.

Nothing wrong with being unique. Well done.
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Luke
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Post by Luke »

Well thank you all very much.

Thanks for the heads up on the arrow pointing the wrong way picke... my ftp program keeps swapping file names when I upload. It's kinda weird, but that's how that happened.

Onion- yes I was a little put off by the text at first myself, but I tried just about every font, and that one seems to be the most fitting. when you say whitespace... what do you mean?

Feyd, thanks... I'll check out that WAI test. I'm not sure what that is, but I think I've seen it in my dev tools in FF. Once again, what do you mean by whitespace?

Roja- thank you very much. Really... I appreciate that.
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feyd
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Post by feyd »

White space is the "unused" portions of a page. The smallest pieces of whitespace are gaps between characters, words and paragraphs. In typography and graphics design white space is just as important (sometimes more so) than black space (where the information is.) Page margins, line spacing, breathing space around graphics, headers and footers are all larger portions of white space. Wikipedia has a very terse description, but does have a nice illustration of the difference white space can have on something (the lower right image.)

For myself, white space is every bit as important as black space. If need be, I can post an screenshot of your page with and without white space highlighted.
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Luke
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Post by Luke »

no no that won't be necessary. that is what I thought you meant, but my site being black (and me being a moron :wink: ) confused things a bit.

EDIT: 'round here we call that negative space. :D
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Nathaniel
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Post by Nathaniel »

Since everyone else has gotten the overall design (and the praise :)) out of the way, I thought I'd comment on the contact form. The form side-by-side the contact information is great. The form itself could use a bit of sprucing up. Changing the background-color and border-color of the fields, and maybe putting a (fieldclass):active class to have the background change color when highlighted could look pretty snazzy, I think.

- Nathaniel
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Luke
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Post by Luke »

Good idea, Nathaniel.

I have gotten a lot of people telling me that the radiation symbols are irrelevant and I should replace them with something else... and that the pillars on the side take away from the overall design and look amateur (I got these comments from people who are not really designers at all).
Also, that I should use png images instead of gif.
What do y'all think about those comments?
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Nathaniel
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Post by Nathaniel »

I like it without the pillars (I think you removed them, because it seems different than I remember it). Unfortunately, your site now has a horizontal scrollbar on every page on my 1024 x 768 screen, even with the browser window maximized...
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Luke
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Post by Luke »

I'm going to do some work on it. I will post again when it's ready to be poked at again.
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John Cartwright
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Post by John Cartwright »

Might want to work on your grammer though, your first sentence is invalid. Gives off a bad impression ;)
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Luke
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Post by Luke »

A friend will be writing the content for me. Thank you though.
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