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SwiftMailer.org - Redesigned

Posted: Tue May 30, 2006 4:22 pm
by Chris Corbyn
http://www.swiftmailer.org/ (Sorry I feel like I'm on a mad promotion spree with this recently :P)

Looking mostly for comments on usability/accessibility - art/design comments are welcome too though.

(Contact page is being added and a "plugins" page but I don't have time tonight).

Posted: Tue May 30, 2006 8:21 pm
by Nathaniel
Looks like good stuff. The only thing I would change would be the Latest Release box. It needs rounded corners to tie in with the rest of the site.

Otherwise, good stuff.

Posted: Tue May 30, 2006 8:24 pm
by RobertGonzalez
I dig it. Very clean, nice color scheme. Easy to follow, not a lot of fluff. Well done.

Posted: Wed May 31, 2006 2:53 am
by Oren
Never saw the old design, but this one looks great. One thing though... I think you should use more colors cause it looks a little bit plain right now.

Posted: Wed May 31, 2006 3:07 am
by Chris Corbyn
Oren wrote:Never saw the old design, but this one looks great. One thing though... I think you should use more colors cause it looks a little bit plain right now.
I like plain :) Nobody can struggle to read plain and plain doesn't dsitract the eyes too much. Thanks for the input though :)

Posted: Wed May 31, 2006 3:10 am
by Chris Corbyn
Nathaniel wrote:The only thing I would change would be the Latest Release box. It needs rounded corners to tie in with the rest of the site.
I was toying with the idea, although sometimes it's easy to go overboard on a particular look which I was concious of... I have to admit I didn't try it though so I'll give it a shot and see how it looks. I also considered just keeping it square but adding that really fine gradient you see on the rounded boxes.

Glad nobody's said anything tricky to find or anything :)

Posted: Wed May 31, 2006 8:48 am
by RobertGonzalez
If there is one comment you should NOT get is that anything is tricky or difficult to find. As for the rounded edges, it would look nice but would add a lot more markup to the base HTML. Leave it the way it is. It suits its purpose. And besides, I doubt any developer would going to your site to check out your markup anyway. What they really want lies behind all that. :wink:

God job d11. Keep up the good work.

Posted: Wed May 31, 2006 10:16 am
by pickle
  1. As has been said - very clean. There's not too much content on one page, so it's not difficult to find one's way around.
  2. I'd get rid of the 'ruler' div between the "Latest release" box & the Google ads box
  3. It doesn't validate: W3C
  4. The navigation tabs are elevated a bit in Firefox - the bottom of the tabs isn't flush with the big blue header. I'm not sure if that's by design or not.
  5. I agree with ~Nathaniel - you should round the corners of the 'Latest Release' box - maybe making it the same blue as the header would give the site some more continuity.
All-together, a pretty decent looking, useful & usable site.

Posted: Wed May 31, 2006 10:55 am
by Chris Corbyn
pickle wrote:
  1. As has been said - very clean. There's not too much content on one page, so it's not difficult to find one's way around.
  2. I'd get rid of the 'ruler' div between the "Latest release" box & the Google ads box
  3. It doesn't validate: W3C
  4. The navigation tabs are elevated a bit in Firefox - the bottom of the tabs isn't flush with the big blue header. I'm not sure if that's by design or not.
  5. I agree with ~Nathaniel - you should round the corners of the 'Latest Release' box - maybe making it the same blue as the header would give the site some more continuity.
All-together, a pretty decent looking, useful & usable site.
1. Cool :)
2. Hmm...
3. 8O that must have happened when I threw the paypal button in :oops: It did validate. I'll fix that asap.
4. Intentional, there's actually a 3px white line on the bottom of the tab image.
5. OK I'll try this now :)

Posted: Wed May 31, 2006 11:16 am
by Chris Corbyn
Okie I've rounded off the corners and fixed that validation issue (<form> didn't have a <div> inside it).

Not sure why but the corners ain't wanting to go nice and round, they look round in Gimp but so much not in firefox :( Does it look better?

Posted: Wed May 31, 2006 11:32 am
by RobertGonzalez
Man those corners look like hell :) . No, seriously, they are not round in the output. It looks like that are either getting stretched sideways or squished upwards.

Posted: Wed May 31, 2006 11:58 am
by Chris Corbyn
Ooops... I think I know what that is :oops: I have an 8px margin on the right hand side of the box I've forgotten to account for.... Must trim my image(s) :)

Posted: Wed May 31, 2006 12:03 pm
by Chris Corbyn
Fixed.... if the box wasn't going to vary in height depending what versions are in the repository I would have added the vertical gradient but it won't work right. Cheers everyone... I think that's all :)

Posted: Wed May 31, 2006 12:22 pm
by Nathaniel
Hey, much better :)

Posted: Wed May 31, 2006 12:36 pm
by pickle
Yep - better.