Topic: Layout/Colours

[Canuck]

Hi,

Since I took a course in web design in my final semester, I thought I would take some time to redesign my Andy Moog website using some CSS and XHTML.

I fooled around a bit with the style and colours, and came up with the following:

http://www.freewebs.com/andy_moog/new.html

There is no content as of yet.

I just wanted your opinions on the layout and colours, any suggestions and/or comments would be appreciated.

Thanks

[ober]

IMO, the colors are pretty bad.  If you want help picking colors, try this out: http://wellstyled.com/tools/

The layout is fine, but it wouldn't hurt to put something on either the left or right inside the text container.  And I hope you're going to add some kind of logo/banner image at the top, because it's pretty boring as-is.

If you want a full critique, I recommend registering at phpfreaks.com and posting in the "Website Critique" board.  It's one of the best critique sites I've found and the guys that post there are very thorough (although you'd probably want to do a little more work before posting there.

[Canuck]

Thanks for the quick reply, Ill have a look at the site you suggested, and fool around with the colours tomorrow.  I didnt want to work on the graphics before I had the layout and colours chosen.

Thanks again.

[yoshi]

Why are all of them "id"s? No class?

[Canuck]

Well from my understanding, you use classes when there is more than one instance (example paragraphs), I usually give all my divs ids, since they are unique (one instance of them).

Someone correct me if I am wrong.

[ober]

No, that's exactly right.

[Canuck]

I worked on the layout a little today, as well as the colours, which I used from that site you provided.  The colours still may not be the best, but I kind of like a greenish look...

On the top I added a section where my banner will be, not sure of the exact height, but I put a rough size in for now.

I also added a floating menu to the left side for links, although not ever page on the site will have that floating menu.

Looking any better?

Thanks

Its the same link as before, I uploaded over the previous file

http://www.freewebs.com/andy_moog/new.html

Edit: I havent fooled around with fonts much, but I do plan on changing some.

[ober]

Looking good... and you're actually using a color scheme I chose for a site I did not so long ago.    Keep working and updating as you go along.  

FYI, the menu items at the top (or at least most of them seem to have an odd amount of padding on the left).

[Canuck]

Minor Update

I believe I fixed the spacing problem you mentioned ober.

I havent worked on the site much, but got a little bit done today.  I still have to put the CSS into its own file, and create a header.html file which will include the main layout and the top nav, and will get to that before I start adding more to the website.

The links on the right allow one to jump to differents sections on the page.  I havent tinkered with the fonts and sizes on the site, yet...

You can check out my progress here:

http://www.freewebs.com/andy_moog/bio_new.html

2 Problems

I was using a
 in the list, but it didnt validate, so I removed them and added a line-height.  If one line of text is too long to fit on one line, it goes to the line below, but has a blank line in between due to the line-height.  

A problem in Opera, the text appears to be lower than the bullets, but looks fine in Firefox, and is also slightly off in IE.

Thanks

[Perspective]

Looks good here (firefox).


*damn, you know a lot about Andy Moog.

[ober]

Use XHTML 1.0 Transitional and you won't have a problem using the
s.  And I know about the problem with lists not looking right in Opera.  It's weird, but it's always kinda been like that.

It also wouldn't hurt to change the background color of the links on the nav when you mouseover.

[Canuck]

I worked on the site a bit again the last few days.

http://www.freewebs.com/andy_moog/home.html

Currently, home, personal, statistics and wantlist are at a point where I feel they are looking pretty decent, and wanted some feedback with respect to the fonts and sizes.

Ober, with regard to the lists, I found a way to make it validate under strict XHTML, and eliminate the use of line-height.  Under li, I added a margin-top of 12px.

I also tried to add a background colour to the top nav bar, but ran into some problems.  When I changed the background colour, it wouldnt cover the entire area between the vertical bars.  Im going to look at it again.

Thanks

[ahluka]

Do you listen to Foo Fighters? I didn't think that much of the 2nd disc of their latest album.

[Canuck]

>>Do you listen to Foo Fighters? I didn't think that much of the 2nd disc of their latest album.

I just started listening to them recently, because of their new album.  There are a few good songs on their second cd.  I like some of their older stuff as well.


After posting my update, I was looking at the site, and it just doesnt seem to have that pop/edge some sites have.  I know there isnt much to the site, and it is my first atttempt at using CSS/XHTML to design a site, but I may fool around with the colours when I get a chance, something a little lighter.  What do you think?

[Perspective]

>>What do you think?

I suggest selectable themes which change the colors to Andy Moog's team colors. (You can use the same site but load different css files). Blue, orange, and white for edmonton.. yellow and black for boston, etc...