opinions please

The new sample looks nice, but the white on light blue isn't great
It's more exciting the new one is...
The original is good but boring... as you said

I like the blue one best. It looks more up to date. The lined background on the other one was sorta busy (no pun intended) and out of date looking but it didn't look bad.

Don't ya'll just love busys tutorials?

Thanks nike_guy_man and Thanks DM

I dont mind the purple/blue one but looks, how do you say, cheap? I have tried plain white with dotted line seperating links from content, didnt like it, tired techo look, way to distracting, tried heaps of colors (trying to keep away from blue/blue). had several that looked like phpnuke layouts.

*think I need a holiday ;)*

As for the tutorials, I am combining the html with the XHTML, with an added section on CSS, but also want to do another section the same, but different colors on PHP.

The purple look reminds me too much of msn/hotmail. :\

I like the blue one and I think the white on the the light blue is fine but not overly keen on the orange there. With this genre of site it is actually nice to have something plainer so you can concentrate on the content rather than being distracted by the graphics/layout IMO

yea...the new one is much better...btw, you spelled "colour" wrong on the old one... jus' playin

Thanks to everyone whos commented so far

so is the general censorship to go plainer or just another color?

Eskater05 - you know we spell colour that way, but its amazing how many people don't, I have a mention at the begining of the site but since people are coming from any page they dont see it and have had a couple of emails mentioning my spelling on things like colour, humour, litre, tyre ... so am going to redo all the words the American way.

Go with another colour. I think the style is just fine.

Quote: Eskater05 - you know we spell colour that way, but its amazing how many people don't, I have a mention at the begining of the site but since people are coming from any page they dont see it and have had a couple of emails mentioning my spelling on things like colour, humour, litre, tyre ... so am going to redo all the words the American way.

NOOOooo! It's really really relieving and refreshing to see "colour" again. :D

Why don't you just stick a link to the 'colour' notice at the bottom of every page or something?

Abhishek, the pages are already way to long. but its an option to consider

ok, have another layout color scheme for ya'll based on spam pop up

Since the navigation section doesnt go all the way down (could make it), I could wrap the text under it (make bottom part full width) or maybe make more pages with less text.

*or maybe get someone to proof read it and cut out all the rambles lol*

[edit]I forgot to change the link colors, so they are same as the first example at the moment[/edit]

Prefer the blue one myself. Don't give in the the americans spellings, they are wrong we are right!!

I definitely like the new sample one, with the blues. Some colour on the edges are a good addition, and I think that this is always a good way to visually separate content from navigation and logo areas. it gives people another visual cue about where they'e supposed to be looking.

I would maybe expand the dark blue margins on either side, especially at higher resolutions. Maybe you could put in a max-width on your table so it only expands to about 1000 pixels or something. I'm sure most of your target audience won't bue using resolutions higher than 1024, but at 1152 the text in the content area stretches a bit too much. I would make the border a little bit bigger for all resolutions anyway.

Oh, and a little more space in between the different sections of the navbar would be good too. Just enough to separate the different sections a little more.

One cool idea would be to use different colours for each section but it doesn't sound like you want the design to be that lively.

A good improvment over the original, I think.

Thanks again everyone

Megan, I can't find anyway to size the table depending on screen size other than javascript and it seems a lot of these pop ups killers affect some javascript. You think having the main table at about 95% would do the trick? (the nav section is a fixed width)

Anymore? would love some feedback from some of the new/not so new comers

Yeah, that would be fine. You can also use CSS to define the maximum width of the table for higher resolutions (max-width: ???). This only works in the latest browsers though (mozilla & Opera I think, I'm not sure about IE6).

IE5/w98/1024x
The blue/purple is ok. Megan's idea of increasing the the dark border is good for higher res and the text is hard to read at this res..in that it stretches across the screen to far with out break ups.
Also I think setting your p tag with a higher left margin would be good for the main body text -- bring it off the devider bar some.

I don't like the white on blue and I really don't like the gold.

I do like colors though, and i have found the some dark greens (you'll need to play around) look great on purpleish backgrounds, for one example, dark chocolatey ones do too. Or make the links dark and use the white for the hover..?

I also don't really like the added 'lines' in the nav, and think the text with underline (maybe) with hover over and under might look and feel cleaner.

Also, maybe a drop shadow or a border or something on the logo?

hth

dragonsjaw

Set the table width to 98%, any smaller and it starts to look to seperate.

[edit]the top section may not align with the main one on 800x600 browser with sidebar, a table lower down on the page is causing this, I haven't finished editing the pages content yet[/edit]

Changed the link colours, and lightened the top, side and bottom colors.

Considered having different colors per section but just coming up with one color has been bad enough

removed half the lines under the links (only half so as to compare), but didn't add more spacing, instead used a line to seperate, added more spacing on the lower half (from bad html downwards) - I personally like the lines.

better, worse? all input greatfully expected and considered

The link is
the link save you going back to the top.
And a reminder none of the links work, if you want the actual site the link is in my signture.

Now based on input from this thread http://www.webmaster-forums.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=18731 (feel free to add more) and my log files it's off to change all the content

I like Only thing I'm not sure about is the hover pinky colour, maybe the red would be better?

the "pinky" colour is kind of meant to be within the default link colour theme, will try red

any prefence to lined or unlined links on side (lines as in graphics not underline)

forgot to mention i increase the font size to 13px as well, not that it changes much lol

[edit]the red on hover is to bright and light red is hard to see [/edit]

I like the lines

Busy, do you know what I mean when I say that you should set a max-width on that table in your CSS? It'll only work in the newer browsers but at least it's something.

I don't like the hover colour either. I think the lines are an important way to separate the different sections of that menu although you should think more carefully about where there should be a line or not (i.e. between "Upload with Cute FTP and Upload with WS-FTP - those would both be in the same category I would think). Everything from there down has a line between each link, whereas the top section seems to be divided into categories more. I would also think that Colour Chart, Tags List, and Special Characters would be in a separate section since they're all more like reference lists than tutorials.

Thanks, I know what you mean by the max-width. figured my target audience would either have the latest software or the older, flipped a coin and went with the older. Will get it set in older first then add newer stuff that wont affect older browsers later.

I only removed the lines down to the "bad html" so it could be compared against no lines (see 5 posts back), but I hear what your saying about the sections, am going to rename, remove, replace and add some yet so the structure it stuff is what I am more interested in

It's just one little CSS call - won't take a lot to implement (okay, I'll stop harping on it!)

Well, I do like the hover color.
I like the lines to separate the sections..very nice, but not on each link.
The dark blue separator line between links and body is good, helps to define the area.
If you are gonna describe what is on each page, ie--the Adding Graphics, I would do it in a "title=" tag and maybe in the site map,
i also don't care for the bolder (visited) look of the Adding Graphics link.
But I do like the link colors and the hovers.

just my 2cents
hth
dragonsjaw