Intermediate "style" critique

I don't see a logo... hmmm... the top table cell isn't showing up in NS 6.1 - you probably forgot to close a table tag or something in there. In IE the image won't come up for me.

This is a little on the boring side I have to say. Blue is a nice colour, everyone likes blue, but it is starting to become overused in web design, and I don't think it really represents what your site is about. I would try something with a more lively colour scheme. Maybe keep a white base and then use bright colours for accents and design elements. Pale blue isn't funny. Canary yellow is fun. Red is fun. Orange is fun.

It's certainly getting better! But I have to say that it is still very boring to the eye. Logo doesn't show for me either. Changing the colours like Megan suggests will be better but you need to give your site a unique look that will make it stand out from the rest as well as having good jokes, etc.

Carry on with one thread when you are making changes to the site, otherwise people get confused I'll close the other one so that people don't post on the other one and miss comments made here.

Thanks for the quick reply and pointing out the error on the logo, it was because it was pointing to a file on my hard disk ....... doh ..........

I did wonder about the bordom factor I think it looks quite classy, I probably need to get a happy medium between class and fun ! Give me 30 minutes and there will be a new version there.

Jokes are not classy - forget that idea and go with something more exciting.

Thanks Megan, my jokes are especially without class

There is a new version there which the logo should work on, I've also changed the colour scheme, so the concept is the same as before, other than the headings (menu, top ten jokes) are now in orange. I have only done the first page now, I know I'm lazy but I've been stung before !!!

It certainly is colourfull

I'd make the background plain white & try a different colour to the orange as I don't think it works on the yellow.

Can't make my mind up about the logo - certainly unique though!

I think at this juncture, colourful is better than boring !!! and I thought you'd like the logo ! I am working on getting another one, I've put the feelers out in the barter forum and had a couple of good replies, I may keep mine though, it growing on me (like fungus)

There is a new version, with white background and now the headings are in a darkish green, which seems to work and also it isn't a totally different colour group to other things on the page.

After reading one joke, I couldn't go on. That bright yellow and bright green hurt my eyes.

Please proofread or at least use a spellchecker: "Send this e-mil to eryone in ur addss boo,evn if the ent it to you".

And wouldn't it be vote *for*, not vote *on*? Or how about just "rate this joke"?

Thanks for the input on the colours, I'll have to have a good think about this, maybe they are a little extreme. I have now changed the text above voting to, "To see another joke, either rate this one or press Refresh".

As for the spelling, I don't get it ! All text, other than the menu and the text above rating is dynamic and can be submitted by people other than myself, so it can easily have typos but does anyone really care that a joke has typos ? and anyway, I don't think there are that many "annoying" typos in the jokes.

Yup, went a little bit too far in the other direction. Try to find a nice compromise. I have said this before and I'll say it again - never use the 6 basic brights, they almost never look good - maybe for link colours but that's about it:

#ff0000,#0000ff,#00ffff,#ffff00,#00ff00, and #ff00ff

Also go easy on amounts of bright colours - keep the white base, lose the green on the right side box and the yellow background to the logo. Try changing the yellow to something like this - #ffcc00

Back again !!!!

Thanks for the input Megan, I've changed the main box to be the colour you mentioned and worked the rest of the colours around that.

I have put another version in the usual place, hopefully this is a little more subtle but not too much !

Mike

Alright, you're getting close. Make the background of your main area white. Use the yellow I showed you for the left side nav. Then take the blue from the logo and use that for the header backgrounds (which are kind of a yucky murky yellow now) and try blue or red for the links.

The orange & yellow in the two boxes are too similar but not the same & don't look good. Change the nav one to the colour yellow Megan suggests and change the orange to something else.

I feel really bad about going through so many iterations to get to the right answer because of my lack of colour co-ordination, all I can say is that I really appreciate all the help everyone has given me.

There is a new version there. I have taken the ideas of Megan and included them in it, I have also put in the new logo, I'm not 100% happy with the logo (I think I want the main font slightly funkier) but it's quite a bit better than the last one !!!

I'll put the link in here again http://www.jokeornot.com/site_2/ (saves going back to the other page!!)

I actually like that banner better than the last one. What I'm not so sure about now is the rest! :eek:

The nav box seems very disjointed now and looks liked it's just been plonked on there and the boxes around the headings don't look good either. Perhaps have them as a colourful graphic in a different font. I think that perhaps if you settle on a colour scheme of say three colours and go for a layout that kind of frames the content, that would be better.

That logo looks really good. Now that you've got that you can use it for the rest of your colours A few things to do:

• make the background of the content area white, that's #ffffff
• make the left sidebar the same yellow as the smiley face in the logo
• Not sure about the green header backgrounds - try the blue from the logo... actually, what you should do is take the green and the blue in the logo and make them just a little bit brighter. Then they would coordinate with the yellow better.

You might want to clean up your code in there - it's a mess. Lots of nested font tags and stuff. What is YesSoftware CodeCharge?

Good to hear you think the logo is good, you probably wont be surprised to hear that I didn't do it

I've done those changes and I've also put a grey box around the menu and the main text, like the grey in the logo, this is trying to keep the design all together. I will probably change the headings (Menu and Top clean jokes) to be graphics, using styling cues from the logo but I will need to know what the font is from the designer before I can do this.

PS

Before someone says, I do know the grey in the background of the logo says "sample", I have asked the designer to include this in the final version in some way, probably not with the words sample

This is good! You're finally there. Way to go!

Just one thing - make the green header backgrounds the same green as the green smiley face in the logo.

Hoorah, yep looks good

The header was an oversight, I had done it but not FTPed it !!!!

I can't thank you enough for this, I really really appreciate all the input you have given me, now I just need to add lots more content and features !!!!

Also, it was asked in an earlier post what Codecharge was. It is a very clever tool which makes the writing of dynamic database driven sites much easier. It can generate in lots of languages (PHP, ASP, Perl, etc, etc) and is a really good R.A.D. tool but as you say, it does have a problem with doing too many tags ! I'm going to run the site through a compression tool before putting it live though.

Thanks again

Mike

The site wont load for me in IE or Netscape

In Netscape I get nothing, in IE I get an error:

Quote:
error 'ASP 0113'
Script timed out

/site_2/Default.asp

The maximum amount of time for a script to execute was exceeded. You can change this limit by specifying a new value for the property Server.ScriptTimeOut or by changing the value in the IIS administration tools.

could be congestion on the web with these worms/viruses going round