My graphics site

One thing that stood out to me as soon as I saw the site is the menu. I think that the dark gray text on the light gray background is a little difficult to read. I like how the menu looks on the rollover, though, where the area will become highlighted.

Hi TBL,

SOrry it took so long to get around to reviewing your site. I think a lot of people might have been avoiding it because there are alot of problems with it. It is going to be hard to review this without sounding too discouraging.

THe first big change you need to make here is to switch everything to a sans serif font. Serif fonts are good for printed documents but they look terrible on the screen. If you really like serif try something different like Georgia. That one usually looks pretty good. That alone would be a huge improvement in the look of this site.

The logo might be okay as a serif - they do look more traditional if you want to go for that sort of a look. Try using a different serif font though. Since the logo is a graphic you are free to experiment with different fonts and find something that communicates the feeling if your site.

THe next thing to do is try something a little different with the colour scheme. Blue and grey is a nice looking colour scheme but it's so boring! Take a risk, try something more original. THis reminds me of those pop idol shows when the judges tell someone their performance was "safe". That's what blue and grey is to online colour scheme - it's safe. You know it's going to look have decently good. But you could do so much more! I notice you've got a bit of orange text in the body there - try throwing something like that in with the blue.

I hope this helps, and good luck with your site! Learning web design can be a long and challenging process, but it's very rewarding in the end

WOW, first off, I love the content you have to offer, free stuff is always a winner with me, especially quality stuff like yours.

Second, did you mean to leave the rollover effect off on your polls button?

Third, It is a nice original color scheme, but like Megan said, it looks boring, but I think your header takes the focus off it, and then makes us focus on the important part "the content".

Fourth, I've always hated adds by google.
Fifth, What does TBL stand for?

I know it seems boring, like a cloudy day, but it has a calmness there, like a cloudy day with an opening with the blue sky above. I don't know what it is, but it's nice I think.

One thing you can experiment on and I'm sure you will get around to it, is the menu, should have the headers blue color and a rollover effect that is glow green or light glow blue.

I also like the way you have set the alt text on your menu to pop down instead of outwards, it's logical. Maybe though, you could move it out about half way of the menu? Because when someone mouse's down from the top, that menu actually blocks the path to the buttons below it, and you have to actually move your mouse slightly left, or all the way past it, then back up again. Don't know if that makes sense to you. But you have the right idea about the way I want to navigate. Unlike the start bar on a windows machine, when you move your mouse up to say settings, it pops out a menu to the right, you then move it to the right. I believe the way you have done it is great, because I have to move my wrist less. I actually have my computer set up this way, and don't use the start bar. I can mouse over say, docs on my quick access menu, and not even move my mouse anywhere but half a mil up down left or right to navigate through 300 document windows. Its pretty damn cool

Anyways, I think I took up the whole page.

Good luck with your site, I think its pretty great all round. I've added it to my list of photoshop links.

Visual 7/10
Content 10/10
Navigation 9/10

PS: Mind if I add it to my friends list of links on my site? I hve some friends that have photoshop sites and tutorial sites that this will fit in nicely.

OK, thanx for the lomg reviews .
What colours should I make the navigation

A lot has been said about the visual so I'll start with the code side.

Your code should start with the DOC tag, then the html tag.
Your code has a lot of errors and would not valid to XHTML Transitional if you tired. It does look like you have attempted to though with & instead of & but there are to many uppercase tags and elements not XHTML compatiable.
Your using a lot of CSS but your code still has font tags and older unused tags

There is a horziontal scroll bar at 800x600 caused by your table being set at 870, ideally should be 760 to avoid the scroll.
Your animated banner is not needed, by the time the animation has loaded people would be at the content, I doubt anyone would notice it (except for load time), is 82kb

Popunders are as bad as pop ups, you wont make any friends using them.

Pages like text effects (only one I went to) are to image heavy, the banner at 82kb and now all these bloated animations, is enough to drive a dialup user insane (well would go elsewhere). A better idea may be to display a smaller plain image and link it to the animation (pop up would be ok here), this way your page would load way faster, give the viewer only what they want to see.
loading that page 4 images timed out, dang that candy kane image is 190kb, plastic 135kb ... without the 4 loaded I worked it out to over 500kb, really you need to get it down to 50kb, 100kb max

I was testing out the pop unders, I though I got rid of them? Are they on the home page, they don't show up on either of my two computers, with norton disabled?

Edit: They should be gone now.

exactly what Busy said is true, I actually wanted to see those images on page 2 of the graphix, some were 2 megs in size...took me ages to see them on this slow 256/64 line, half timed out. I ended up closing that window and going to the rest of your site. Make them thumbnails for us poor guys that cant afford 100Mbit cable .

yeh, I know I should...

one thing that i noticed is that the it looks a little bit cluttered, i would suggest changing the font or font sizes for different sections
maybe you could make the font in the middle column smaller