New Here, Please Take a Look

Nice job on the sites.

Now if anyone has anything bad to say about these, they need thier head examined

Hey thanks! Glad you like them. Hehe now the problem is getting more hits Thanks again

Illicit Designs

The splash page is okay, although I would like to see something a little more impressive as far as graphics go here. The I's in the logo look a bit fuzzy to me too.

On the main page you need to have a logo, that's the most striking thing. The other major problem is the arrangement of your boxes. Try playing with plain solid boxes on a plain background. If you were to do this with your current layout you'd notice a rather ackward arrangement of white space. Something needs to be done about that.

Slow down those page fade-in animations too, and make those scroller button on the front page look like arrows so people will know what they're supposed to do.

COI Designs

Those cogs just aren't doing it for me. Or maybe it's the combination of the cogs and the rest of the design. Hmmm... I'm trying to think of what you could do with those.... easiest solution would be to lose the 3D effect. That's a very striking style that's difficult to work with. Those 3D square thingies do look good against the checkered background. It kind of reminds me of CAD - you could do kind of a CAD inspired thing maybe. What you need to do here is pick a design style and really go with it - what you've got is kind of wish-washy as far as style goes.

Otherwise, the top logo area is much too big - it's taking up too much space above the fold and I don't see a navbar. Oh, there it is, at the bottom. Should be moved up to the top. I'm not keen on that grey-red gradient either.

Do I need my head examined or what?

Wow, lemme rub my eyes first

Thank you for that lengthly reply, I do appreciate it. You made some very good points. First off, for the Illicit site, the splash has to be redone I agree 100%. You said I should mess around with plain solid boxes on a plain background. Sorry I do not understand, maybe I'm reading it wrong. Could you explain? Your comments about the animation and arrow, I also agree.

Ok onto the next site, lol. Aw you don't like the cogs? Yes I feared that a 3d look would not work well for some people, guess I guessed right. Your comments about the size and nav are also helpful, I will take those into consideration.

Wow, I just want to say thank you. I've posted my sites in about a dozen forums and nobody has given me such a thorough reply. Thanks Megan and keep up the great work with the forum!

Kevin

Hello there!

On your first site: http://www.illicit-designs.net/main.html
I agree with Megan. I just have two more things to add. one - The graphic that's a background (the pointy arrow thing) is too dark on my screen. I have a hard time seeing stuff because of that.
two - there is not any text that tells you off the bat who you are and what you do. I know that you do design work - but I still think that you should tell visitors.

On your second site: http://www.coi-designs.com/main.html
The only thing that really stands out to me is the portfolio page. The boxes are confusing and it just us not working for me.

That's it. Good job on those sites - they are really good!

Brooke

BooooHoooooHooooo.....I'm taking my toys and going home. Can't compete with those. I like them both other than a few things that have already been mentioned.

COI
The boxes on the portfolio page were a bit confusing to me too.....not bad, just looked like something else should be there.
Top logo is taking up too much space. It looks good though...real clean. I like the colors.

ILLICIT
I like the sound effects. The page looks a bit crowded but it is way too cool.

Nice sites you have there.

I guess I need my head read, sorry to be the bearer of bad news

The first site, illicits splash page is very loud (bright), the text cant be made out in Netscape 4.7, viewing it in IE i see it says "Best viewed in Internet Explorer 4+ at 800 x 600 or higher screen resolution."
having to wait for a 229kb flash file to load, hope its worth it (normally i wouldnt wait, I'd just leave)
likes ok but the dancing white dots are annoying and the small black text is hard to read over parts of the graphics.
I have no idea what this site is about lol, the title mentions wallpapers, flash, web design but umm ok, you need a icon/banner for sure, i only went to the tutorials page, your links dont loo like links, the word flash does but thats not a link. I like the colors and design but could of been done as well without the flash, do you have a non flash version?

The coi site looks great, but you need to compress your graphics, especially the top banner takes a bit to load.
I am so glad I have IE to read things on sites lol, the "Welcome to COI Designs" bit in Netscape is unreadable, the background image is bleeding thru, also the cap C (done with css doesnt display as you intend either, its just a normal c. The alignment of text to the image on the right (cool graphic) is too close in Netscape, updates is also unreadable, the portofolio page has a lot of the bleed thru on your boxs, netscape doesnt like color-graphic-color, it always ends up color-graphic-graphic, use a 5x5 image of the color you want to use instead of the bgcolor if nested.
Again the links dont look like links, i thought there wasnt anything there yet, "view" usually means "look at" not "click to view"
the contact page is also at 100% in Netscape, netscape doesnt do form widths the same as IE

a little bit of fine tuning and you've got yourself a couple of great sites

Happy b day in 28 days btw

Quote: Originally posted by khu19
Thank you for that lengthly reply, I do appreciate it. You made some very good points. First off, for the Illicit site, the splash has to be redone I agree 100%. You said I should mess around with plain solid boxes on a plain background. Sorry I do not understand, maybe I'm reading it wrong. Could you explain?

Just as an exercise to really see how your layout is workiing. There's so much else going on there that it's difficult to see what the problem is, which I think is the arrangement of the boxes. So if you just made them plain solid boxes on a plain background it might be easier to see what you should do.

So if you did something like this:

See what I mean now? It's easier to see what the problem is without all the other stuff getting in teh way. You can see that that's not exactly a pleasing arrangement. Lots of weird sections of white space, it doesn't align will, the spacing isn't consistent etc. So if you did that in flash start moving those boxes around and resizing them it would be easier to come up with a better layout without having to mess around with everything else that's going on in your design.

Here is one arrangement I came up with - there are others that could work though:

Phew wow, this IS a good forum. First off, thanks everyone for their helpful replies, and thank you Megan for clarifying (I see it now ). The portfolio page seems to be irking people. Sadly I can't directly change this (the site is a two man project, that was the page he made). But I will bring it up with him, I've also stated the problem to him. Ok the main thing that stuck out to me were the MANY issues with Netscape Seems like I need to do some major reviewing in Netscape. The problem is that I don't have 4.7, can someone direct me to a place to get this version? If its still available that is.

Did the flash page really load 229 kb? It's actually just loading 80kb. Ok, but yes I do find your comments helpful( especially the Netscape ones! Thanks!) and I'll get working over this weekend. Thanks again everyone, you guys are great.

-Kevin

Oh and thanks for wishing me happy birthday

you can get older versions of Netscape here http://home.netscape.com/download/archive.html

thanks