new layout (Biological Honor Society)

They have: 17 posts

Joined: Oct 2006

first of all, i had an old name that i had more than just 3 posts on, but i forgot my PW and no longer have the email I signed up for it yet.

Anyway, I designed this site for a school club. Tell me what you think (no sub-pages yet)

http://www.echoschool.com/bbb/

and the colors aren't my favorite, but red and green are the official colors of the honor society.

Megan's picture

She has: 11,421 posts

Joined: Jun 1999

This looks very good. You've done a very good job with those colours. It would be hard to use red and green without making it look like Christmas but you've managed to pull it off.

I can't find much to say about this. The design is very well done. There's not much to pick on here actually. It would be nice to have a more noticeable affect on the navigation mouseovers. Like maybe changing the background colour to green.

I think the photo in the centre there could be better. I imagine it's hard to get good photos for this topic, but you could try to stage something in the lab with a similar theme but with the person (preferably people) looking at the camera instead of looking at the equipment.

Otherwise not much to say (until I look at the code but I'm not sure you want to hear about that!)

Do you remember the username or anything about that original acocunt? I can merge it with this one if you want.

They have: 17 posts

Joined: Oct 2006

Megan;209138 wrote: This looks very good. You've done a very good job with those colours. It would be hard to use red and green without making it look like Christmas but you've managed to pull it off.

I can't find much to say about this. The design is very well done. There's not much to pick on here actually. It would be nice to have a more noticeable affect on the navigation mouseovers. Like maybe changing the background colour to green.

I think the photo in the centre there could be better. I imagine it's hard to get good photos for this topic, but you could try to stage something in the lab with a similar theme but with the person (preferably people) looking at the camera instead of looking at the equipment.

Otherwise not much to say (until I look at the code but I'm not sure you want to hear about that!)

Do you remember the username or anything about that original account? I can merge it with this one if you want.

Thanks for the feedback. I agree that the mousover is pretty simple/plain. I did an alternate version where the buttons turned gray, but didn't like that as much. I might try green though, or some other mouseover.

I didn't take that photo, I just selected it from the few photos that had already been taken. I just picked it because the color of her shirt and the dissection trays kinda matched the colors scheme of the site. Laughing out loud

I'm sure you could look at the code and find many things. I really haven't progressed much farther than basic HTML as far as coding goes, so I'm sure there's some things that could be cleaned up. Smiling By all means tell me about it though! (it could be a learning experience)

The only thing I remember about my old account is the email I used. I could probably guess the user name because I'm sure it's something I use regularly, but there's really no need too. The only reason I mentioned it was because I didn't want to make it seem like I just came here and reviewed 3 sites real fast just to post one of my own. Sticking out tongue

pitbull82's picture

He has: 18 posts

Joined: Apr 2005

Well, generally it looks ok, but for me there's to much red colour. Also the green in the top doesn't look very nice with the whole red. In addition I don't like page's code - there are too many tables... Generally ok but if you do some improvements it will look much better Wink

They have: 17 posts

Joined: Oct 2006

i wasn't aware that there was a problem with tables? i don't know any other way to do it.

pitbull82's picture

He has: 18 posts

Joined: Apr 2005

You should rather use divs insted of tables. Get to know with web standards a bit...

They have: 17 posts

Joined: Oct 2006

what are the advantages of using divs over table? I did a google search and found this tutorial http://snook.ca/archives/html_and_css/getting_your_di/ but he/she says that it has trouble in some browsers. Also one of the comments says that it's better to not use a lot of divs! Confused

Busy's picture

He has: 6,151 posts

Joined: May 2001

Load time is really bad on dialup, that photo alone is 108.88 kb

I think the layout is to mumbled (or maybe jumbled), the top section is all square with a dark rounded section (about this photo blurb), it kind of flows but is very dark. the bottom section is white, it looks like it's another section stuck on, especially when the left hand side has the striped curve and the right side has the rounded box which kind of goes with the top section but the bottom of it fades and there is no other fading on the page.

Maybe change the top bit to two section instead of three, put the current top right section under the navigation and the photo (a 1/4 the size) with the text on white background to the side - a 20/80 or 30/70 type split.

The navigation could be done with just CSS using text as the actual wording (more keywords for search engines too), this will also help keep the load time down. You can still have the white stripe on the buttons but would suggest just have it visibal on the actual page they are on.
If you are going to use white for link colour dont have white text, use an off white for one or the other or underline so as not to make people hunt or miss links.

I'm not going to comment about the div vs tables apart from saving do a search on this forum for css layouts etc, have been several debates, err discussions about it Wink

They have: 17 posts

Joined: Oct 2006

oh alright. thanks for the nice and lengthy suggestions. Laughing out loud I know the navigation could be done w/ CSS, but I'm kinda lazy/busy so I don't think I'm going to change that.. atleast not yet (and i don't care about generating traffic for this site.. it's really just for people in BBB or people that might want to join). I agree that I should make the text an off white. I thought about taking down the quality of the picture a little to help reduce the file size, i know it's big and the picture is the largest kb. I also could slice up the top header more, which should make it load faster. I might try getting rid of the fade on the right side.. as for changing moving the different sections around, i'm not sure i have the time to try that out (atleast not anytime soon), probably a good idea though.

thanks again.

They have: 3 posts

Joined: Oct 2006

Hmmm the layout is nice. But I think maroon and green don't get along. Maybe you should use maroon and orange?

They have: 17 posts

Joined: Oct 2006

miketaylor;209315 wrote: Hmmm the layout is nice. But I think maroon and green don't get along. Maybe you should use maroon and orange?

As stated. I used those colors because they are the official colors. Yes, they suck.

demonhale's picture

He has: 3,278 posts

Joined: May 2005

Good Job... Although the colors are fixed, you worked on it and achieved a nice balance... This is a good example of how to make color combos work when the colors suck... like the challenge here Impossible Design Challenge.

Although the overall design feels a bit templatish, it works for this type of site, IMHO the glossy look and the glow feel on the reds makes the page looks a little bright... and the beta beta part could be reworked, it looks like a star wars Episode logo and looks like its being eaten by the bg... These are just my 2 cents. Good Work on the site!

They have: 87 posts

Joined: Aug 2006

The site looks good in design. No complaints regarding color management as its said that's compulsary. I think only the gome page is working. No other link is working. Just have a look at it. The font size of the text also looks apt. Overall, the site has a professional look.

They have: 11 posts

Joined: Oct 2006

I agree with some of the others about the photo. I'm sure it is hard to get a good photo, but it seems off for some reason

They have: 7 posts

Joined: Oct 2006

That's a good design but the logo and the letters below it should be bigger and readable. I liked the colors.

They have: 23 posts

Joined: Nov 2006

Very nice dude. looks very pro.

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