Review Request : www.conxiondesigns.com

Great start dk!

I am working on two of these right now myself and have found that the XHTML 1.1 with CSS for positioning is a wee bit limiting but it sure is rewarding IMO to actually make it work. I have stopped coding for NS4 as well but you can still make the site accessible which I am sure you are aware of.

IE 6 -- looks good. everything seems to display as it is suppossed to.
Mozilla & Opera 6.05 -- there is approx. a 50 px horizontal scroll.

In the header, the jagged rounded corners are taking away from the clean look of the rest of the design. I am thinking the the logo would look nicer if it were a wee bit smaller and make the header part less graphically complex. ??? I am not crazy about the rounded retangle part.

This Page Is Valid XHTML 1.1!

I agree with Sonia that the header part could be a little bit smaller and the graphics less jaggedy and I too am not overly struck with the roundness of the rectangle, too rounded IMO.

I like the general look and feel of the site except for the small navigation leading to lots of blank grey space at the left side.

I am totally in agreement. I think that the site looks good - but it does seem a little dull too me - like it needs a pic or something - I am just not sure what...

What kind of things would you suggest adding to spice it up? I mean it has no content and I will obviously try and work with that to make it better but in terms of the design what kind of pic would be useful for improving it. Also is the rounded rectangle you are refering to the white one? Would leaving it as a box help do you think? Guess its hard to please everyone since I was told to add it since it looked too "boxy like typical websites". Ahh oh well thanks guys I will see what I can do.
-dk

I think it'll look a lot better once you get some content in there. Lorem Ipsum paragraphs isn't as visually interesting as real content with headers and lists. You could put a screen shot on there highlighting a recent project.

I also think that you could do something more interesting with the navbar. The text could be a little larger, and maybe play with backgrounds on hover to add some more punch. One thing that could really add a lot of interest to this design is the addition of a contrasting colour. Shades of blue looks nice, but it could really pop with some bright orange accents.

I agree that the header is a little bit on the big side. I like the way you've used curves to break up the boxiness. What I'm not sure about is the way the white content area sits inside that partial dark blue border. The offset there isn't quite right. It should either be either symmetrical (even all the way around) or very offset (more space on the left) to provide contrast.

Opera 7
Win 2000
1152 x 864 with win taskbar on right side

I agree that the header is a tad too big but I find nothing wrong with it, I like the roundedness.

The content area also looks good but the navigation nees a bit more work, seems as if it has just been chucked on.

The navigation text is too small, you want people to be able to read it well not just to be able to read it. Since you already have a bit of that shadow thing going on why not add it to the right of the nav too? and also span the navbar all the way across to the left of the screen, with a bit more padding for the nav headings - maybe 5px; or 10px;?

Ok I am firstly adding in some orange as Megan suggested. I really like it with orange but I don't know if the header fits in really. Do you think they shape is ok or I should eliminate the curved sides and just make the words seems to be floating centered with no boundaries?

check it out on the page. it has been updated.

-dk

Wow! Just that little bit did wonders. Yes, I like it.

However, I still think it would look better if your logo was on a white background and use the gray, orange and blue colors in the lettering and little "e" thing. More flat and less bevel.

Great improvement though even if you leave it.

I agree WOW! Much better and I quite like the logo now, although I would just make it a tad smaller. Orange really brings it all to life

Hello
Does make a big differance doesnt it.
your obviousley putting a lot of work into the site and its paying off, nice clean design.
Good luck with site.

Ok thanks all. I may decide to shrink the logo a bit but I took off the gradient bar that was above it so I think that works. It fits fine on the screen in 800x600 and I think it would look odd if I made it sized for 640x480. I am now going to focus on the navigation and main area. Thanks for the input everyone its extremely helpful. I will post in this thread when I am done with the next round of revisions.
-dk

Logo graphic is overlapping the blue gradient bar underneath it just slightly (Opera 7, 1152x768 with taskbar on right side, Win. 2k pro) Also getting horizontal scrollbar in Mozilla.

Looks great though

Mozilla Firebird 0.6
800 x 600
Win XP

That’s a very, very attractive design. Impressive job, dk! I do want make an observation about the vast majority of XHTML 1.1 sites that claim conformance to the W3 specs (yours included), however. Sending an XHTML 1.1 document with a media type of text/html is not allowed; the W3C’s validator will not catch this error. You might want to refer the chart in section 3.5 of this page: http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/NOTE-xhtml-media-types-20020801/

I don’t want to hijack this thread, and the intricacies and implications of serving XHTML as anything other than text/html really merit their own discussion. If you or anyone else would like more info, please start a new thread (Webmaster’s Corner?).

Quote: If you or anyone else would like more info, please start a new thread (Webmaster’s Corner?).

Hi Justlurkin, please start a thread on this. I am very interested in hearing what you have to say. This is one of my favorite topics.

The site is to empty in my opinion, especially for a design site.

Did you read my original post?? That usually helps.
-dk

Ok I have opened a new threat for xhtml/css talk!

Go here to see it: http://www.webmaster-forums.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=21266

JustLurkin I was wondering if you could clarify about how to change my page away from the text/html as you stated. What can I do on my server, on my pages, or on my browser to change it?

Thanks for the comments on the site too! :)
-dk

Ok as I suspected there was going top maybe be problems but now that I have added the correct content-type for http header and meta tags it seems as though my css has not been loaded. Do I need to make it external, use CDATA, or use some sort of xml stylesheet?
-dk

Ok I made it external and it worked. I wonder if it was the comments or maybe it just is required to be that way. Huh. oh well I was going to make it external anyways. Thanks!
-dk

Wow! Renders great at 800 x 600 in the following: Netscape 6.23/7.02, IE 6, Mozilla 1.4A, Mozilla Firebird 0.6, and Opera 7.1 on Win XP. Response header confirms application/xhtml+xml and your mark-up is clean. Really nice to see a talented designer embrace the latest standards and execute them so well.

the way comments are meant to be done are like so:

or

Ok, you guys have lost me. What is the deal with the comments?

Its because anything inside tags is parsed as xml by the xml preprocessor so that means that anything like comments will cause the xml preprocessor to be confused! Anyways so the way to stop this is to warn the processor that the following code (between "" and "") is non-compliant to the laws in the dtd. Correct me if i am wrong but I think this is why.
-dk

Getting back to the orginal post to review this site....

1) I like to colours and fonts of the title/header, however it is wasting too much space at the top of the page. This is prime space, you should use it wisely.

2)I would suggest that you use drop down menus in the blue bar that is below the title area.

Not to be mean, but if you are asking for design and layout feedback I would really question if you are suited to provide these type of services. You should take a layout and design courses, or at least look at what other sites are doing. (look at the big firms sites!)

Wait hold on a minute. I wouldn't go there really. You can't say asking for a design review is poor showing of professionism. I was primarily asking because of the advanced nature of the coding. Also no matter what profession you are in you should be able to ask for others advice without being questioned. I gotten up to here by teaching myself so I figure I can keep learning on my own. A little help from people who themselves do what I am trying to learn will help me in the end and NOT hurt me.

Anyways on your suggestions. No I will not be using a dropdown menu since they are not fluid-layout compatible. The header I have shrunk down some already and will leave it the same size for now. I am not going to have an advertizements and it does leave space for news and things to show up.

First up, watch the use of the 'back' link at the bottom of the page, as if it's the first page of your site you dont want to send them back to the one they came from.

only real thing that sticks out is the arrows on the navigation, seems like it needs to either come off the edge a lil or the links closer to the arrows

Oh and I think you have a typo in your lorem ipsum

Yes I am exploring how to change the navigation now. Mozilla was the browser that did not display my arrows properly so I had to compromise with a poorer positioning of the links.

As for the "back" link I think I am going to use the breadcrumb navigation instead as it is clearer and fairly easy to implement.

Ya and about the typo. Couldnt find my ancient latin dictionary!
-dk

Stil needs content and the graphics do need to be attended to. but other then that.. Great Job.