Review Request: www.frobba.com

Hey, Geoff! Thanks for reviewing some other sites.

I think the biggest problem with this is lack of balance in terms of colour. The header area is so pale and low contrast and yet the rest of the design is much darker. That should be evened out somehow. ALso put some padding in your table cells so things aren't butitng up against the edge like that. It will be easier to read that way.

Agree with Megan, your header doesn't match with your colour, the right side where your archives are stored are crammed in, some even space between the words would help, and the words need to have some space between the edge and the first letter of your words.

The biggest thing for me was the text being right against the edge of the table cell - need to padd that out a bit.

everyone see's colours working in different ways - I do think theres a bit of a contrast in colours, but It doesnt put me off the site.

After almost a year, and another revision to my layout, I'd like to see what everyone thinks of my site now.

I read the procedures and this seemed like the proper way to ask for a re-review.

Thanks!

Thanks for reading the instructions

I'd have to say the same as to what Megan said last year (but now the colours are opposite), still need some padding in the cells too.
The main image IMO is too big, at 800x600 it kind of appears as a 404 page.
Is a good idea to use width and height tags in all your images as it can (does) make the page load very jumpy on dialup.

It's got an arty look/feel to it, maybe not the right way, whos knows. At the end of the day it's your personal site so you can make the rules as you go

You should go to XHTML, not much of a step up, I had a quick look at your code, you wouldn't have to change much, just into and /> on your image tags

Padding in the cells has always seemed like a good idea that I've enever followed through on.

Good call on setting image sizes. Often a forgotten task on my part.

I've yet to try the layout on anything smaller than 1024x768. (I know, I know, poor practice), so I'll try that out and see what I can do. I am partial to the way it looks in higher res's though.

I've been coding for... ever (?) and I've stuck with standard HTML for layout. What are the advantages of XHTML over HTML 4.01? I tend to stick to my guns and not venture out into the new coding standards (again, poor practice).

Thanks for the tips... anything else? How about navigation? That's usually a weakpoint for me. How'd I fare this time?

IMO, the single biggest thing is that the text is hard to read. There's not enough contrast with the background.

Other than the somewhat monotone color scheme, the only other thing that really bothered me was that massively huge header graphic. Massive in terms of height. I would advise not making it nearly as tall. Too much of the actual content is forced off the bottom of the page, making it less likely that people will stick around to read it.

Oh, and I'm using 1024x768 also.

I agree with Tim. That header is totally out of proportion, especially since it isn't all that impressive. If you did some more with it, maybe in a sort of grunge style you might be able to justify keeping it big.

I also agree about the text - it's really important to make reading your site comfortable for viewers - this means that text is a reasonable size and has good contrast on the background.

Another thing is that in a lot of places the text is cramped up too much against itself and agaginst the table edges. Particularly the blog header with the title and timestamp (as Busy mentioned)

I like the style of the site, the colours make it very sophisticated and the site is memorable and different to all those light blue sites you get, yawn.

However the text colour could contrast more with the background colour, it's a little hard to read.

Wow, thanks for all the critiquing. I tried out some of the suggestions and I actually think the changes I made were for the better. I shrank the height of the ehader graphic a tad and I darkened the body text by 2 shades, which makes the text stand out a lot more. And just for kicks, I used the title attribute for the menu links to offer more clarification of each section, what with my cryptic titles and all. Oh, and I added a few pixels of padding to the blog headings... defintiely a noticeable improvement, even with just 3 pixels shifting the text.

I appreciate the constructive crticisim. Lemme know what you guys think. I think I've tweaked it to where I'm satisifed, but you never know. Sometimes you need someone outside the project to point out minor details.

congrats on breaking out of your shell

the changes are better though could be improved still.
some text is stil very tiny (stuff under title in main section)
Also now the right column is very long while the content is very short, maybe put the 'scene change' under the title image?
Although the text and background are better it is very hard going from your site to a white background site.

Give the XHTML a shot, what you got to loose? heaps to gain though, big impressive 'valid Xhtml label for your site

That's much better. The graphic is still just a hair too tall for my tastes, but much better.

I would suggest changing the text to a slightly darker grey, though. There's still not much contrast with the background. Makes it hard to read.

It's very... brown...

I think you did a good job deciding on a color scheme, but when I look at this site I really don't want to stay there. The layout itself is nice.

I think it know what it is... your background... what I would do, is make it a very very light tint of the current color, then use that current color to around the center of the page. So to the left and the right of that center block is the darker color. It will make the text easier to read and force it to stand out more, grabbing your attention.