review request

That's quite a long bit of explanation text on there. You took three paragraphs to get to the point of telling the audience what exactly you do. Get to the point. All of your pages seem to have this problem. Don't make people read more than they have to. Be more straightforward.

Overal the design is not bad. It will server your purpose just fine I think if you're stresting information. There are some smaller problems that could definintely be improved. Those letters poping up before the navbar, for example, are totally unlrelated to the rest of the site as far as design style goes (did you realize that it spells "WIRED"?). Your client feedback sections are using way too many colours - green header, purple text, red name and blue links. Stick to the blue, green and yellow you have for the rest of the colour scheme.

The pictures on the right side of each page seem to be rather cut-off from the rest of the page both in terms of layout and content. I would try to integrate things more there. The "TEST YOUR VEXILLOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE" thing seems particularly odd to me. What does "Vexillogical" mean anyway? I'll have to look it up.

OK first up, if your going to have the time on your site, make sure its the right time/date, your site says "Good Evening, it's Mon Dec 17 23:33:41" it would of been this yesterday for me, but now its Tuesday, 18th 17:50pm, the weather yesterday was really muggy, please dont make me relive it (same day/date problem on IE, NS 4.7 and NS 6)

Whats with the arrows in top right corner? one thing i have never been able to figure out is "go forward in history", if i've just come to your site that means there is no forward, but there is a back and back would be going off your site (not a good move),

I suppose for a web design site showing off your skills is one way to do it, but it really seems a case of "just because you can ..."

The images at the bottom shouldnt have the blue borders
Todays links - at first I thought it was the links above and thought, would you really change them daily, then clicked on it and the links appeared.

The mouseover pop ups on the image page is a bad idea, i waited a few minutes to see a picture but the mouse moved and had to reload, if it could load in a pop up - cool, if i have to wait around watching paint dry - bad.
you should have a warning at least that thats what happens, and for IE users that if they wave their mouse over fast enough can actually crash their browser.

your pages are also very slow loading, the editing page for example has a 34kb image on it

Way too slow! I'm on a adsl connection and it took forever to load, I hate to think how long it takes on a modem!!

Don't put the time there, I know what the time is and it isn't what you are telling me it is. I've only just got up but you are telling me it's evening! Ok I'll go back to bed

Not overly keen on the navigation, neither the actual buttons or the mouseover effects.

You have loads of blank space at the bottom of the page, why?

I think everything else has been said.

Good start

I do like the colors that you have used here.

Oh, it loaded really fast for me on a modem.

wow, you guys are rough! :eek:

a lot of these criticisms are ones I've heard before - so obviously, I'd prefer to avoid them, but not sure how, I guess

I'm not happy with the navbar - I used to have those buttons spread across the top in a frame - when I started using SSIs, I just moved 'em over - I'd like to improve on it, but I'm not much of a designer - I do realize those letters that appear onmouseover spell "W-I-R-E-D" - used to use that .swf as my "splash" page - when I changed that, someone suggested I try to use the letters somehow through the site - that lame setup is the best I could come up with

not sure how to include "tooltips" without leading people to think those are links to be clicked

I've had a few people say the date they get is wrong - here's the code I'm using:

the back and forward buttons clearly have the problem pointed out - but my experience is that it seems like only web designers get hung up by it - perhaps I should get rid of 'em, but... - as is the case with much of my site, I am, as someone indicated, "demonstrating my skills," but apparently not as well as I might

I use the blue borders around those thumbnails of my so-called "portfolio" cuz otherwise they'd "blend in" to the rest of the page (same bg color) - any alternatives?

Today's Links - same issue - trying to demonstrate, being awkward

I only recently adopted new code to display the images of flowers/sunsets - previously, I used a "focused" onclick pop-up window, but thought onmouseover would be more "sophisticated" - apparently needs "ironing" - I gotta say, I get a laugh out of crashing IE after repeatedly suffering that fate as a Netscape loyalist viewing pages clumsily written for IE

I think my host may have been screwed up yesterday - I hope the download times aren't all that bad - I admit, I tend to design my site for cable and up

all that blank space at the bottom is something I definitely want to fix, but haven't figured out how - I do it so the off-white bgcolor will extend to the bottom of the page at higher resolutions - I figure there's a way to "100%" it somehow, but can't seem to get around the SSI setup - weak coding skills

I like the HOME idea - always wanted that, but couldn't find a place fer it - I was tryin' to get away with having the logo as a link

the images on IMAGERY are another demonstration - in this case, how to deliver images online - in the page or in a popup

I've been very uncomfortable with the editing page's "client feedback" - I did get permission from a couple of people - a couple more ignored my request - no one said no - the truth is, I only asked four or five - felt very awkward - same reason I work for nothing all the time, I figure - I'm happy to help others, but can't seem to ask them to help me - on the other hand, these comments were published in public forums - were people being insincere when they thanked me? - am I "embarrassing" them? - I don't want to be arrogant about this, but I'm trying to get my business off the ground - when people publicly ask for help, I provide some, they thank me, am I wrong to try to take credit for it? - can't a site be a "client" to more than one developer? - I admit using the word "client" in this context is a reach, but I always say if they want to send me money, I won't turn it down - bottom line: if ya didn't wanna thank me, why'd ya do it? - my guess is I'll be lambasted for this (maybe asked to leave the forum for somehow "violating rules") - I'll probably just keep tryin' t' help people and no doubt get nowhere making money for myself while I'm accused of being "unprofessional" - the life of a socialist, what can I say?

the database page needs more - right now, I have a link to the search index of Cooking My Way, but that's kinda confusing and not much of a demo either - I use the BB cards as way to "demystify" dbs - just columns and rows

thank you all very much for taking the time to critique my site

I think I see part of the problem now - besides being admittedly presumptuous in using those quotes, I can't seem to figure out who designs the site and who owns it

on Home, that still would't offer a continually displayed link - has to go in the navbar, I guess

yes i agree that the blue border around the graphics at the bottom is bad. perhaps you could put a border around them that is the same blue you use as the top of the page or the green you use at the side of the page?

also i don't like the popup graphics for the menu. took me a couple trys to figure out that the popup graphics weren't an extension of the menu (a lot of sites have menus similiar to the start menu, you put your mouse on it and then it gives you options of where to go..).

i also agree that the forward/back buttons should be stripped. i'm assumming the average visitor to your site will know how to use the Back/Forward buttons of his/her web browser, so the extra graphics only slow down load times and take up window space.

the date is 3 hours fast for me (are you located EST?). i'd recommend taking off the seconds (eg, Tue Dec 18 14:06 instead of Tue Dec 18 14:06:45).

the extra space at the bottom definetly has to go, as has been mentioned. it shouldn't be that hard to get the offwhite background to extend to the bottom without adding all those extra paragraph tags. adding height=100% to the column table and the web sites table will probably take care of that problem.

the page loaded as fast as i'd expect it to (i have dsl), so perhaps it was a temporary problem that slowed it down for some people?

Quote: wow, you guys are rough!

Not rough, just honest and to the point sometimes, you're better off getting the hard facts than being lead up the wrong path.

The reason for your time being so messed up is your using PHP for it, php runs off your hosts server, not peoples local machines, I'd wish no one used teh time but if you must display it, use javascript as it runs of local machines not the servers machines, or you could find a host in New Zealand and everyone (except people living in NZ) could be in the future

It appears you are aware of most of whats been mentioned, maybe keep your design clean and simple and either mention your skils or have a demo page, like an ideas page.

your portfolio section needs a label at least to tell what they are.

I just contacted my host - "oh, sorry, we're having 'router problems' with Qwest" - great - plus my ISP is Cox Cable - as you may have heard, they're going through some kind of transfer cuz @home died or whatever - so EVERY page crawls on my machine, ESP. mine - yeah, Happy Holidays

Hi...

I guess everything already mentioned:)

But I believe if you made ur title bare bigger with a professionally designed logo, i guess it will display ur skill more than the current one.. I feel its too thin...

I think it will be nice if u used fewer colours..

I wish u the best:)

site layout is simpleandnice. Although I think you can improve on the buttons and fonts, I think thereis just the smallest bit of cutting corneres there.

Personally I feel if site is made then the entire site should feel as one in cluding the buttons. Small things such as buttons and fonts and rounded edges can bring a site togather and conform it to regualr aesthetics of design.

well just my 2 cents..so dont take it too hard.