YoungDevelopers

I have to say it looks very nice.. I like the color scheme and I like the feel of the site.

2 things I think are

1. Its lacking in real content. However I can see its not finished yet..

2. Have a think about the different screen resolutions. O.K not many people browse at less than 15 ", but at the moment I'm on a laptop with a smallish screen and it scrolls horizontally. There is nothing I hate more than a horizontal scroll bar. It oftens will influence me to leave a site unless the content is really good.

Just something to think about....

well done...

Well, we figured that most people will have a resolution of 600x800 or higher. We designed the site for that resolution and higher. I guess we never thought about labtops b/c I'm sure a good amount of people use 640x480, then. We'll see what we can do to make it 640x480 compatible.

P.S.- I agree that horizontol screoll bars are not very professional.

I think the color scheme is pretty good overall. The top and left are bold and bright - great! But the right side feels too light compared to the rest. Maybe use some of the same colors over on the right.

I see two things right now that I think need some work:

The first are the stripes in the blue boxes on the left - they make the text a little hard to read.

The second is the navigation. At first glance I thought that the nav on the right was the main set. But it's really in the blue box on the left. Somehow that main nav needs to stand out more.

Good job!

Brooke

1) The main content area and right navigation bar look really cool. Good job on those parts.

2) It's hard to see the menu overtop of the striped menu bar. Very hard. I'd make that area a solid blue instead. I think that would look better, and also make the menu easier to read. Also, I'd maybe add bullets next to each link on the navigation.

3) It just hit me that the main navigation is up on the top right with the drop down menu. I think you should put that whole menu on the left side, where the current 'compact' version is. It would make it a lot easier for people to find.

I agree that the colors used on the left and top would look better carried over to the right hand side as well.

Also, I think the fonts on the text area should be somewhat larger with heavier headers.

Other than that and adding content, you're looking pretty good.

We have changed our site since the first response and will continue to do so. We are trying to find a good solid color (perhaps blue) for the left navigation menu

We will also be making the text bigger. We have a dHTML scroller int he workings for the news stuff.

Also, we are looking for a good color/style for links, regular and onmouseover, any suggestions?

Thanx for all your comments.

I personally like the mousovers you are using now.

I have to say, now that Justin pointed out the navigation on the top right, I am really confused. That navigation doesn't match the navigation on the left - completely. Parts do and parts don't. I think that the nav has to be really clear and obvious. At this point I don't feel it is.

Brooke

I must agree i like to color to, but i can not read the menu to well with the lines behind overall i must say i like the design.

- Rob

YOu guys like that colour scheme???? Are you seeing what I'm seeing? Bright purple and pale green? I think that it's usually a bad idea to try to match a bright or dark shade of one colour with a pale shade of another colour. Clash city! Either keep the purple or the pastel green and blue - not both. Count the number of colours you are using. I see about 7 (that bright green hover is particularly bad). Usually it's a good idea to keep the number of colours down to three or four. Choose two or three main colours for your design, add white. It may be okay to use another colour in small amounts just to highight a few things but that's it.

I like the layout you have inside the white content area. The little icons look very professional I think but they could be a tad bit bigger. That part looks nice but the sleek professional look doesn't carry over into the header and side nav areas.

The navigation is also a problem. There is way too much in that drop down menu on the right and it doesn't match up with the headings on the left.

The design looks pretty cool -- although the colors kinda do clash, it's a really original color scheme that most kids and teens would enjoy.

My suggestions are to change the bits of Verdana font text in the main areas to Arial/Helvetica to keep it uniform with the rest of the fonts in the side menus and I would also like to suggest making the topic icons larger than their current miniature size.

Good job so far.

As one of the resident old farts around here I won't comment on the color scheme per se.

I do have a couple of comments though.

Your logo is rounded at the left end and has a nice swoop on the right, yet the purple area is squared off. You might consider rounding the corners of the purple area (inside edges only) for consistency. You might even consider replicating the swoop on the upper purple area.

The scan lines in the left blue navigation boxes make the text hard to read, you might want to fix that. The border around the blue boxes seems heavy, slimming those down wouldn't hurt.

Hovers. . . hmmmm. . . three different effects seems a tad busy to me. I agree with Megan about the lime green hover. Use the underline for that. If you want to use the italic for the "read more" links bump your font up a size (maybe 2) so the text leans instead of leans and shrinks.

I think anything else I noticed has already been covered. With some polish it'll be a nice site.