New Design, would LOVE comments! :)

Hi Folks!

I was just wondering if you guys would like to critique my latest designs...


THIS IS MY LATEST DESIGN, IT'S FOR MY PORTFOLIO SITE (MY PERSONAL SITE)

Click for image



THIS IS A LINK TO MY LATEST LIVE SITE FOR A CLIENT.. IT'S STILL UNDER DEVELOPMENT, BUT IS ALREADY LIVE TO GAIN PARTNER ADVERTISING

http://www.discounts247.co.uk




I would LOVE some nice comments, please be descriptive!!



Thanks very much in advance!!! :D

Steven Woods (woodss) :D

Welcome to the group woodss.

I like both of them very well don't know if I would change anything on either....nice color usage on the snowboarding one...

only one thing....since it is like 60k we ask that you post a text link rather than posting the image directly into the page....(it makes it easier on the people still on dial-up...me included.)

Edited... :D :D :D

Thanks for your comments... I like positive replies, especially at 4am :D

haha, you are in the UK?

it is only 10 PM...here in CST

Yea, I'm in the UK for my sins, and only 3 hours until I have to get up for work.. yippee...:o :mad: :rolleyes:

Very nice work, Woodss. I'm a big fan of the pixel look. The colors on the portfolio site are very nice as well. I have no real gripes about the design of it at all. And hey, you have a link to www.k10k.net! How can you wrong?

A couple of things though... Is the site going to stretch to 100% of the browser window? Or is it going to stay that small? A layout like that would be very easy to stretch out, and I think that would be nice. I realize it's a mock-up though. It just looks lost over in the corner of a maximized browser window.

But like I said, top shelf work. I like your style a whole lot. (it's a lot like mine )

Thanks Deker..

The width... well, I was going to make it live at that size, but centred on the page.

The problem is, because it's a personal site, I do not really have that much information to put on each page, and I didn't want oit to look too bare.

However, It would be extremely easy to change the widths at a later date, to perhaps 780px, for 800x600 browsers, if the need arises. That is a very good point and I will consider carefulyl before I place it online.

Thanks for your comments :D

Just something to think about..... White space is a great design element. And I personally think it is put to better use inside the border of a site rather than outside. (though I've done exactly the opposite on several of my sites... oh well)

Say you make your content table column a percentage width so that it stretches as the browser window is enlarged, then include another table nested inside that one that is set to a specific width. I'd suggest around 4 inches wide on a typical screen. (don't know how many pixels that is...) That way when the browser window is maximized, the text isn't stretched so far that it makes it very difficult to read the text. Kind of like when you open a document in Notepad, but forget to turn on Word Wrap. Also, when the browser window is maximized, it will create more white space around your content, which is less distraction for the eye, and increases readability. Even if you have only a little content, if you put it in that second nested table I talked about, it wouldn't stretch out, so it would look like there was a lot more there. There would just be more whitespace, which isn't a bad thing.

Just my thoughts.

Yes, I agree with you. I think it's a good idea and my brain is buzzing wildly with ideas now.. I could actually put a second column with quick links to my portfolio (with screenshot thumbnails) down the right hand side (past the navigation menu), with summary information displayed below, in the same column.

It's all going to be database driven, which means it will use templates to display each record in the database for a given part of the site, which carries on to provide a consistent look for each section. I will also be developing an administration area so I can manage the content through the browser for every area of the site.

Thanks!

Yeah, that's a good way to fill up some space. And that's also one of the main things people will want to see when coming to your site, so it would be nice to have it constantly available. Since you are going to have it be database driven, you could just have a database table that holds all of your completed portfolio work, then pull them randomly from the database, so it is different on each page, and each time you load the page (depending on how many items you have in your portfolio, I suppose). I think that would keep people looking at the list each time a page is loaded, rather than looking at it once, then ignoring it for the rest of their visit because they have already seen it. Know what I mean?

What are you going to program the site in? PHP, ASP? A couple of my sites have admin panels like that, where I can add things to the database from the web without looking at any code or anything. Very handy! I would like to get better at that sort of thing though. I only use it for very basic things right now.