Website interface rough sketch

okay, this if a REALLY rough thing I'm playing around with to try a new interface for www.saffasartworks.com

I know the feathering is all jacked up, it's really rough right now, I'm just trying to get the dimensions of the interface right before I do a nice rendition. What do you think about the colors and the placement of the buttons and things? Do you think it has potential if I keep working on it? I'm thinking if I can get a decent beveling on the rounded edges I might have something. Please, I'm having a hard time with this and any comments are appreciated.

Here's the image:

New Interface

Thanks

I like the interface as a whole... its original, and has a real nice feel to it....

couple things though....
I don't see how it could stretch horizontal or vertical... there isn't a repeating pattern ANYWHERE.
Is it gonna be a fixed size?

and

I don't care for the buttons being different colors...the top button seems to be what draws my eye....
is it the blue? is it just me?

heck I don't know...

thanks for your reply, tornupinside. One thing you said I didn't understand:

"I don't see how it could stretch horizontal or vertical... there isn't a repeating pattern ANYWHERE. Is it gonna be a fixed size?"

I don't know what you mean by stretch horizontal or vertical?

I agree about the buttons, although it's not necessarily a bad thing for your eye to be drawn to the top one, because that's the most important. I felt having same color printing on the buttons looked boring. Maybe I could use the colors for the rollovers, and have the regular buttons black text? What do you think?

Here's another rough one I had started to work on.

New Interface 3

What do you like/not like compared to the first one?

okay, here's another version I just worked on. How does it look?

I think the buttons stick out too much on this one. What do you think?

New Interface 4

I like your new interface alot betta than the first

I agree about the buttons, although it's not necessarily a bad thing for your eye to be drawn to the top one, because that's the most important.

<.sarcasm> I don't think it's good to have your eye drawn to any one element on the page. "Maybe it's just me, but it gets annoying for my eyes to constantly return to that bright neon yellow-green" button. Do you have to have all your links on the top left all the time? Isn't that just an invitation to browse the site? Overall I think the nav is TOO FREAKING BIG. It's very bright and intrusive and not "simple". <./sarcasm>

You should critique your own site just like you critique other's. And I agree with Charm, it looks like something right out of 1995. It looks exactly like something my dad would make actually. (www.carsmodelcargallery.com) I don't see why you have glowing text and buttons. Is it suppose to look like marble, or something else? Because it looks weird to have that glow on a marble texture. Also the colors you used for the text are incredibly boring. Just primary colors. Looks like crayons. I would suggest making the text gold or something that would fit in with the feel of the site. I would make a site like this look very elegant, and use script fonts, etc. But that's just me, I'm sure.

And what Torn meant was that when you maximize the browser window, the site can not 'grow' with it like say, www.alistapart.com So it's just stuck at that one size, and then if you have your resolution set to 1024 x 768 like I do, and maximize the window, then the site will stay the same size, and be surrounded by a bunch of white space, or 'null' space, as some like to call it. And from what I hear, that is really bad and distracting to the eye.

Just my thoughts.

(Now version 2.0 with clickable links!)

Thanks for your response deker.

Although, I didn't find your sarcasm very sarcastic because comparing my little moderately colored button to that huge green thing on that one page is not even a comparison. I don't use different critique for my own site, and I certainly don't compare my site to someone else's.

The '95 look you mention was about a different site. Do you think this new interface I'm working on still looks '95? Why does it look that way? Some suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks for your suggestion about the text color. I will try that. I don't want to use a delicate script font because I don't want the page to look feminine. The artist likes the font I chose a lot, so I only have to adjust the colors and the placing of it.

It's not really supposed to look like marble. It's an overlaid image of one of his statues. I added a bevel to give it depth. I added a slight glow to the logo to make it stand out, otherwise it gets lost in the dark background. What else could I do beside use a little glow?

About maximizing, how do you make a site so that it can grow at higher resolution? I'm at 1024, so I know how it looks, but I want 800 viewers to see the whole thing without having to scroll. In the past I've just used a background texture so that there won't be white space but texture. How would you make it so that it grows at higher resolution? I was not able to view alistapart.com's site either.

Thanks a lot for your critique. Although I sense some bitterness in your reply, deker, probably having to do with something in another thread. Please don't take things personal. I like critique, but bitter negative feedback without helpful suggestions I don't like. And if I read your last post wrong, I apologize as well, but it seems as if you are upset at me. Please, let's not let things get personal here and stick to the artwork.

The first thing that makes your site look '95 is that sandy grey background you use. I personally don't like background images at all 95% of the time. (patterned backgrounds that tile across the whole page I mean... I also realize your new design doesn't have that) The squareness of the whole navbar thing... the seperate buttons. Looks kinda like you went to a stock image site and took some canned buttons from there.

I don't really think a script font looks feminine. You could make any font look either way. Depends on the way you handle it.

I don't really know what to do about the glow. Not much else you can do with that layout I suppose. Unless you made brighter text that contrasted over the dark background. Or you could cut out the text. That glow just looks amateur and "filter-fied".

To make a site grow, you need to have an image that can be stretch across the screen. A simple pattern that can tile horizontally. Kinda like this...

www.webteksites.com/CSC

It fills the screen no matter what size it is.

Why couldn't you view alistapart? Are you using Netscape or something? That site doesn't support Netscape, because Netscape doesn't support standards at all, and makes everything look like crap.

Deker, he couldn't see it because you added a period at the end of the link. He didn't look to see that.

No, actually it's because IE has been acting funky for me lately, it will say it can't view a page until I refresh a few times. I am able to view it now.

Although I find alistapart.com to be incredibly boring, I understand how the expanding thing works now. But how is it done? With solid colors it's easier to let it fill in when it expands, but in my case I have a picture in the interface. So how would I set it to expand at larger resolutions? I don't think it's possible, and I can't limit myself to a simple color for this site.

About the buttons, the originals were carefully picked from a stock image source, but I changed them completely for this site. I changed the whole texture and coloring of the whole thing, the only thing the same about the buttons is their size. Nonetheless, I am finding that these buttons aren't fitting very well with this new interface.

I have a question for you. What do you think of this site: Petra Fine Art

Does it look '95 to you too? It's not my site, but I really like it, as does the artist who's site I'm working on now. It uses a patterned background and doesn't have the "cutting-edge" look to it. But I'm thinking the cutting-edge look is not what I want at all for this site, I'm going for the style of the site I just mentioned. That may not be your style preference, but for this it's what I'm going for and maybe that has to do with the differing opinion of it.

Thanks a lot for your comments and suggestions. It gives me something to work on. Does anyone else have any comments? I would really appreciate it. Thanks.