New website design - criticism?

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Socoder -> Art and Sound -> New website design - criticism?
Thu, 29 Oct 2009, 11:12
HoboBen	Edit - website now live at tophatstuff.co.uk! Thanks very much to everyone for the feedback! Hi folks, I've been working on a new website design here. It's HTML 5 but even works on IE6 with a few extra lines of JavaScript. Any thoughts? Be brutal. Thanks! -=-=- blog \| work \| code \| more code
Thu, 29 Oct 2009, 11:19
JL235	I like it, I think the design is excellent. Three minor tweaks: 1) something about the logo bothers me. I can't put my fingure on it but it kinda looks too crisp. 2) you can only have three special items at the top, that doesn't sound that many too me. 3) The items at the top really distract from the main blog below. Maybe they could be made a little smaller, moved into the right side bar, or something similar. But overall I really like it.
Thu, 29 Oct 2009, 12:02
Jayenkai	Pretty much the same arguments. As well as the "Special" boxes blending into the main text, the sidebar's not really all that seperate either. It looks more like one large page. If it were in a magazine, it'd be a Review page with screenshot and a little "Hot/Not" feature thing over on the right, and not the News page with the Headlines, main news and side news.. (if you get what I mean!) Additionally, I didn't actually notice the Home\|Articles\|Code\|Downloads bar until I took a good look. Seems to blend into the background a wee bit too well. No arguments about the logo from me, though! And, to be fair, it's not bad at all. Decent easily readable font coughDDcough and a lovely black stripe. Good stuff. -=-=- ''Load, Next List!''
Thu, 29 Oct 2009, 23:23
HoboBen	Thanks very much for the feedback! Attempt #2 is here. I don't know what to do with the logo, so I'll probably have to leave it as it is. edit: I guess I could also tweak the sidebar to have something more relevant once you're actually reading an article as Jay suggested. -=-=- blog \| work \| code \| more code
Fri, 30 Oct 2009, 17:27
CodersRule	Side bar could be a "related items" algorithm?
Fri, 30 Oct 2009, 21:14
Stealth	The sidebar is fine in my opinion. It adds diversity to the content which leads to a more interesting page. -=-=- Quit posting and try Google.
Wed, 18 Nov 2009, 16:45
HoboBen	Thanks again for the feedback - I think I'm almost ready to release! I've uploaded a demo here if you would like to take a look. If you login (login link top right, username 'admin' password 'password') you can have a look round as an admin - as there's not much actual content otherwise! (write permissions have been turned off) Any last-minute advice or criticism? I'm pretty happy with the features so far, though I do want to add a ranged report to the analytics script to analyse usage over a period of time instead of just by day. -=-=- blog \| work \| code \| more code
Wed, 18 Nov 2009, 17:26
Scherererer	Saw your tweet, looking forward to the launch and seeing the final product! -=-=- YouTube Twitter Computer Science Series: Logic (pt1) (part 2) (part 3) 2's Complement Mathematics: Basic Differential Calculus
Wed, 18 Nov 2009, 17:48
Afr0	CSS looks funky in IE8: This happens on many pages -=-=- Afr0 Games Project Dollhouse on Github - Please fork!
Wed, 18 Nov 2009, 17:53
HoboBen	Cheers Scherererer! Thanks Afr0! I think I added a fix for IE 6 and this has messed up IE 8. Who knows what IE 7 looks like! I'll have to tweak this, but I think I know where the problem is (Internet explorer doesn't like the sidebar) -=-=- blog \| work \| code \| more code
Wed, 18 Nov 2009, 18:37
CodersRule	I happen to have IE7 on my comp, and just from the first look I can see that the sidebar goes down past the bottom of the page.
Wed, 18 Nov 2009, 18:42
HoboBen	Haha, it seems like every single version of Internet Explorer does something differently! Oh dear! Thanks CodersRule! -=-=- blog \| work \| code \| more code