Adventure Game Studio

Creative Production => Critics' Lounge => Topic started by: LGM on Tue 06/01/2004 20:30:05

Title: New Website Design
Post by: LGM on Tue 06/01/2004 20:30:05
Dats right, LGM has recreated his website again.. This time it's even better.. Any comments or Crit welcome.. And I need some content to spiff it up so I need ideas as to up the interactivity and stuff..

The LilGryphMaster Gallery (http://www.lilgryphmaster.tk)
Title: Re:New Website Design
Post by: Inkoddi on Tue 06/01/2004 20:31:18
I would comment it if I could see it...  it just times out
Title: Re:New Website Design
Post by: on Tue 06/01/2004 21:15:31
Gah.. Stupid .tk..

Try this:

http://www.fbc-bettendorf.com/lgm (http://www.fbc-bettendorf.com/lgm)
Title: Re:New Website Design
Post by: Dorcan on Tue 06/01/2004 21:21:10
Ah, good improvement, everything is structured now !  ;D
but... the colors...and font... Argh  :o
But at last it's friendlier.

Interesting stuff
Title: Re:New Website Design
Post by: on Tue 06/01/2004 21:27:33
What exactly is it about the colors and font? Do they hurt your eyes? Too Cliche?
Title: Re:New Website Design
Post by: Inkoddi on Tue 06/01/2004 21:30:58
Any color except white on dark grey backround = ugly

Change the background color to something nicer please :)
Title: Re:New Website Design
Post by: LGM on Tue 06/01/2004 22:23:31
Okay.... What color do you suggest?
Title: Re:New Website Design
Post by: Inkoddi on Tue 06/01/2004 22:27:33
Black or dark blue
Title: Re:New Website Design
Post by: LGM on Tue 06/01/2004 23:13:00
Well.. I don't want to use black again.. And I didn't find a blue I liked.. But I did find a dark green that I liked.. I hope this looks better now.

Can I get comments on some content now? I like the font as it is, and I'm not changing the color again cause it takes too long.
Title: Re:New Website Design
Post by: Dorcan on Tue 06/01/2004 23:41:14
mmmh, you forgot "mailto:..." in the link for your email, at the bottom of each page :P. It will not work if somebody click on it.

If your website had been in PHP, you wouldn't have any problems with changing colors of every page!
Anyway, I'll shut up now about colors... at last the green text merge perfectly with the background color.

I'm going to read some of your stories, 'cause I've heard you write them very well, but not this night !

Good job
Title: Re:New Website Design
Post by: Esseb on Wed 07/01/2004 01:07:45
Use colours for the links. The default link colours don't fit, especially not for the e-mail link at the bottom which is unreadable on the dark green. Use css to change the link colours without much hassle, you can stuff the font info in there also so you don't have to have font face="Courier New" all over the source as you do now. The actual design isn't all that bad but the source makes me cringe. You should read up a bit more on css since you're using it all wrong, there's no need to use the font tag anywhere with it for instance.
Title: Re:New Website Design
Post by: Inkoddi on Wed 07/01/2004 01:08:54
hmm.. you forgot the .html at the end of the page 2 link in the voice recordings section
Title: Re:New Website Design
Post by: MrColossal on Wed 07/01/2004 01:21:52
hey, you've got a lot of redundant tags in there by the way, is this written with a WYSIWYG editor?

if yes then look into how it handles class and style and maybe you can clean some of it up, like at the moment you define each link with a redundant class="style5" when you can set the table column to equal that style instead

also there are a few little problems that should be dealt with now cause they may trip you up:

     <li class="style5"><a href="links.htm"><font face="Courier New">L</font></a><font face="Courier New"><a href="links.htm">inks</a></font></li>

that's the code for your links, something funny happened and it set the L in Links and then the inks in Links seperatly.

also may i suggest naming your styles better, style1 and such is confusing so maybe go with linkstyle or something for the links and only use that for the links on the left hand side

unless i'm mistaken all you have to do is define a new style with all the attributes you want like the colour the font and the font size and then do this:

<head>
.linkstyle {
   font-family: "Courier New", Courier, mono;
   color: #009900;
   font-size: 24px;
}
</head>

<td width="155" height="403" align="left" valign="middle" class="linkstyle">

that changes that coloumn to that style so now any text in that column will always look the same.

i did a little edit [hehe] and only used 2 styles linkstyle and newsstyle, linkstyle handles the link bar and newsstyle handles all the text in the other column. i also created 2 tables, 1 for the top title and 1 for the bottom disclaimer, as you had it before there were just a bunch of spaces to align everything and that wasn't necessary.

i'm uploading 2, 1 with your original colours and another with my edited colours. there are some font issues but i'm not gonna spend forever making the fonts match when i think this will be enough to get you in the right direction

http://sylpher.com/kafka/junk/lgm1.htm     my little edit

http://sylpher.com/kafka/junk/lgm2.htm     your original site

eric
Title: Re:New Website Design
Post by: LGM on Wed 07/01/2004 01:26:50
I just use Frontpage 2003, which probably isn't the best choice eh?

It's easiest for me, and I know nothing about CSS.  Editing HTML was just too cwazy for me, so I just decided to do it the hard way.. I probably should've used stylesheets in the first place.. gah.

I dunno, I'll optimize it later.. I think there's a program that cleans all the redundencies and frontpage crap out've HTML..

I got so used to Frontpage that, when I tried Dreamweaver, I got so confused I just went back to Frontpage cause I knew where ecerything was.
Title: Re:New Website Design
Post by: MrColossal on Wed 07/01/2004 01:28:27
and my edit is ugly, pay no attention to it

just suggesting bright happy colours
Title: Re:New Website Design
Post by: on Wed 07/01/2004 14:02:02
Well. I spent a good part of my night optimizing the HTML by hand.. Surprising how much I remember and what I learned just looking at the code. But I've reduced most of them down by 1 kb and their much cleaner and easier to read. I still have alot to do.. But I should be done whithin an hour after I get home.

Thanks for your support :)
Title: Re:New Website Design
Post by: Pessi on Wed 07/01/2004 21:37:29
For the color theme, how about something like this? (http://runestone.adventuredevelopers.com/staff/Pessi/TrashCan/LGM_WebsiteColorTheme.gif)

It's a bit more subtle than Mr. Eric's one but it's along the same lines - simplified. Just trying to retain some of the original colors. Anyway, bright orange and dark green don't go well together when there's equally much of both, in my opinion. It creates kind of a restless atmosphere for me at least. As green is only for the background I changed it to white. I think it might suit a bit better.

Also, you could use subtle shapes here and there. Like I changed the menu bar a bit with simple shapes. Probably not that hard to just code. Or I don't know. I'm not an HTML guru either. :)

I hope you won't mind my changes. Just trying to help. The new site (your version :)) is way better than the last, black one, in my opinion!
Title: Re:New Website Design
Post by: LGM on Thu 08/01/2004 05:03:45
Thanks for all the feedback..

I've optimized the code alot. Each page has dropped about 1 kb or more.

They all look nicer and cleaner.. And the code is not full of junk I don't need. Although, there are some repetitions in there, but I found it easier to just keep them in and keep some sort of uniform... I dunno, it's much better.

Any other comments or crit or welcome (As long as they don't pertain to colors!!)

I'll find ways to implement more interactivity and such..

Again, thanks
Title: Re:New Website Design
Post by: LGM on Tue 20/04/2004 04:30:27
I've done more code optomizing.. Please feel free to look at the code, IMO, it looks tons better and is much more organized.

The site design itself has changed too as far as fonts and sizes and content. Please take a look and give some feedback. Just keep in mind I want everything to be simple as possible.

Thanks in advance!

http://www.fbc-bettendorf.com/lgm
Title: Re:New Website Design
Post by: Evil on Wed 21/04/2004 02:27:34
"Reply so it gets bumped, damnit" - LGM
Title: Re:New Website Design
Post by: LGM on Wed 21/04/2004 02:34:17
Maybe I should be more clear on what I would like commented on.

Mainly, I would like the code to be commented on, as it was what was the biggest beef with everyone that replied earlier.. So Esseb, Eric, what do you think?

I also changed the fonts, cause people had problems with courier.. So now it should be nicer on the eyes.

Colors are the same. I did change some asthetics with the about page and art and photo pages so the table  and content stays the same size between every page.

Also, if you want to comment on the content within it, that would be awesome.

I crave attention, damnit! Can't you see how selfish and impaitent I am!
Title: Re:New Website Design
Post by: Darth Mandarb on Wed 21/04/2004 08:03:19
The bright yellow is a little hard on my eyes, but the colors do work well together.

The font is easier to read (from what I remember of the older version)

The navigation is easy to use, though it does disappear on some third tier pages (like the review of El Miriachi for example)

It's plain and it's simple ... which I like!

I see that the fbc-bettendorf main page is under construction.  Are you redoing it as well? ;)
Title: Re:New Website Design
Post by: on Wed 21/04/2004 13:57:53
Thanks for the reply.

As far as the navigation goes, the idea was to keep the navigation off of the "third tier" pages. It kind'of brings all the attention to the content on the main area.. I dunno.. But I provide a back button at least.

And yes, I'm working on the fbc-bettendorf site :-p