New Website Design

[Darth Mandarb]

I have come up with a new design.  I just stopped liking the old one!

Details:
* I have tested this in Firefox and IE and that's it.
* I know the "fun factoid" and "on this day" are the same as they were last time. (they aren't hooked into the database just yet)
* The "fun factoid" and "on this day" will be randomly selected bits of info every time you visit the front page (the 'on this day' might come up blank sometimes if nothing happened on that day!)
* The content section (the white area in the middle) will scroll (only in that area) if the content grows longer than that area visible.
* The links aren't active yet

What I need to know:
* I need to know if anybody gets any errors of anykind!
* what do you think?
* what could I improve?

Oh yeah ... the link:
twindesign - v2.0

Thanks guys!

EDIT - Also, ignore the crappy content itself.  I was just filling in the spaces!  I know it makes little sense and doesn't flow well!

I decided to do an over-haul to my company website.  Six months later this is the result ...

the new twindesign website

There's no content in there yet (well ... some) I'm more or less just wondering what people thought about the design/layout and if the navigation is easy to use/understand.

So if you have some free-time I'd love to hear what y'all think of it.

And please, be brutally honest, this is (will be) the public face of my company and I want it to be the best it can possibly be!

* any errors glitches (in the browser you're using)
* any text look funky
* any misalignments of columns/text
* any non-uniformity in fonts/layout
* does the nav-system work?

[Minimi]

Ok here is a small review of me, on the website. I give a + or - before the line to show weither that's good or bad.

- First thing that came to my mind when I opened the page was ; "Yikes! That's small, where are my glasses?". I use resolution 1024x768, but I really think the website should be at abit larger size.
+ Easy to navigate!
+ The colour change by section looks really good
- My personal preference is that the navigation popups keep open, so you can have every section open, and that they do not close, when you choose another section
+-I think the font on the top could be alittle more funky, though it's probably also good this way around.
- the line at the bottom of the page : "all information copyright © twindesign 2004 :: www.twin-design.com ", could be made as an clickable hyperlink.
+ The background gray lines are good, and give a calm feeling to the site.
- When I click for example at "Why Twin Design" the title at touches the line under it. I mean only the "G" of design touches the line. Maybe if you could either change the font, or lower the line, it would be better.

That was it... I hope you have something on my little review!

ps : i forgot to say, im using IE 6, at 1024x768, with winXP

[Meowster]

Okay this is sorta weird and you prolly should ignore me, but the design reminds me of those pages you get... you know, you click a link and it brings you to this website full of advertising, like "Gambling, Romance, Email, Fun, Games." That sort of thing, with shitloads of links.

The design is good, but like I said, it reminds me so much of those sites I nearly went to close it thinking it was a popup.

That's just me though.

It's a great site.

[strazer]

does the nav-system work?

Not for me (Firefox 0.8). Where is it?

[Nacho]

Congratulations anf good luck with the new website...

* Farlander downloads the TwinDesign Entertainment Logo...

[Vel]

A great design. The only thing I'd add is an animation for drop down menus.

[Pumaman]

Looks good - the only thing that bothers me is the way that one category closes when you open another one, I always like to be able to expand everything and see all the links at once.

[piraatlife4me]

Hey Darth,
I think it looks pretty good. I like your useless info/tip of the day feature. Very nice addition. Will look even better when there is content on it. You should try pasting a bunch of content in the main page and see how it looks then.

Daniel
Winebarger

[Privateer Puddin']

I hope the new AGS site works better than this in Opera

[Esseb]

I didn't see the navigation bar at all in opera or firefox, only ie.

Way too small as Minimi pointed out. The text is too small as well, not just the boxes.

As Eric mentioned in some other thread, sites who mess with the default mouse over settings are evil. If something is a link I want my mouse pointer to act like it should.

[LGM]

When I opened it, I though "This is it? 6 months of work for this? Is Darth crazy"

But then I realised I use Mozilla on Linux.. So, yea.. Major error.. If you want clients, you need major compatibility.

Other than that, I like the design.. nice and clean

[RickJ]

Firefox - nav don't work  

[makri]

No navigation at all in any of my browsers. Lots of useless and harmful javascript and loads of errors in html.

The most important thing in making a site is that it at least works on every single browser ever made - it's not really all that difficult goal to achieve. JavaScript should never be used for anything important such as navigation (or other links), people turn it off for a reason. Looks should never be the starting point of page design, usability always comes first.

The trend in browser developement these days seem to be to support standards, so the smartest way to make pages would be to make them valid html. This ensures they work in future versions of browsers too.

I'd recommend to build a simple layout that works (and is valid html) without any formatting. Then add all formatting later with CSS.

[Darth Mandarb]

EDIT - twindesign v1.2

Thanks for all the input!  It's funny 'cause it works flawlessly on my system.

I wanted to try something different with the navigation element.

I get sooooo sick of seeing the same boring shit on every website.

But hey, if it doesn't work, it'll have to be changed.

I'll never understand why those other browsers can't display DHTML ... it's beyond me.

privateer puddin' - the template for the new AGS site won't use DHTML so it'll be universal.

makri - I have completely stopped designing for navigator 4.  It's too big of a hassel to design for such an old browswer.  If somebody is still using it well that's their own fault.  But I am concerned about Mozilla and FireFox (which should get their heads out of their keesters and be compatible ... but that's another story)

esseb - all links should still change the cursor when the mouseOvers?  What area wasn't in particular?

I'm going to rework the navigation and increase the over-all size.  I'll post here again when it's updated!

Thanks for all the 'brutally honest' input.

~ d

[Esseb]

It was the two links in the upper right, which was the only I could see in opera. I didn't check the links in firefox or ie. v1.2 doesn't seem to have that problem.

[Migs]

Your company is a web development business, and the first thing potential clients will look at as part of your portfolio is your own web site.  They want to see something spiffy or something you can do that places you above the rest.  Having an edge in the competition is crucial, especially when you're going against larger companies with a lot more employees.  Unless you show them something right off, like some cool Flash features, or a DHTML drop-down menu, or some nice graphics, they might simply skip your site and go somewhere else.

I'm not talking about simply showing a portfolio.  Something extra should be incorporated into the basic design of the web site.  Of course, the simplicity of your site right now is good, and it there has to be a careful balance with any extra features, so you don't overdo it and make it look ridiculous.

Keep in mind this is all just the opinion of one web designer to another.  The navigation you have is remarkably good; it's not the least bit ambiguous.  The colors aren't too bland, although I personally think they could be a little more catchy.  I like the change in color scheme with each section of the site.  You might want to consider a more traditional commercial layout, like putting a small square company logo in the top-left corner.  Usually, doing this indicates a professional commercially-oriented web site, whereas the design you have now indicates a personal web site.

Your usage of boldface is an interesting style, and I rather like it.  The "on this day..." and "fun factoid" is a great feature that instantly captures attention.  You might want to make these so a different one randomly pops up whenever the page is refreshed.  I think your usage of headers on each page is nice, too.  Looking at your source, I can tell you make very good use of the CSS.  You might want to put those Javascript functions in a JS file, since they're common to each page.

Also, this is entirely up to the web developer, but people are tending to stray away from <font size=#> tags now, and are putting everything into the CSS.  Supposedly, in a future version of HTML, <font> will be obsolete.

[Darth Mandarb]

... first thing potential clients will look at as part of your portfolio is your own web site.  They want to see something spiffy or something you can do that places you above the rest.  Having an edge in the competition is crucial, especially when you're going against larger companies with a lot more employees.  Unless you show them something right off, like some cool Flash features, or a DHTML drop-down menu, or some nice graphics, they might simply skip your site and go somewhere else.

Which is what I wanted with the original navigation menu (which you might not have seen??) ... but it gave nothing but head aches 'cross browser'ly.  So I went with a more traditional style... I might script it so that if you're using IE you get the cool nav, but any other browers who haven't got their heads outta their butts uses a boring nav.

I guess I forgot to mention (in previous posts) that there will be some graphical elements added in.

The top box (header-type thing) will have a centered graphical element.  (it's going to be a changing random type thing)

And there will be pictures in every content page.

This is more or less just a 'shell' of the website.

The 'on this day...' and 'fun factoid' is a random thing.  I've already built the database to drive it!  I just didn't code it in there yet, right now it's just using a static piece of text.  I have over 40 interesting factoids and am slowly building more and more 'on this day' items.

And not to worry!  All the <font> tags will be removed.  I use strictly CSS to format.  As I continue to work out the bugs those'll be removed as well.

The whole site is a template and all content pages consist of 1 table which is 'dropped' into the template.  All titles/headers/etc. are variables passed to the templates.  It's pretty darn slick if I do say so myself.

I'm thinking I should have waited a little longer before posting

Thanks for the input!

~ d

[strazer]

(...) but any other browers who haven't got their heads outta their butts uses a boring nav.

I think it's really unfair to critisize other browsers for not implementing (as I understand it) proprietary Microsoft features.
If it's any help, the drop-down menus at CargoGuy work with Firefox.

[AGA]

I think the reason you're getting cross-browser problems is that you're using Coldfusion (right?).

[SSH]

If a page can pass teh W3 Consortium's free validator then it should display OK in all modern browsers (ie, IE > 5.5, Netscpae 7, Opera 7, Mozilla Firefox and Classic, etc)

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.twin-design.com%2Fhome.cfm

You don't even have a doctype so it can't get started! Tch! Some web designer