new personal site design

[mshort]

well, this week i was abit bored so I decided to do a complete redesign of my site. have a look and feel free to give any feedback. currently its all complete save for the portfolio site which i’m still working on.

http://michael-short.net

my web host has been doing maintenance, so if you can’t access the site, thats probably why :-).

[HJ05]

Interesting look for the site. Good layout and navigation.
A few things to consider though.

1. When using images for links make sure that there is still text in the link just use css to push it off the screen.
2. Make descriptive title tags. Google doesn’t like when you have the same title tag on all pages and it is a good place for some keywords too.
3. Because your links in the side panel are already on one line each consider adding display:block to the css to make them easier to click.
4. The text in the header is hard to read. While interesting text is nice readable text is more important.
5. You have problem with contrast on the page. The color of the text especially the links is a little to close to the color of the background. I know while they seem like such different colors to a person with a color deficiency they may look like exactly the same color. To give it a test try taking a screen shot of your site and convert it to black and white and see what it looks like.
6. You might consider taking the background image and extending across the whole site instead of just the middle. I don’t know how this will look but it might look a little better.
7. A page saying under construction isn’t exactly a good idea. Just removing the mouse hover over the link and making the link go to # would be better.
8. Is the fixed length really necessary. It can annoy some users to see that the page is longer and they can scroll only to find nothing there.

I’m no designer(yet) so don’t take everything completely to heart just consider them and think about what these changes have to offer.

[mshort]

"HJ05" wrote:

3. Because your links in the side panel are already on one line each consider adding display:block to the css to make them easier to click.
8. Is the fixed length really necessary. It can annoy some users to see that the page is longer and they can scroll only to find nothing there.

Hi HJ05,

thanks for the tips. just a few things. I am not sure what you meant with number 3. and I haven’t set a page height for the page-wrap. I am not sure why its insisting on spanning the entire page :-(

anyways, thanks for your advice i’ll work on fixing it up

[HJ05]

What I am talking about with number three is just a use ability thing. It makes the clickable area for a link larger so that users don’t necessarily have to click right on the text. Here is a link to a longer description: http://www.usabilitypost.com/2008/09/04 … ble-areas/

[cssgirl]

Looks really good. I’d really enjoy it a bit more if your background pattern went the whole width of the screen, and not just in the middle. Like the grungy/dirty look.

Only other thing is font size. I’m not very old, and while my vision isn’t the best, fonts that small (especially when serif) and almost unreadable to me.

[mshort]

i’ve increased the size of the text, as for adding vines and such into the main conent, I would like too but i am not sure how I would do it, since the image there is just a repeating image, so anything i had to repeat down the page and not look as good imo

[Author]

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