redesign feedback requested

[snillor]

Hi folks,

I’ve finally gotten motivated to redesign my website, aiming for an open, clean look. I also wanted to use HTML5 features and CSS3 with, of course, graceful degradation for older and less capable browsers.

Here’s the first draft of a possible redesigned home page: snillors.com It’s preliminary – most links don’t work and the content will surely change a bit. But the basic layout will probably remain pretty much as you can see it. (Unless you all tell me you hate it!)

Some of my goals are to use: 1) a flexible layout (or is it a responsive layout? – I can never keep those two terms straight) instead of the fixed-width one I now have, 2) flexible images, and 3) CSS3 columns. I may look at transitions and some other goodies but will try to exercise restraint so I don’t ruin the clean look. Right now I have a max-width, but may not keep it.

My next step will be to see if I can use media queries to improve the site’s display on small screens. I’m not sure how successful this will be, since a photography site is by nature very image-heavy, and the quality of the displayed images is important.

Any and all feedback is welcome. Feel free to criticize and suggest improvements. Thanks.

[snillor]

Thanks for the quick and helpful response Karl.

At first, I wasn’t seeing text flush against the bottom. But when I resized the browser window enough, I saw what you mean. Easy enough to fix.

I had not considered relating vertical whitespace to horizontal whitespace, but it makes sense. I’ll play around with that a bit.

And don’t worry about being too harsh. The more I hear about deficiencies in the design, the better it’ll turn out.

[karlpcrowley]

I think everyone writing sites from scratch should watch this (if they have time)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyM37XKkmKQ
There is new features since this video was released, but it’s still relevant and educational

[snillor]

Thanks Karl,

I’ve looked at this boilerplate before, but it’s probably time to dig into it more seriously.

I’ve tweaked some colors on my page, and added some bottom padding to the footer text.

Gotta figure out why IE8 displays nav items vertically instead of horizontally.

[Author]

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