Feedback please (web site design)

Lo all, I was wondering if you'd be kind enough to give me some feedback on my latest website design? It's a site I'm building for a hypnotherapist. He wants a bit of a web presence - and I want his money - so it's a match made in heaven

Anyway, I just wanted some general feedback about the design - I'm not much of a designer, but nice and simple designs (which he wants) such as this are easy.

http://ftp3.dns-systems.net/~hypnoticoutcom/

Feedback please - good and bad

 

As a webmaster, I can't help but give you some feedback.

[As a side note: Et tu, Daniel?]

Anyway, the site looks very unobtrusive and functionally capable.

Let me ask, what languages do you know? Just HTML? Or are you using any other combination?

The coding looks quite solid and you've done a good job on that. Might I suggest, though, making your paragraphs justified instead of left-aligned? That might look cool.

Anyway, graphically, it looks a little ... plain, so to speak. The colours are all monotone (white and a pale, dark blue). You could do something to visually spice it up, but at the same time, don't sacrifice the stability of your code.

To me, it looks like a plain yet functional layout. Functionality is better than style, but for a truly good website, one must have both balanced and in harmony. =)

Balance && Harmony,
Hikaru

 

seriously please do not justify those paragraphs unless you are prepared to go in and kern (adjust each word and letter individually) all the white space outta them. One problem that I so see all the time is that people have justified paragraphs and this leads to major white spaces snailing through their body copy. You are totally able to avoid this if you go in and adjust individual spacing after you have justified it but if you can't then sometimes the readability is better if you leave it left justified....

I will attempt to find an example of what I mean to post.

Lorem Ipsum is a wonderful language isn't it!!!

Links in a sidebar is not a bad idea but then again they operate and look like a million billion other sites and as long as your frontpage isn't too long I don't see why this would matter....maybe depends on how much info you actually intend to be in the front page.
In terms of it not being mystical enough...screw that, it loaded so nice and fast and looks clean and easy to read I figure that once you plonk a pic or two in somewhere that will be enough fo all those that don't exist on broadband alone!

 

http://lowendmac.com/designer/11.html

well I certainly don't agree with everything this person says cause it contradicts what I was taught about readablity but they are talking about something slightly different...that of being taken seriously...they are saying that if you justify it is therefore like newspaper text therefore it is deemed more serious than text not set like that by your average text consumer. This I disagree with because I really don't think that people are suckers for mainstream and that if readability is offered to them they will go for that instead without even much thinking about it...

 

http://www.csusm.edu/iits/trc/training/lessons/graphicDesign/d4Fonts/4_design_fonts.htm

this one seems a really good one. They seem spot on with most of the info they have regarding all the various bits and pieces when it comes t type.

 

Regarding the part about justifying text in this article ...

I just did a justification test using CSS. The modern method of justification, used in browsers today by default, does not produce "rivers" or include unhealthy amounts of whitespace.

I've used justified text a lot in my web designing, and never had any problems with too much whitespace, or rivers.

That being said, justification on a website and justification in a newspaper are very typiaclly two different methods. Justification in a newspaper is rarely a good idea, especially when used in small columns. Justifying small columns on a website isn't a much better idea, of course ... but there's no problem with a block of text.

 

as newpapers are laid out using the same programs that people use for websites I don't see how the argument that they are different runs. There are very few newspapers in the world nowadays that don't use computers in doing their layouts. Just because they now use type badly to me doesn't justify (pardon the pun) the fact that everyone else does so too. ok ok I am railing against the inevitable but I figure that as most don't get taught to use type before they produce websites it doesn't hurt to rail a bit here and there. There are so many variables when it comes to this but I suppose that when you are dealing with the net it comes down to the fact that you are dealing with media literate people who are not neccessarily put off by readability and are maybe looking more for what their original search was for.......or cool stuff!

 

OK wow - lots of feedback - lets try to take this point by point...

(WTF does Et tu mean? )

I'm not a designer in any sense of the word - I'm more of a coder. I use PHP and MySQL for all the backend stuff that no one ever sees - but seeing as I need the money, and this is a nice and simple site, I have no problems doing it. This site, right now, is just HTML. I'll be using SHTML to make a common header and footer. I know a little CSS - but plan to learn more (such as how to stop needing to use tables, etc..)

Regarding justified paragraphs, I was thinking this myself.. but I've had problems with it before, using diffrent browsers.. If you can suggest what CSS code I should use to make it justified (I'm guessing something like 'align: justify'), I can test it out.

As for the plainess of the site - this is mainly due to the fact, as I said above, I'm not much of a designer - but also because that's what he requested. Just something nice and simple with easy navigation.

The site is indeed still in development - this is a first draft to see what the client thinks. That's why it's not in english. I need some text to fill the site out, so I use http://www.lipsum.com/ to generate text (latin text I think) to give the feel of normal words (it's better than a page with nothing than just 'text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text'). It's also designed to make people focus on the design and overall layout of the site, than read the text (mission accomplished ).

"mysticism, occult, paranormal etc" - not to this guy.. it's his business, and that's what the site is for, to promote his business.. That's why it's plan and simple - rather than fancy and mystic (if you see what I mean?)

I'm not too sure about a sidebar navigation - to be honest, I can't see the pages being all that large, and if need be I can add a second navigation bar to the bottom of the site, but I'll see what the client thinks.

Anyway, I think that's all - thank you for the feedback, keep it coming

 

Hehe @ your pun. It was justified.

Anyway, newspapers *must* use a different justification technique, because a justified newspaper often has "rivers" and websites do not.

This also probably has a lot to do with screen fonts not being able to be displayed as TrueType fonts, only printed onto paper as TrueType. This may be a reason for the difference, but the difference is enough to make a distinction.

Et tu is latin for "and you?" In Julius Caeser, when Brutus betrays Caeser and stabs him, Caesar's last words are, "et tu, Brute?" meaning "You too, Brutus?"

I think it's the same in Spanish as well.

Welcome to my world. =) But PHP is evil, you should learn Perl instead. That's my pet peeve for the day.

As far as CSS goes, you might want to try the W3C site for good references. Also, try and learn some JavaScript; if you know some PHP or Java already, JavaScript ought not be too hard.

Here you go, courtesy of yours truly:

Code:

<style>
p.justice {text-align: justify;}
</style>

Insert that into the head of your document, and activate it with this:

Code:

<p class="justice">
</p>

Don't forget the </p>. Feel free to change the "justice" to whatever you want, just don't forget to also change the paragraph class. If you want to use it with a <div> tag or multiple different kinds of tags, just remove the "p" in "p.justice," leaving ".justice". It'll be fine.

I've had requests like that before; if that's the case, it's perfect.

 

Cheers Hikaru - I've added the justify and updated the site.. looks good... but I've only tested it in firefox and IE so far - I should really download netscape (ok, ok, so it's the same as firefox, but worth checking anyway) and opera to test it out as well..

 

Indeed. Personally, I have a thing for not caring how other browsers display my websites. The way Firefox displays HTML and CSS is *almost* perfect. It's FAR ... FAR closer to anything that IE, Opera, or Netscape will ever achieve. If the site isn't displayed the same way in any of those other browsers, I just chalk it up to the fact that those other browsers don't conform to the W3C's web design standards.

I like to spite those browsers.

 

LOL, well that's good in theory - but alas, you *should* - as a good designer - make it sutable for ALL browsers... You want people to come to the site - and people will come, but under their own terms (be it mac, windows, linux, firefox, IE, safari, whatever), and if they can't use the site because their needs are not catered to, they won't change to fit us - they'll go somewhere else - so it's up to us to make sure they do fit

 

PS - PHP FTW

 

Aye, but a good designer is ALSO morally obligated to promote good craftsmanship and to shun bad design. That's why I boycott the use of IE when unnecessary for Windows function, and advocate Firefox-compatible HTML because Firefox is the closest to correct HTML 4.0 Transitional standards.

You can also put a footnote at the bottom of the page - This site is best displayed with the Mozilla Firefox browser, version 1.0.6.

=)

P.S. PHP can SMD!!! PHP is just a crappy Microsoft knock-off of Perl anyway.

 

Alll hail Hikaru Zero, coder extrodinaire! and language man.

And anime man, no go

 

WTF - PHP has nothing to do with Microsoft... You're thinking of ASP - *that's* the microsoft product - PHP is open source. PHP is great, the simple fact that you've said that it's microsoft shows you know nothing about it

 

That's a great site to visit when you are stoned. It made about as much sense as a left handed smoke shifter

 

Sorry ... I kind of dribbled on my keyboard with my fingers. I didn't even mean to put Microsoft in there at all ... I don't even remember typing it. My mistake for misleading you; PHP *definitely* isn't Microsoft-made.

Anyway, a lot of the PHP internals are supposedly based off of Perl code. Perl is *also* open-source, and PHP's structure is virtually identical to Perl's, except it seems to me less powerful and less complete. Some people do prefer it, though.

PHP also has TONS of vulnerabilities to boot ...

The main difference between the two is that Perl is primarily used among so-called "programmers" and PHP mainly used among so-called "web designers." Although there isnt' much difference, PHP is geared towards the web, and Perl was originally geared towards applications. With how modular and popular Perl is, however, Perl has been used to create at least 80% of the web applications on the 'net (it also has its roots in Google, Yahoo!, and a slew of other websites), and is very "robust" in the sense that it can be used in virtually any way (albeit with some difficulty and technical ability). Because of this, it is also very secure. Perl is, how to say, time-tested.

PHP on the other hand, is a relatively new language compared to Perl, and is pretty much more of a "put me into a web page to do good stuff" scripting language (which Perl wasn't originally geared towards, although PerlScript does exist on some servers). It also has a shorter learning curve and is great for smaller projects or a few pages that need to interact.

I prefer Perl because of its time-tested power and versatility. But that goes without saying ... I'm very biased.

oli-picka:

Despite what you may think, my name doesn't come from Hikaru no Go. Although, I admit I did end up learning how to play the game after I heard about it.

 

aye, it is a good game- ive got a board after a friend introduced me to it, he was a hikaru addict