Take a look and comment

[kevin]

Well I was bored so worked on a website design for which I will probably never get paid, but so what else is new... :)

This is only the homepage, there is no content yet. If you click on any links you will get a 404 error. All the content pages will look like this page probably, the content will display in the blank white table.

It's optimized for IE browser but should be fine in Netscape. It should render well in 800 x 600 and 640 x 480 windows at 16/24 bit color, not checked at 1024 or higher resolution. Its definetely not 256 color friendly...whatta ya want for free??... :)

Color selection is based on the colors of the Jamaican flag, darkgreen, black, and gold colors. I threw in a tiny bit of blue to give it a little life and a little depth and help lead the eyes around.

I know the top graphic is a little messed up, I lost my master image file and this one has too many saves on it but you can see the design of the "logo" anyway. I will redo that logo later to make it sharper looking.

The webpage is stored on a free server for right now, there will be no obnoxious pop up advertisment on the real website.

Here is the URL..... http://milleneum.virtualave.net/images/directfindja2.html

Thanks,
Kevin

[This message has been edited by kevin (edited 01-08-2001).]

[aco]

Hi Kevin

i looked at ur site, the color combination is quite good, but the logo doesn't really stand out coz it's abit dark, so perhaps a brighter yellow may work better.

the blue border looks abit strange to me, i think it will look better with just the top, without the side. btw, how do u set the color for a table border?

i am using 1024 by 768 to view the site, and there seems to be a slight problem with the positioning of the upper right curved corner.

other than that, all else are quite good

=)

[Jason]

Great work kevin, I expected nothing less from you. You're right about the top graphic, it will look much more professional when you redo it, and get a smoother version up. Navigation looks easy to use, nothing confusing on the page which is always good.

You don't need to scroll too much to see al the page content, and it loads quickly.

I also have a feeling that if I ran it through a validator, it would come out cleam :D

------------------
Jason M. DesRoches
Co-Founder / Business Development
Big Resources Network (http://www.bigresources.com)
jason@bigresources.com
ICQ: 17947522

[kevin]

Thanks for the comments....

Aco.... I need to redo that graphic anyway so I will be experimenting with a different gradient fill, maybe a less dark color at the right, or fade to blue like the word Jamaica, I'll have to see what looks good.

The blue border is a small HTML trick of mine that is easy to do and easy to figure out by viewing source. Its just a blue table, then the rest of the tables are embeded inside of it (its not really a border, just looks like it). I do it that way so Netscape and IE look almost indentical. I could use style tags to get the same border, but Netscape does not support the nice border attributes that IE does. So its a compromise.

The easiest way set border colors is using the BORDERCOLOR=XXXXX attribute in the TABLE tag, it works for Netscape and IE.

I fixed that image alignment problem, thank you. I had the cell set to 38 pixels wide with align=right. But the cell was stretching out past 38 pixels at high resolution, but the width=38 attribute would not let the image align past the 38 pixel boudary, so I removed the width attribute in the cell and the image fell in place... :)

Jason.... the amount of scrolling will depend on the content of each page, but it should never be too much. It's not a real fancy design or layout, but I did it in a day and for the amount of money (zilch probably) I might earn from the work, I wasn't about to get any fancier... :)
As long as it is easy to navigate and looks semi-professional, that's good enough.

The code is clean, but I'm sure a validator will find something to pester me with, ifyaknowwhatimean... :)

Regards,
Kevin

[kevin]

Well I redid the logo graphic at top and bottom, and the little "FIND IT" graphic above the links. Changed the flat darkgreen color at top to alternating black and green stripes to add visual interest and more depth, and "curled" the top left and bottom right corners of the gold table to also add a feeling of depth and visual interest to what was an otherwise flat looking page. Rearranged the bottom to make space for banners. Put up a splash image in the content table so it looks better...this looks final to me unless someone notes a problem or has a good suggestion.

Regards,
Kevin

[This message has been edited by kevin (edited 01-09-2001).]

[SteveS235]

I didn't see the first design, so I can only comment on the second one.

Looks excellent! I use 1024x768, and it looks fine. Looks the same in IE5 and NS6.

Hmmm....I'm almost too embarrassed to have you guys look at my dinky little site!

I'm new to HTML and site building, but what did you use to create the logo at the top? Photoshop or something else? I've always wanted to play around and learn how to create my own logos, graphics and such.

[Jason]

BIG DIFFERENCE! The logo is much smother, and blends into the page nicely now. I like the little peeling edge too, it really helps to separate the parts of the site. Too bad you have to part with it. I'd like to see what you could do if you actually spent a week on a layout :D

------------------
Jason M. DesRoches
Co-Founder / Business Development
Big Resources Network (http://www.bigresources.com)
jason@bigresources.com
ICQ: 17947522

[kevin]

Hi SteveS235,

Don't be embarrased or shy about having your work reviewed. We all start somewhere. When I look at some of the stuff I did a couple of years ago I wonder what I was thinking !! :)

The logo was done using only Paint Shop Pro 6. Any good paint program can do a simple logo like that one. All I used were the standard tools, I didn't have to "draw" anything. I used things like the shape tool to get the triangle shape, gradient fill to fade the tan to blue in the text and the gradient fill to put the stripes on the triangle and the stripes on the background. Drop shadow, cut out, and chisel effects to make the lettering look a little 3D. I used the text tool to select a font (Titanic) for the text. Set the background color to transparent and converted it all to gif format to maintain the sharp appearance.

Logos are tricky, I'm not real good at them unless there is an obvious connection in the imagery or design. In this one the T and the F both fit together well because of the font style so that was easy to "see". The triangle/arrow under the text is fairly standard stuff, almost forces your eyes to look down drawing you into the page below, which is the whole point. Plus it mimicks the Jamaican flag which has 2 diagonal lines through it, forming four triangles, another easy connection to "see". The colors were taken from the Jamaican flag pretty much so I didn't have to think much in that regards. I added the blue for some depth and also to link it to blue elements on the page.

I'm starting to ramble.... :)

Regards,
Kevin

[aco]

i agree with jason,

the new version looks much better
but there's still a positioning problem.....
with the bottom right page fold
=)

[Lawrie]

First impression is good, you can see a lot in one go, without scrolling too much and there's no information overload.(I'm on 1024.. res).