New design, comments appreciated

Flanders · 31 Aug 2007 at 00:15

Not strictly speaking a new design, more of an experiment that went in the wrong direction. Its different to anything I've done before.

Im not entirely sure how practical it is, but I'd like some opinions

My one concern at the moment is how the #body background image looks across the board, I've had problems with dark background patterns and TFT's before now.

Have a look:

http://www.simplestuff.co.uk/new

Hit me.

kvfb97 · 31 Aug 2007 at 00:53

I love it! Are you using Mootools? I've something similar here:
http://justsaymedia.com/

But I really like yours. One thing I dont like though is the way the whole page loads and you can see it, before it collapses.

Boov · 31 Aug 2007 at 00:55

accordions rock, but might wanna add this to your css.

Code:

img.click (cursor:pointer}

to make it a bit more user friendly.

one idea might be to make the <em>'s the same color as the section they are in, so they appear green in the green tab, orange in the orange tab etc.

all in all the design is great, the typography lets it down a smidge, but i think thats purely because its justified, in my opinion, justified text is harder to read, as the word spacing is varied, the eyes dont travel very well, try and center it instead?. also try reducing the line-height a little as well.

iv just noticed as well, the "www.simplestuff.co.uk" under the banner text, is very hard to read, i can see that you have tried to make it less obvious, but atm its practically non-visable.

love the design and the concept, simple and effective, pleasing to the eyes

SiriusB · 31 Aug 2007 at 03:08

Decreasing the text size can make justified text look much better. However this obviously isn't always possible. I can see why you have gone for justified text as it does make it look very neat.

I agree with the typography being a bit off. Not sure how to describe it but it doesn't seem to sit right...

Moredhel · 31 Aug 2007 at 07:56

I think the typography issues stem from it being a serif font. Sans-serif is so much neater.

Flanders · 31 Aug 2007 at 09:07

Boov said:
accordions rock, but might wanna add this to your css.

Code:

img.click (cursor:pointer}

to make it a bit more user friendly.

Thanks, I had tried using anchors, but of course you get the annoying dotted line around images.

Boov said:
one idea might be to make the <em>'s the same color as the section they are in, so they appear green in the green tab, orange in the orange tab etc.

That thought had occurred to me, just need to find an elegant way of doing it.

Boov said:
iv just noticed as well, the "www.simplestuff.co.uk" under the banner text, is very hard to read, i can see that you have tried to make it less obvious, but atm its practically non-visable.

I did have plans have to brighten it up when hovered over, I think you're right though.

Typography was a tricky one. I had originally used "Lucida Grande", but as the title image and headers use a serif font, I thought it was more appropriate. The text was originally un-justified, but as the content area is very thin, I thought it looked a little silly. I will have to experiment with some different type faces and spacing, as this does seem to be a problem.

Thanks for all your comments

EDIT:

Changed back to Lucida and altered the spacing a little.

lloydsj · 31 Aug 2007 at 12:02

Hi,

Nice site. Only had a quick look as im pretty busy at sec, but few comments from me...

* I think that you should be able to both expand AND collapse the sections. i found myself clicking on the coloured title buttons (or whatever you want to call them) again, to collapse them before expanding the next.

* You've got 3 emails addy's on there... just have 1... its looks much more professional. <whatever>@simplestuff.co.uk would be best. Plus you can sign up any address you want nowadays for msn too.

* Im using an LCD here and i can't see your background at all... i litterally had to put my eyeball against the screen to see anything other than pure black.

* I tested it in both opera and ie6. It works better in opera. Plus the text in the portfolio section didn't even show in IE.

Flanders · 1 Sep 2007 at 01:02

lloydsj said:
* I tested it in both opera and ie6. It works better in opera. Plus the text in the portfolio section didn't even show in IE.

Thanks for pointing this out. No idea why it won't show the <p></p> and <h1></h1>, I'l have to have a play.

Flanders · 3 Sep 2007 at 00:50

OK, made some slight changes. Unfortunately, nothing I've tried seems to fix my unusual IE 7 problem. As someone above pointed out, half of the content in the "Portfolio" section doesn't show.

Could someone with IE 6 installed confirm whether or not it happens in that particular browser please.

Can't say I've ever come across anything like this before, so any ideas would be appreciated.

Tripnologist · 3 Sep 2007 at 10:27

Flanders said:
Could someone with IE 6 installed confirm whether or not it happens in that particular browser please.

Can't say I've ever come across anything like this before, so any ideas would be appreciated.

Yes. It looks the same in IE6 as it does in 7.

Don't have time to try and figure it out as I'm at work but I might give it a shot later if nobody else has.