KCooper

I use Chrome on my current laptop, and Firefox on my desktop PC upstairs. (just kinda the way it came about). I find Chrome to be a bit nippier, and less prone to crashes or the like, but there's not a huge amount in it in my opinion. I use Internet Explorer regularly in work, and that is a sluggish beast in comparison... though I don't need to tell anyone here that

I would definitely still include a reference to them on your portfolio. Every thing you work on, however small or seemingly insignificant it may seem, all helps build up a positive picture in the eyes of a prospective employer or client. I see numerous graphic designers portfolio's with references to work done for a lot of big names, and I know for a fact in most of those cases the work was done while working for a graphic design agency as part of a large team, and they were responsible for a smaller part of the whole project. They still include it. Just be clear on what parts you helped with and everyone's happy Agreed

PC for me. I just bought a new Samsung laptop; i5 processor, 8GB ram, GT650M, 1GB HDD for just over £500 brand new and its nice and nippy and capable of running every game I've thrown at it so far on, at the minimum, middle of the road settings. I could never jusify the cost for a Mac, but then, that it just me. It takes all sorts to make the world go round

Seconded! Its a nice, clean looking site. I agree with what's been said though, its not instantly obviously what the site is for. As a minor change, if the initial image in the slider was of an item of food from the restaurant, that would help rectify this.

First impressions are good, its a nice looking site. However, as mentioned above, the cursor is more of a hindrance than anything else. It will only serve to confuse people and is anti-accessible. The images in your portfolio section are way too small, and do nothing to show off the work you have done; the main aim of a portfolio website. I appreciate that when you click on an image, information is displayed (and I like the way this is done), but I think the initial view of the portfolio section could use some definition.

I've always preferred learning from a book. The internet is a fantastic, invaluable resource, but if there was specific information I required, available in book-form, I would take it in book-form in an instance! I think its for a number of reasons; 1. Its what I'm used too; grew up reading and learning from books, didn't get the internet until I was 15. 2. Convenience; I can flick through a few chapters while watching TV, travelling on a train, on a break in work etc 3. The FEEL of turning a page, and feeling that you have progressed one more page towards the completion of the book - this satisfaction cannot be emulated online. I'm old school I guess Kyle

I own a 360, but on the subject of AC Brotherhood, that was one of my favourite games of last year - WELL worth a blast Kyle

If its working for you then just stick with it I say

The client who I did the site for doesn't actually use the opencart system to monitor stock; every product is always "in-stock". They use thier own method for stock taking. I know when you add additional "option values" such as; 'color: blue, white, green, etc' you can add a quantity for each option type.

I developed a site using it a few months back, you can check it out on my portfolio (link in sig). Pretty good cart to be fair! Kyle

To go a bit further than that, it'd be worth you utilizing a CSS reset to help stop this sort of thing happening in future; http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/css/reset/ Kyle

Ditto. If you can supply a link, or the code, it would be a lot easier to troubleshoot your problem Kyle

I like the approach :-)

Same here I use it every single day, comes with the territory I wasn't criticising at all, I was just curious as to whether or not there was something in particularly that swayed you, or that you just got more and more tempted as time went on - I've been seeing you pondering it for quite some time! There is no denying they are nice pieces of kit, just not for me, at least from my experience with them. I really hope it aids your productivity though. Let me know how it goes if you do eventually for for it Kyle

What convinced you to make the leap then, mate? Just I know you've been considering it for a few months, and you seem pretty sure now Kyle

I don't get it, isn't that already practically a top of the line mac? (it might not be, I'm not into Apple at all, but I was under the impression it was near enough top of the line...)

To be honest it looks pretty outdated, and thats got to be affecting your conversion rates. Just off the cuff, I find the red italicised font on the yellow background somewhat difficult to read comfortably so just making that quick change would help the readability of the site. I see this is a follow up to a post you made quite a while back now. Do you have any idea of the sort of levels of traffic your site receives? ie, using google analytics? Because it could be that your receiving a decent amount of traffic, just not making the conversions. Getting listed well in google is only part of the battle, once people are actually on your site you need to give them a good first impression, and exactly what they want as quickly as possible before they click away into the ether. Kyle

Got this through on my Twitter feed earlier on today, from smashingmag. Thought it was quite an interesting read. I generally seem to follow most of the standards they outlined anyway, but there were still a few I should keep in mind for the future. Plus it talks about some HTML 5 markup, which is something I've started dabbling in. http://na.isobar.com/standards/

Nice one Kyle

Also... Get the Firebug extension for firefox. You can change CSS properties and see how the changes affect the site you are looking at - dissecting a website is a great way of learning! Kyle

Why?? Upgrade to a better browser... its freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

I've used 2 alternatives; I've coded up using twentyten as a starting template, and more recently using the starkers barebones theme. I prefer the latter, though I have found it a bit counter intuitive in parts - theming up the blog comments etc from scratch has been a lot more difficult than jumping into one thats already been themed and restyling it. Meh, it was a learning curve, which was the main reason I decided to use the starkers theme Kyle

haha, that second photo is awesome! Heres one that always make me smile; "I understand you're ghetto, but could you walk a little faster?";

Just to jump in... I've owned 2 Acer laptops, one of them I still use regularly, and it has been going strong for 4 years (without needing a reinstall of windows too I may add, though thats down to the fact I actually do housework on my computer ). Plus, the ipad just looks like pretty much every other apple product; white with rounded corners and the apple logo slapped on the back. Doesn't really do it for me. I would turn them both down for a date based on looks and go by myself Kyle

I like the site on the whole. The major concern for me would be the loading time, as has already been mentioned. At the moment the main background image is like 850kb. I just took that into photoshop and managed to get the file size down to around the 250kb mark using the "save for web" function. This alone would increase the load times. Also, moving all the jquery scripts (I see most of it already is though) to the bottom of the page should help. Kyle