invisibleinkweb

Logo is cool but then you do have an unfair advantage with your name!!! Haha. Site is clean, fresh and effective BUT I'm going to be a horrible little bugger and pick a few things out, haha: The 3 feature images at the top look really nice until you hover over them, at which point they slide down and reveal a very flat, uninspiring bit of grey background and white text. I dunno - I'd like to see something a bit funkier. The "Get in touch now" button on the front page has no rollover effect, which I think is expected and important now. The "Get in touch now" button on the contact page has no rollover effect, nor does the cursor change to a pointer. You can sort this out with a tiny bit of javascript. I'm not sure about the contact form, specifically the fonts used in the form boxes. I think they should all be the same and perhaps non-italic! Like I said, I'm being picky. Overall, I really like it and I think it works really well. You haven't cluttered it up with anything and you've let your work do the talking, which is important!!! Well done. I've seen so many of these "Skills tables" recently - haha, is there some sort of craze going around?? Like yoyos?

Hi, I think you need to sit down and put some serious thought into the structure of the site - what features you want on the front page, where you want them, which ones you want to highlight and how... etc. etc. Get a piece of paper and a pencil - that always works for me. At the moment, there's no real hierarchy and everything on the front page seems to have the same importance, which I am sure is not your intention. Also, less is (usually) best in any kind of design. A good rule of thumb to follow is to get rid of at least half of your text, then get rid of half of that. People are impatient on the internet - they won't sit down and read through a load of information to find what they're looking for. They want it NOW! Instead of "Main", make that link say "Home" - people are more used to that. Might also be worth seeing if you can get some quality photography done, just to add a bit of punch to the site! Keep going though mate, it's not a disaster and I'm sure you can improve on it. Oh and cyan?? Reminds me of my days playing with the old bbc computers and programming with basic! ;D

Yeah, I posted in the other one ><

Hi Simon, The site is nice and simple, looks slick and uncluttered and generally gives an air of efficient professionalism (in my opinion). As for the dark theme, I think it works pretty well but would prefer to see more of a dark grey than a flat black - I just think it makes text, etc. easier on the eyes. Also, the news & info section could do with something to catch the eye I think - kinda doesn't scream out "READ ME" at the moment! If I'm being REALLY critical, I would suggest that the logo needs a tiny amount of tweaking with the anti-aliasing, it doesn't look quite right in Firefox (mainly the very tops of the curved characters). Overall though, I really like it and I think it's a really effective example of pretty minimalist design. Well done!

Also, try changing those div classes to ids - that might work!! so <div id="buttonhome"> instead of class Shouldn't make a difference but you never know with IE. Also, you should really be using a sprite for the whole nav menu, not 5 different sprites.

weird!! It's perfectly ok to use images as links like that, as long as you've got the link as text in the html code (which you have) The links should be in a <ul> though. As for the reasons it doesn't work... I have no idea but I have a feeling it has something do do with the fact that you have placed each link into an individual div. Try placing them in a <ul> and try again...

You can also change the frequency of bot visits in your Google admin panel.

Here's the logo as a .png file with transparency, so you can put it on any backgroud...

No worries at all mate - give me a shout if you're having any problems with it!

You use a combination of drop shadow, inner glow and gradient overlay to achieve that effect - kinda makes it look like it's cut out. Yeah, I think that's an improvement to be honest - you still get the flash of header colour, without it appearing too large (because the first container is overlapping). Have a play around with it mate - you're more than welcome to use any bits and pieces off that jpeg i posted - consider them yours!

Thanks notbanksy, that is a very good point. I'm glad I did it, like i said, it's rare you get to do whatever you want with a web design. Even your own site needs to be designed for the masses in a way. It'd be interesting to do something similar here in the design comp section - working with that html was a really interesting challenge, I desperately wanted to add some ids and stuff to the code, haha.

Ok, done a quick mockup. Sorry about the images - they're from another job but basically they fit the dimensions of the template... I'm not sure about the colour - the red is difficult to work with. If you could make it a little brighter, it would help a LOT but i've used the same colours as in your site... The top image (with right and left arrows) is a flash image transition - don't know if you want that there to be honest but I thought it looked kinda cool. Odd numbers rule in web design - that's why i've chosen those 3 recent jobs and also added a space for another service - i'm sure you can find another one... Anyway, like I said, just an idea but maybe it'll give you a bit of inspiration or something, haha. Good luck!

Geeks, First off, thank you for taking the criticism in the spirit it was intended. Reading it back, it seems a little harsh but I can assure you that wasn't my intention... As for the improvements, it's a little better but that logo needs a little work. Would you be offended if I had a little play with the logo and posted it back on here?? I think the site has got potential and I have absolutely NO problem with the simple design - it's actually very refreshing to see!!

Thanks Lev, very kind. Anyone got any criticisms??? I obviously didn't post it to get pats on the back - I'd like some suggestions to improve it if anyone's got any! Go on... Be brutal, I'm big enough and certainly ugly enough to take it...

Totally agree with davep - if the company i've got an interview with refuses to employ people with tattoos, then there is very little chance i'd like working for that company. Call it an ink-based weeding out process. As for tattoos and web design, I think quite a lot of people now almost expect people in "creative" professions to have something about them. I've never had a problem with mine and some are quite visible (on my wrists and insides of biceps). The others are hidden away. My mum still hates them though, which is the biggest problem, haha.

Really like it!! Maybe a few images in the latest posts section would spice it up a little but I'm not sure. That contact form would look GREAT with, instead of a flat grey background, you had a .png background with an opacity of maybe 30%, so the background wallpaper showed through.

Thanks notbanksy, I have a sneaking feeling that the CSS Zen Garden is no longer with us... I submitted that design quite a while ago and they haven't updated any designs on there for a long time. It's a real shame - it was a great place for people to try a few things out.

Logo needs anti-aliasing badly. Header is too tall. Image on front page is VERY pixelated. Try not to use words like "random" in professional sites - it conveys an air of irresponsibility. Text needs formatting more in the "What is Core Drilling" section. You need a question mark in the nav bar to make "What is Core Drilling" grammatically correct. It is simple but, to me, doesn't look very professional at all. It looks a little like the websites that are churned out by "What you see is what you get" html editors. Refine a few things and you won't be far away from having an effective site. It's refreshing to see text links and reasonably uncluttered information pages, so well done on that front.

Font face is really odd in Firefox and I'm not sure about the little pop-up box at the bottom, asking for feedback. Other than that, I really like it. It's simple but still packs a punch. I couldn't find a search bar though. That's always nice to have in a blog. Well done though! Impressive.

Been meaning to do this for a long time but finally got round to it. I decided to create a sideways-scrolling site, mainly because I'd never done one before and it's not often you get the chance to do whatever you like. I tried to go for a kinda vintage feel, with a little bit of a nod to one of my favourite web designs at Misprinted Type. For those of you who don't know, the rules for submission to Css Zen Garden are that you do not alter the html code in any way at all. Basically, you are given the code and you have to produce the css and images to style it. The html code is quite dated now (it's been the same for quite a long time), so there are significant limits to how you can style it. Another of the criteria is that it must render in IE5 upwards. I've ignored that a little bit, since the <ul>s in the footer will go crazy in IE5 and 6 but I have used .gifs (yuck) instead of .png files in cases where I've needed transparency. Oh, and the little "feature image" things are from vintage film posters. I'd be interested to find out what you guys think. Here it is: http://www.csszengarden.com/?cssfile=http://www.invisibleinkwebdesigns.com/csszen/sample.css&page=1

Sorry but I think it's horrible!! Over Photoshopped by a LONG way and no real consideration into how the different elements work together in the design. Whatever that header image is, remove it - the holes need to be MUCH smaller in order to give it a more "textured" effect. Go easy on the drop shadow and, if you insist on (over)using it, make sure you set the shadow to drop to the bottom right of the image - it works much better visually. The organic-looking brush you've used to create that "Tim Price" bit doesn't fit at all with the rest of the "polished plastic" design. White text on black background rarely looks good. Use light greys and dark greys instead Your links have no rollover effects, which is a big no-no (although this might be a bit you haven't finished yet). Use image sprites for the rollovers. If you're advertising a web design service, you NEED to come up with a design that is absolutely stunning OR one which 99% of users will think looks professional. You have done neither. Also, to be honest, looking at your code, I'm not exactly sure that you should be offering web design as a service until you've brushed up on your design AND your coding AND your attitude towards feedback. I'm sure you posted on here thinking that the majority of people will love your site. Please don't be offended by any of the above - you need to take on board what these people have said because you will improve if you do!

Lmao, don't bother - Fireworks is a waste of time unless you're building mock-ups. There's no benefit to it at all - it's not free and it ships with Photoshop normally.

Won't validate if you place block elements like that!! Do it once and do it right - use <strong></strong> - you can always specify how <strong> displays using css if you don't like the default.

The Lynda.com php vids are terrible!! Genuinely REALLY bad. They're pretty good for everything else but they fail terribly at PHP tutorials. The guy makes a lot of mistakes in his code in the vids but never tells you about it - I was tearing my hair out. There are some really good books - I can recommend the Head First series. BUT make sure your html and css are stunningly good before delving into php and stuff!

Wall of text crits you for 10k... Your code is, errr, horrible Try laying it out a bit better if you want people to have a look at it... As for getting the 3 images in the correct position, have you thought of just laying 3 containing divs on top of each other, using absolute positioning set to left: 0px; top: 0px; width:100%; for each one, then doing it that way?? Guaranteed to work but not the prettiest solution. Maybe try: <div id="header"> <div id="rightlogo"> <img src="......" /> </div> <div id="leftlogo"> <img src="......" /> </div> <div id="telephone"> <img src="......" /> </div> </div> set the rightlogo, leftlogo and telephone divs to the EXACT dimensions of the image, then either position them absolutely, or float them like this: div#header { width: 100%; height: ...; (exact height of highest image) } div#header div#rightlogo { width: ...; (exact width of image) height: ....; (exact height of image) float: right; } div#header div#leftlogo { width: ...; (exact width of image) height: ....; (exact height of image) float: left; } div#header div#telephone { width: ...; (exact width of image) height: ....; (exact height of image) margin: 0 auto; } You can then play around with margins and stuff... Also, are you using Dreamweaver's templates for your design?? Try doing it from scratch, it's much easier to see what's going wrong if you've produced all the code... You don't align images centrally by using text-align, it's usually done by setting: margin: 0 auto; You've done your coding a REALLY weird way though - are you using the WYSIWYG editor in Dreamweaver?