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I'd suggest you study design, typography and usability principles a bit before you get down to business. You'll find great inspirational resources and docs at smasingmagazing.com, webdesignerdepot.com or alistapart.com, just to name a few. No offense but imho your site is not yet ready to be evaluated against professional criteria. The comments here are really helpful and they allow you to fix a few glitches here and there but still it won't make you have a clear concept of how to communicate your message to your visitors. I hope you don't mind my being honest. What really hurts my eyes is the typography (or the lack thereof). As the guys pointed out already, a typical mistake rookies make is throwing in all the effects you can get. Less is more. Lavalamp under dropshadow, harsh gradients throughout...we are not in the 90's any more. Older fellows will prolly remember the dark era when the inner bevel-drop shadow combo dominated the web. "I have thrown in some -moz and -webkit drop shadows in some divs, I think they look quite nice in the right browsers. What do you guys think?" – Matter of fact, i think they look just horrible. Vulgar. If you use drop shadow at all, it's supposed to be subtle and barely visible and you need to deliberately pick the colors. So try to develop a sense for fine details.

SOLVED wmode=transparent

I have an embedded flash video on my page, along with a highslide (jquery) based gallery. The thing is that when you click an image, the modal window will appear behind the video box. I can't give it a z-index since the div containing the video must be part of the page flow and can't be absolutely positioned. And it won't work anyway. I wonder if there's any other way to send the embedded object backwards in the stack. Bunch of thanks in advance.

Since the market is saturated, i'm sure you'll find an affordable developer. You can post it in the Looking to hire topic. Without specs, it's hard to tell how much they'd charge. Make it look like a real project, regardless of the budget. Sketch out the site structure, write down precisely & explicitely the functions and capabilities your website should provide etc.

Hey mate, with zero dev background and experience, i doubt this is a suitable job for you. You'll find a bunch of sites out there that provide streaming music but they are all — and i mean all — professionally designed bespoke systems and not makeshift joomla hacks. You don't even have any specifications available. If you need this site badly, i'd suggest you hire someone from this forum. I mean a pro. No offense dude, but your questions suggest that you don't have the faintest clue how web applications work.

In fact, most of the CMS platforms ship with a bunch of free themes and skins. WP allows you to install a theme right from the server, you don't even download anything to your local machine. A great part of the clients, typically small businesses, are perfectly happy with the off-the-shelf themes. Free themes definitely lend an air of cheapness to the site but they don't mind it, content is king. On the other hand, in the pre-CMS era you could also download full static templates (with those ridiculous XHTML and CSS W3C badges in the footer) or even flash templates for that matter, and yet it didn't kill the web design industry. Sites like templatemonster are still thriving and i suppose they are making a big $$$. I think you should focus on clients who actually understand the importance of a unique design that stands out.

I could use a little help with wordpress permalinks on localhost. I'm on W7, apache 2.2/php5, WP3. I've commented out the mod_rewrite line and set AllowOverride all in httpd.conf and restarted apache multiple times. Yet if i set my permalinks to other than default, i'll get a 404 for all the posts and pages. It does write the .htaccess file when i change the permalink settings but the urls are broken all the same. I really have have no idea what else could be done to fix it. I wouldn't mind sticking with the default setting on local for dev purposes, but a forum extension, simple press, will not run at all, due to permalink glitches.

I have a table with a rowspan in one of the cells, the problem is that it's rendered differently in each and every browser. See img below. Actually IE is the only one that renders it properly. Any way to fix it? http://www.hubschraubermuseum.de/exponate

Can you post a link or html/css? Anyway don't use DW to embed flash. It generates a fat and ugly js. Use swfobject instead. It's not only valid and a lot cleaner but also removes the annoying border from your movie in IE (normally you need to click on the movie to activate it first)

I guess it is the table width (650px), div #content apparently begins right under div #left but they are supposed to be inline. Try to assign the dimensions i did in my div based layout. I guess if you make your table a few px narrower it'll just snap in. However there's no reason to use tables here. Table has one thing over divs: vertical align. You should decide if it's worth all the trouble. Table is not evil or something, i don't hate it, it's simply not the right way to do layouts. Table is to display tabular data, that's it. What you have here is not tabular data. OK i did the vertical alignment with line-height, which is also not a nice way to handle it but you can use padding instead. Crosshair cursor came from a separate css, it isn't there now.

Sorry dude, your css is a real mess and so is your html. I've put together a div based layout for you (see attached zip). It makes no sense debugging your existing site, i suggest you rebuild it from scratch. The stuff i did might be a good foundation but you can choose a different approach. There are a few things however that you should keep in mind: - It's never a good practice to blend divs with tables, once you go for divs try to build up your wireframe without using tables - Don't position divs absolutely or relatively unless you have a very good reason to do so. This is why your layout is screwed up in the first place. Positioned elements are removed from the document flow. - 150px for border is just gross. It's no way to do columns. If you need equal height cols the most commonly used method is what's known as faux columns (that's what i used here) but you can get the column height with js and set all heights accordingly. This sucks if your visitor happens to browse with js turned off. - Don't use a transitional DTD - If you set <a> to display:block within a <li>, give it explicit dimensions, otherwise it may add extra whitespace and screw up your layout in IE6 - A little typography: stick to a single typeface. you can use a different one e.g. for H1 but swapping from verdana to trebuchet is unprofessional - Usability: forget the crosshair cursor, it's confusing for most users, esp. when it's supposed to be a pointer. it'll make you lose customers - Don't add style to the body when you have an external css attached to your html - Check if floated objects need to be cleared (see fix in css) As i see this is a downloaded or generated css with some copyright stuff included. It's ok to use templates sometimes but css is no rocket science really, you better learn it on your own, you'll have more control over your sites and less garbage in your code. antenna.zip

Forget 800x600. I normally make my layouts 960px wide. Looking at my own stats i must say that over 50% of my visitors are still using 1024x768 so you can't just ignore lower resolutions. But if your 800x600 visitors can't afford to upgrade to a better graphics card and a bigger display they probably can't afford your products or services either, so don't worry about losing them. You can optimize for handheld but that's a different story.

min-width is not supported by IE but if your markup is ok three is no need to use it. Here's a nice post on clearing floated elements that will probably fix your problem http://www.positioniseverything.net/easyclearing.html

Transparent png doesn't work in ie as background, even if the png fix js is present. But here's a post that may address your problem. http://thedesignspace.net/MT2archives/000103.html

Hi Dizi, here's the link http://www.coroflot.com/creativeseeds/2008...io_websit_1.asp Ok the post focuses on the consistency of your portfolio site in the first place but the question is valid nonetheless.

I just found an article on coroflot about building the perfect portfolio for job seeking. One of the tips says that you need to pick a visual style (palette, type, layout etc) and stick to it consistently. Prospective employers, who are often creative professionals too, may turn you down if they don't see anything that permeates your work and makes it recognizable. This sounds reasonable but a truly consistent portfolio is hard to come by. On one hand, assignments and clients' taste and demands vary greatly. You are not likely to use the same style for a prestigious blue-chip company and for a music site. On the other hand, visual styles on the web just come and go, if you are old enough you may remember the awful 45 degree pixel style back in the 90's and thank god we have now the so-called web2 style behind us too, with all those glossy icons and reflections and large type. I guess those styles affect pretty much everyone involved in the web industry, at least to an extent. Maybe painters and illustrators stick to their styles more consistently but a webdesigner should be comfortable with various styles. Some time ago when i applied for a freelance gig i was rejected with the message "we are looking for someone with another style, thanks for your interest". So even if you have a coherent visual language, painstakingly elaborated over the years (which i don't have), it might be the reason for not getting the job or business. So what do you guys think about style? Is it ok to do everything in a single style or you are better off being versatile?

I think in most cases you can tell in advance if a prospective client is going to be trouble. Here's a great post about this: http://freelanceswitch.com/start/a-compreh...eelance-career/ (Sorry if it's been posted earlier) One way to ensure you always get paid is being able to recognize and refuse dodgy clients. I have a personal method that you might not approve (works only for flash sites). If i don't trust a client i put an swf file on my own server that contains some of the content or the site navigation, whatever, and is loaded as external file. The client doesn't have the chance to see what's under the hood. In the worst case he can hire someone to decompile your swf and hack it but that's very unlikely. You can also prevent him from doing so by using components here and there, as they can't be decompiled. After you got paid, you can easily replace the 'security version' with a self containing one. If your client turns out to be a difficult one, you can bring down his complete site or just disable the navigation temporarily or even have some nasty message displayed. Frankly i never had to do this in the past 10+ years, this is just theory but i think it works. For html sites, you can encode the whole source so that the client can't update it until he wires your money.

yeah i skipped the introduction but better late than never. i've been off ever since

Hi all, i'm glad i've found this great community. Although i'm not UK based (yet), i hope you don't me hanging around:) I'm an allround print & web designer, engaged in a full time job and taking freelance assignments occasionally. I have 10+ yrs of experience doing front-ends, flash, corporate stationery, multimedia and such. In fact i always wanted to be a 3D designer but apparently ended up doing webdesign and 3D remained a hobby. When offline, i do a lot of travelling and photography. I hope you can benefit from my presence. My humble work can be seen at http://morfon.com

Thank you guys for all your comments and for the warm welcome:) I've been offline for a while so i missed some of the replies. Meanwhile i'm in serious talks with a recruiter about a Gibraltar based job, it looks promising but nothing is sure yet. Not a big $$$ but i think the location itself compensates for it all. Thanks for the interview hints sheeby, i'm not too worried about questions that concern management skills, in fact i'd be more interested in design/coding specific questions that may occur during an interview. Honestly i'm not a manager type dude, i prefer focusing on the actual creative work. Anyway it's good to know that it's not the age factor that makes me land or miss the job A buddy of mine, 37, just got hired after the second interview. Although he's a flash coder and a pretty good one.

Well thanks, i'm checking the flights and hopefully in may i'll be inhaling the London smog. I'm confident concerning my chances but we'll see.

Hey guys, i just found this great community, this is my first post. I'm wondering if some fellow designers have a deeper insight into the job seeking process and would be willing to share this valuable knowledge I'm a Senior Designer, currently employed at a German dev company but looking to relocate to the UK. I've recently registered to some major job hunting sites, jobserve and monster, just to see if i fit the bill. Some recruiters were interested and gave me a call and i also applied for a couple senior positions. The thing is that i'm not UK based yet, whick makes it pretty hard to go for an interview immediately. However my biggest concern is this: as i'm in the mature phase of my career now (age 40) i don't know if this is a major drawback or i can turn it to my advantage. The crew at most IT companies are way younger, mid 20's, dudes of my age are sitting in the leather chair. And i know the competition is tight, a recruiter told me they receive dozens of applications for each vacancy. So is age a pivotal factor? Or it's only your portfolio & skills that matters... The other question may sound stupid but i never been to an actual interview in my entire life. I've been working for this company for over 6 years now, i was hired without real competition so all we had is an informal conversation about salary expectations and stuff. Prior to that i was approached by another company where i spent only a year and before that i was freelancing. So what sort of questions can you expect when you are interviewed for a senior position? Are you required to demonstrate your skills or just to show of your portfolio? If any of you guys went through this i'd be glad to know some details. Thx in advance.