gdehms

Hey guys, I'm looking for some quick feedback on my little personal portfolio website for college Here ya go: http://tinyurl.com/y8e3g4e I was just want to hear if there's anything.. strikingly wrong about it. I can't really test IE6 right now, so if anyone wants to check that out please do. I tried fixing the transparency issues, but for some reason my retro-installation of IE6 doesn't seem to be affected by any of it.

I definitely like the new one better than the old one.. there really is no comparison. The only problem I have is that you didn't really put much effort into making it look different from the base theme, Infinity. I find it odd when web designers just use templates for their portfolio websites.. a portfolio should be personal and an expression of yourself.

Hell, you don't even need a tutorial. Just look at website sources.. View > Source, find check out how the navigation for most sites are structured. You can look at and copy other websites CSS too.. just find out the location of the stylesheet they're linking too. From there you can fiddle around with it until it fits your website. HTMLDog.com is good for teaching the basics if you need help. http://www.webcredible.co.uk/user-friendly...tion-menu.shtml Here's a good place to find out how to make a CSS based navigation. http://wellstyled.com/css-nopreload-rollovers.html Here's how to use rollover images. It's quite simple really.. put your two image together in one file, either stacked horizontally or vertically (I prefer vertically). You make the <li> item the same size as the original item.. and all you do with the a:hover effect is you switch the background position to move the image so it fits. It's quite simple and quite powerful.

For creating your rollover navigation bar you definitely used a table. It actually looks to me like you used Dreamweaver to make the table for the navigation and the rollover Javascript (it does it for you automatically). Trust me, there are much much better ways to make a rollover navigation with pure CSS. The problem with rollover Javascript is that if you roll over it, you actually have to wait for the image to load. That sucks. Using CSS you make the two separate images into one, and when you rollover it it actually slides the image down. So there's no loading to be done after the initial page load.

I dunno.. I think the green background works fine. No more textures though.. just fiddle with the color a bit of the green till it looks right.

I think colors are extremely important when it comes to designing a website. For me, I come up with a color scheme first, then put in everything else. It makes it much easier for me than to just start the layout with no idea of what colors I'm going to be using. Bad colors can break a website, while good colors can make a website look very good and memorable. There are plenty of places to get some good color palettes.. I use colourlovers.com. I get a bunch of pallets and bookmark all of them in a folder so if I ever need some color inspiration I just go to my bookmarks. Colors do depend, however, on what the content has. Pink is feminine.. but there really aren't masculine colors as much. Web design portfolios, in my opinion, should have strong or prominent colors, while an online magazine should have a simple color pallet with a mostly neutral colors. It all depends on the situation. The reason blues, especially light blues, are so good is because there really is no strong alternative. Light red is.. pink. Light green is ok, but blue is still calmer and easier on the eyes.

There we go.. What would also be cool is if you added a JQuery slider plugin, such as Jflow or the Coda Slider so that all your content is available on one page so that after your website is loaded, no other loading is necessary to view the other content. Here's an example of what I mean: http://www.panic.com/coda/ When you click one of the tabs all of the content just slides over. It'd be pretty cool with your layout.

It wouldn't be too hard to get this to be better.. just line all your columns up at the top, and get uniform padding for all 3 columns.

It still just looks.. well, not 90s, but certainly a few years old. Web design is a quick changing environment and if you don't keep up your website just doesn't look very good. One thing CSS and HTML can't do is just make your website look good. First thing that really matters is colors. You need to have good colors on your website. They can't cause eye strain, but they need to be interesting and inviting. Right now you have green and brown.. which would be ok, but you picked some pretty 'nasty' shades of them IMO. Go to ColourLovers.com and look up some good pallets.. those can help greatly. 2nd thing that doesn't look great is the complete overuse of stock photography. Vector or stylized graphics, not real life imagery, is 'in' these days. Right now I see a picture of a city in a brown shade, a poorly-photoshopped in laptop, and random stock images placed throughout the site. No. Carbon made is a website that really demonstrates what's in right now. It's logo is a cute vector guy with a horn (?). You simply don't have a logo or any sort of branding. Another thing that's sticking out is your logo. You are using a harsh, ugly gradient on your 'logo'. Subtle gradients are the way to go these days, as you can see from the carbon made website. The top blue area has a subtle lighter-blue to blue gradient, the dark gray area as a lighter-gray to dark gray gradient. This is a current trend, but it is appealing and should be used somewhat. Notice the lack of pointy edges on that website.. there are none, because it uses rounded corners. Those are also a fad for websites to give them a softer feel. You really also need to just simplify and be creative with the layout. No one can teach this. Right now it looks like you are following a template.. which is lame. I would want a web designer that has creativity so that I get something that's unique. Those are just a few things that you could do.

Black Blue I think I may just offer all 3 as backgrounds.. I still like my purple background, but my tastes probably don't match up with everyone. The black just feels cold, but the blue is certainly workable.

Really? Do you think a blue would work better? I kind of like how the colors complement each other. I guess I'll need more opinions.

Thanks for your responses guys. I'm getting conflicting messages here.. so I'll just keep tinkering with it until it looks just right.

1st idea I just came up with this idea recently, and I'm making a template out of it. I also found some cool colors to go with it (COLOURlovers = extremely useful). Tell me what you think! I haven't coded it yet. I just want some preliminary thoughts. Things to point out: - Do you like the use of brushes? I'm going for a natural theme for it, which I why I included them. - Do you like the colors? - Specifically, what of the sidebar color? Click to make bigger! 2nd idea This one has been sitting on the backburner for a while.. it uses the same basic layout but different colors and stuff. Let me know what you think of this one also, if you have an opinion! Thing to note: I'm thinking of zebra-ing the sidebar.. but which font weight, style, and color do you like the best? (there are three choices) Click to make bigger!

Instaban! Check out the link in her sig

Still really doesn't do anything for me. If anything, it reminds me of the CSS gallery CSSem, which to be honest looks much better and more professional. You don't have a color scheme, a general theme, or any of the little details that CSS em has. Design is all in the little details, and to be honest all you have done is stuck a repeating wooden background on a Wordpress theme. That doesn't look good.