j-p

Lol... always resort to the light shade of grey first. It's liking checking if the power cable is plugged in before calling customer service

This is really some awesome work! Despite the huge amount of bootstrap styling you've blended it all together in something that looks really solid. How did you do the backend? Is it based on an existing CMS, have you used a framework or did you start from scratch? If there's one thing I would change it is the typography. Your design really deserves more than Verdana. I'm not talking about the frontpage here, but the page that actually shows the details of a property. The whole design is really brought down by it. Maybe if you agree, and while you're at it give the text a little more whitespace to both sides as well. It is not a lot of text, but because of the way it is styled it seems like it is. Perhaps you'll need subheaders to break the text down into digestible pieces. Not really sure... but there's something about the typography that's not quite right. Other than that nothing but praise!

Hey Nicolasks! Nice to see that you used some of my advice. Especially concerning the typography and the borders around the pictures. You've made quite some progress! Maybe go a little easier on the dropshadows though. Most of the time a 1px offset and blur is already sufficient. A good rule of thumb is that when you think it's barely visible it's exactly right. Give it a try and keep up the good work!

*** EDIT: This is just for the front page by the way!! I didn't mean for the text on the other pages to be green *** Made some quick tweaks in a chrome css editor. I'd like to stress that this is just an example to give an impression! It's not really polished or nicely cascaded css and some styles that should be left the same are overwritten. Also the fadein effect on your nav li a isn't affected but perhaps it could give you some inspiration on what could be done to improve things a little bit. body { background: #f8f8f8 !important; color: #92b219 !important; } nav ul { border-color: #909090 !important; } a { text-shadow: 0 1px 1px #fff !important; } nav li a.on { color: #f8f8f8 !important; background: #909090 !important; border-radius: 2px !important; text-shadow: none !important; } nav ul a, .services a { font-weight: 300 !important; font-size: 1em !important; text-transform: uppercase !important; font-family: helvetica !important; color: #909090 !important; letter-spacing: 0.05em !important; } .services a { font-size: 0.5em !important; text-transform: none !important; } nav ul { margin-bottom: 2em !important; } h1.center { font-family: "discoregular" !important; font-size: 2em !important; text-transform: uppercase !important; }

The basics are good. The website is quite easy to navigate and the design albeit not spectacular does its job. There's a few things that might get you started on making the page look a lot better. 1.) Not much time has been spent on typography. The choice of font, Helvetica doesn't do it justice. Don't get me wrong, I love Helvetica when it's used correctly. But maybe have a look on http://www.google.com/fonts/ (There's plenty of tutorials on how to make them work, but the process offered by Google is so ridiculously simple that I don't think you'll need them.) to pick something more appealing. Do not go overboard though. Keep it simple, typography is one of the most difficult aspects but can make or break a website. Perhaps Open Sans would be a safe bet. Also, the color of the font is full black everywhere which comes out a bit too strong and doesn't really 'guide' the visitor through the various parts of the page. Perhaps make it a little bit lighter and pick some different colours for parts of the page that deserve attention. Play with it. A greyish colour will go very well with the greens on the page. Last thing for the typography. Play a little with the letter spacing. Especially in the header. 2.) Whitespace... The rabbit pictures on the frontpage seem a little crammed together. Perhaps give them a little more space from each other? Also I see what you tried to achieve with the white border around the photos. Unfortunately the border is barely visible with the light blue background. One nice trick would be to give the photos a white background and a 5px padding on all sides. Then add a 1px border that, in lightness, is either slightly in between the white and blue or just a little darker than the blue. You could play even more by adding subtle CSS3 box shadow. Tutorials for that are easy to find. 3.) White background outside wrapper Have a look at http://subtlepatterns.com/ and pick a nice subtle whiteish pattern to replace the full white body background and then maybe add a subtle 1px border to your wrapper? This perhaps seems like a lot of critique, but it's really just meant to encourage you to play with some properties you might not have thought of yet. I haven't tried any of them with an in--browser css editor but it's the first things I would start messing around with if somebody gave me an hour to make some improvements.

@J.P -> You're not so bad yourself @Alluzion -> It seems quicker now, but try emptying your entire cache of the site. All temporary images etc. Sometimes it takes up to three to four seconds to load the entire page for me.

Hey man! Okay, so I looked up a nice site for what I consider a pretty good website for an analysis -> gtmetrix [dot] com (Sorry that I can't post you a link... This website has some childish newbie rules... Like the fact that I'm still waiting for my post where I'm offering a dribbble invite that has been waiting for approval for a couple of days now.) Anyway, according to the site above there's a few things you can still improve. Of course there are many more websites that offer similar services, one better than the other. Maybe it's best just googling for it and pick one that suits you best. Also, I assume it's Wordpress you have running? If so, did you mean server cache is in place when you said that cache is already in place? Or also Wordpress cache? That could help you as well. If not... then I guess it'd be the best choice moving it to a better server.

Hey man, I just read your question. Maybe a little late. I don't have the time right now to write you an answer, but I'll get back to you!

You really did a great job!! Getting close to 9gag for designers Only thing you might want to do is see if you can optimize your speed. Maybe use some caching if you're not already doing that. Perhaps it's just your webhost being slow, but if you're considering to launch this website for real (and I really like the concept) the loading speed needs to be improved.

There's another thing that just popped in my mind. I wouldn't be surprised if different ways of holding and using a device will also depend on the activity someone's using the device for. Playing a game could be more comfortable while using the index finger, but I assume this would also be subject to the game at hand.

Aaaah, I didn't check back here for a while. Thought the topic was dead already haha. Okay, I've been doing some small research as well. For a week, whenever I was at a restaurant, in the bus or in a tram, I've been keeping notes. I was on the lookout for people using their smartphone and if they matched iPhone or Galaxy like design I checked how they used it. I've observed 89 people and of course I understand that scientists will laugh at such a small scale investigation... but still, some data is better than no data. 76.4% or 68 of them were using their thumbs - 4 lefties - All portrait 9.0% or 8 of them were using their index finger holding the phone in their other hand - no lefties - All portrait 10.1% or 9 of them were switching between the options above - 1 leftie - All portrait 4.5% or 4 of them had the phone flat on the table using their index finger. - no lefties - 2 portrait - 2 landscape ​ ​Whether or not it in the end might be a good decision or not in terms of UX I've already found that there also some technical issues to workaround since there's no proper support for position: fixed across most mobile browsers. This feature is absolutely needed to achieve menu bars like mentioned without having to resort to all sorts of javascript even involving custom scrollbars. I've found some interesting articles concerning the above as well. If anyone is interested I'd be happy to post my findings. Cheers, JP P.S. I suck at wordgames ​

Hi Cibgraphics, thanks for your reply. What sort of variables would you be thinking of?

Hi all! I've been doing some studying in the area of mobile webdevelopment. Now whether that's responsive in my case or a dedicated mobile website doesn't really matter because this topic will be mostly focused on the user interface and as a result of that the user experience when mobile browsing. Now... to create some sort of a scope I'll be using the iPhone and Samsung Galaxy phones as an example here since apparently they're the most widespread amongst heavy mobile internet users (at least in my country). So here's the thing. Obviously when you're designing a website for mobile you're designing it for use with the thumb. Yet, to my surprise, most mobile or responsive webdesigns I have seen so far keep the navigational bar as a sticky to the top of the page. The problem I find is that when I need to use the navigation, or any other buttons located on that bar, I have to shift my phone in my hand to reach it since my thumb, being the short fat bastard he is, can't reach it. More often than not the palm of my hand accidentically touches some part of the screen which thanks to Murphy and his law always contains a hyperlink which in turn is activated and takes me to some place I didn't really want to go resulting in cursings galore and dead kittens. My question would be... Why not place this bar, or often used buttons at the bottom of the browser as a sticky where they are more easily reachable with the thumb? For IOS apps this is already the most common design pattern whereas android apps usually keep them at the top. For mobile browsing experiences however the most common patterns for a specific device shouldn't matter since it wouldn't be feasible to come up with a different layout for each mobile device anyway. In my honest opinion it would be desired to come up with a standard for mobile webdesign layout that is focused at the way people physically use their mobile phones in a greater extend than it is now. I would love to hear your opinions on this. With kind regards, JP

Hi there! Your website looks fine! Although not state of the art, at the very least it gives me the impression that I'm dealing with a professional company. Few points that could use some brushing up imho; Typographic styling of your copy text. (It's too small to start with) Background texture is a little too visible and drawing too much attention away from your content. The 'more' buttons under 'About Us', 'Services' and 'Contact Us' are not nicely aligned. Overall it could use some work, but it's a great start! Keep it up!! With kind regards, JP