I have almost finished my portfolio site and could do with a bit of feedback please!! Im also have a slight problem with IE and i cant for the life of me figure it out so any advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

Cheers!!!

 

http://www.1303design.hostei.com

have to say that it looks dated. not retro, just dated.

 

the slideshow pics are pretty small, and the selector circle things (what's the proper name for those?) i.e. the pagination navigation are way too small to select comfortably.

 

'graphics' and '3d' are bit hard to read (and too small) in the nav

 

don't like the mystery navigation on the front page and the click target is too small (make the whole square clickable)

 

transitional doctype? er, why?

 

somehow the wow slider looks messy

 

blue border on logo looks uncertain - like it's messedup somehow

 

edit: what version of IE? what's the specific problem?

 

not seeing your bank gothic on the nav (and other places?) for example

Edited October 15, 201312 yr by dap

after looking at my site at a friends house all points are valid........back to the drawing board.......the homepage squares are supposed to be lined up like the contact page, i use dreamweaver as a code editor so it automatically sets up transitional......... got a whole lot of work to do tomorrow......looked good on my computer but i gotta learn to accomodate for everyone...still learning and i hand coded all but the photogallery so im making progress..... but i post on here for good feedback and i get that every time.....it was still better than my last personal page attempt.....this is why i need to get an internship so i can progress my learning, this course im doing is well outdated and im learning more off my own back......cheers dap much appreciated!!

i think maybe im trying to learn too much too quick, as well as the coding side of things im still trying to learn photoshop, im sharpening my autocad skills, still keep trying with sketchup and also now learning 3ds max. I think im trying to learn all the practical stuff quickly because i need to get some work and forgetting the simple stuff. Perhaps i need to stop trying to cover all bases.....and i think i definatley need to try n find a mentor and/or someone to guide me in the right direction. Ill get there im sure!!

i think maybe im trying to learn too much too quick, as well as the coding side of things im still trying to learn photoshop, im sharpening my autocad skills, still keep trying with sketchup and also now learning 3ds max. I think im trying to learn all the practical stuff quickly because i need to get some work and forgetting the simple stuff. Perhaps i need to stop trying to cover all bases.....and i think i definatley need to try n find a mentor and/or someone to guide me in the right direction. Ill get there im sure!!

 

How much time have you spent learning both Photoshop and the key coding languages respectively? There's nothing wrong with covering all the bases, the trap you've probably fallen into is starting to learn something, and then stopping midway through, to start learning something else. If you want my advice, absolutely learn HTML5 and CSS3 first. Photoshop nowadays is not only unnecessary to web development but borderline redundant given the advances in CSS3. Photoshop is great for mock up layouts, logo design, icons, buttons etc... but that's about it, and skilled developers can replicate these just with HTML and CSS.

 

I'll provide some comments on your current site however, to see if I can spark some ideas and improve your learning:

 

- The main logo is pretty shocking, not in a great way. I agree with dap, but also disagree - it is certainly dated, but it does look retro to me; something you'd expect to see lined with lights blinking away outside a club.

 

- Content is everything these days and there is a lack of it with your site. The home page just features three boxes (all of which are misaligned). Try exploring text-driven content, with some imagery to complement it.

 

- The 'BankGothic' font used with the nav text is, well, BankGothic - it's pretty bland. You've tried to stay simple which is great, but go even simpler - a tidy Arial/Tahoma/Calibri font would suffice nicely. Also, not sure why the bottom links are multicoloured? Seems juvenile, no offence.

 

- In some areas of your code you've used classes when IDs are usable. Generally you've used them correctly, but in some places (e.g. <div class="contact">) IDs are applicable.

 

- The background really should be bigger, it's not large enough to cover any reasonable screen size. Plus you can see it repeating, just to the left of the centred content.

 

Generally the site could use some touching up, but let's see what you come up with as time goes by.

Cheers throzen.

 

I have probably spent more time on coding as it was completley alien to me a few months ago,

 

I normally mock up designs on photoshop then use that as my reference when coding. The boxes looked fine on my machine and i cant figure out why they have gone misaligned on other computers. Im gonna go through my code again to try and figure out what the problem is.

 

The multi coloured nav was originally going to be white then coloured on hover over but for some reason i decided to listen to my missus lol.

 

I can change the banner at the top no probs and i think ill probably just go for a plain white background and choose a more universal font as when i looked on a friends computer BankGothic didnt show up. I think the reason i went for mainly images rather than text content is because im not very good at writing content and images was an easier option.

 

The reason im trying to learn so much stuff at once is because in the last few weeks ive had requests for building plans / 3d model, designing a 3d model for a bouncy castle company, business cards, logos etc..........the list goes on.........as i said before im trying to cover all bases but maybe trying too much at once....ill get there in the end im sure as when it comes to learning software im normally pretty good!!

 

Ill keep playing about with it for sure and thanks for all the advice. Once ive made the changes ill re post!!!

 

Cheers

 

Russ

Right.....have had a play about with the site......opinions would be greatly received!!!

 

Cheers

 

Russ

it's like all the design basics are missing or gone a bit awry

 

logo looks heavy - maybe off-black would work better? or with a (more)subtle dropshadow

 

too many black, monotonous horizontal lines and thickset borders on the nav images

 

not enough white space and centred text wiht enough; needs more white space around the images

 

still the default serif font

coloured text that looks like links, also a bit childish in those back to the 16 colours of zx spectrum (well it was 8+ with not enough contrast for example on that green.

try #333 text or slightly lighter for normal text and simply italicse or use small caps or something subtle for the product names

 

not much lines up with other elements

 

not clear that the bottom navigation is made up of links because nothing to differentiate them from normal text

 

have a look at some minimalist sites - search for them on smashing magazine for example