Firstly, I'm a forum newcomer so I would like to say hello once more! HIYAAA!
I’ve come to this section because I have just finished a site to showcase my development skills (or lack of therein) so that I can attempt to promote the business in my local area, and hopefully make a bit of money. I’ve been working on and off in development for about 8 years, but have really tried to push my knowledge in the past 2 years.

 

http://www.studiobryte.co.uk

 

The front end of the site is built using Compass and Zen-Grids in an attempt to create a responsive and extensible site. The back-end of the site is built on the Laravel framework; I’ve been working with this framework for around a year now and absolutely love it, though frankly there isn’t an awful lot of server-side functionality on this particular site, yet.

 

I tried to build the site from a mobile-first CSS viewpoint but in a rush to get it uploaded I sort of stepped over a few rules and now it’s somewhere between mobile-first and desktop-first :/ whoops!

I tried to implement an animated SVG through CSS transitions embedded in the SVG, though this only appears to currently work only with Chrome and Firefox, and can be glitchy to say the least.

 

What I would like is some constructive criticism and your honest views on the site, as the only people I’ve showed it to so far are friends, and often friends are the very best of liars when it comes to not offending. Strange that I should seek solace in strangers!

 

Here are some points I have ascertained through the development:

 

Negative:

1. The SVG: When the SVG works, I think it looks quite nice and relaxing, and scales quite well (depending on browser). However the lack of support (or my lack of understanding on how to support it) means that the SVG is largely useless, and when it does work a quick look at the chrome developer tools timeline shows that it is constantly repainting itself. I’m not sure if it is my own paranoia but I’m sure the site has got my fan blowing quite a few times, and I’m concerned it could be the sun (it’s based on

a full 360 rotation over 25 seconds).

 

2. The Menu: I’ve noticed that the menu was behaving incredibly odd in older version of Safari. It utilises the jQuery slideDown function, and after reading up there appears to be quite a lot of problems with implementing the function in similar menus, however a lot of people where using a fix that did not work on my site, so it could just be my shoddy code :E

 

3. IE8 support: It hasn’t got any, yet. Are many people still using IE8? I checked the browser usage stats and roughly 3% of the 12% of IE users are using IE8. Does everybody else still add support for IE8? What’s the cut-off point nowadays?

That’s all I can think of at the moment but I’m sure I can

think of more given a little time.

Thank you all for your time!

In general it's pretty good, there are only a few things I would change

 

There is not enough contrast between the header and the menu text (white against orange) I would probably use your brown colour that you have on the drop effect

 

There is way too much text, too much to take in all at once

 

It's lacking hyracki, nothing pointing to the important parts of your content

 

The fonts could do with a change, something more contemporary, I would not use script based writing

 

My personal opinion is that I am not over keen on the colours, but that is just my personal opinion so unless your research says otherwise, leave them as they are.

 

Overall a it's a bright pleasing site that just needs a little work up.

Thank you for your feedback Fuzzy Logic!
I've had similar feedback regarding the colour scheme and the typeface, it can come across pretty bland in part :/ back to the drawing board! Luckily enough most of the colouring is stored in variables so it shouldn't take an age to correct when i find the right scheme.
Do you think cutting down on the intro text by half and separating it into a 2-column layout might make a difference? Or do you mean there is too much information on the services pages too? I can waffle on

I checked on a contrast checker and you're right, white on #FDC572 doesn't pass any WCAG compliancy tests, however the brown link colour passes all up to AAA.
Thanks for the heads up and the advice!

Welcome,

 

With regards to the amount of text, I would not do any more than 7-8 words across and 5-6 lines down in each little section on the homepage, You could get away with a few more lines elsewhere but not too many, It is sometimes hard to condense all you want to say in there but it needs to be direct, to the point with no waffle just so your audience gets the message but does not get bored.

Hi,

 

I'm just a hobbyist (without a responsive site), but I've appreciated being steered towards these helpful sites just recently..

 

PageSpeed Insights and GTMetrix

 

I think your site looks nice.

 

I did notice that a full-screen maximized browser at 1920x1200 breaks the menu.

 

See this example screenshot.