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New website design-advice needed

Shadow

Shadow

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Feb 17, 2006
1,577
1
I am re-designing my website (X-Sector.net) and have come up with 2 designs so far. They are both similar to each other, but I'm not sure what else they "need". I like the design, but ATM its just not good enough.
Link no longer works (Vertbar-at time of post @ 0.7 Alpha)
Link no longer works (Hozbar-at time of post @ 0.2 Alpha)

Neither of them are finished-they both need a lot of work (for example, I'm gonna change the colour scheme). I like Vertbar the most, but I cant get the damn NavBar to work correctly in IE :mad:. All the content is just filler ATM.

None of the links work yet.

Any C&C is completley welcome. Compare them to the website which is currently being used (linkness)

ChrisG

P.S. YES its based on my.Mac and the images are from there to-just as placeholders.
 
ChrisG said:
P.S. YES its based on my.Mac and the images are from there to-just as placeholders.
Click to expand...

It's impossible to judge a site that is a near exact copy of another one, even if the images are just "place holders."

We wouldn't be able to tell you anything without knowing what original images would replace those place holders, unfortunately. Even with entirely different images, the design would still be very similar, which would make it hard to give it an orginal critique.

But, appearance aside, I'd highly recommend *not* using tables to position your elements. That is not standards-compliant nor good design practice. Use CSS for positioning and styling.
 
To answer the question you did ask:
1)The nav looks better on the left hand side in this case

To answer the questions you didn't ask:
1)Don't change my cursor, it's annoying and goes against the basic operation of a browser
2)"the next generation of graphic design" + "Site does not display correctly in internet explorer"

Oh where to start, "next generation" this looks an awful lot like a .Mac/iWeb theme, which is fine if your showing vacation photos or writing about your cat. But to call it the next generation of graphic design is pretty pretenses and it's certainly not true.

"site does not display correctly in internet explorer"
and this is the next generation? like it nor not, IE is still the standard, so to put a line like that in there pretty much says "I'm too lazy to follow standards or test in other browsers"

Your current site is actually better than this, although it is lacking in content.

Take this post with a grain of salt, I'm just one person and this is my opinion. Which quite often doesn't jive with this particular web forum, often I think a site is crap while others think it's great. So whatta I know :p
 
I expected more of the next generation of graphics design. The site is ok though, at least it doesn't look like it's made by a 12 year old colorblind kid.
As in less is more, animations can be nice if they are done properly, most of the time this isn't the case though.

If you look at this site:
http://www.quocvo.nl/ (don't mind the background music)
It doesn't even use icons (as in your home and help icon), but still looks rather pro to me.
Your beta-design looks like another one of the millions of (amateur) photography/webdesign sites out there to me.

But I see you are still putting a lot of work in it, so show it to us what changes you made to it later on.
If I had to choose between the two layouts I would go for the one with the nav bar on the left though. I'm not saying this should always be the case, but in this case it looks better then the one on the top.
 
I think that the original site design is much better than either of the new ones.
There is a nice refined simplicity to it and it's not so gray. Of the two that you put up, the vert bar is better, but the items in the nav bar are too far from each other and the rest of the page is too scattered. Empty space is great in print design, but not in Web design.

If you're designing Web sites professionally, I would not recommend using iWeb to do it. iWeb is fine for personal sites, but it really produces bad code and bloated sites. For a business it is simply not acceptable. i would recommend, for your own sanity (less fighting with IE) and for your clients sake, that you get a copy of Dreamweaver and you design your site using CSS.
 
baleensavage said:
If you're designing Web sites professionally, I would not recommend using iWeb to do it. iWeb is fine for personal sites, but it really produces bad code and bloated sites. For a business it is simply not acceptable. i would recommend, for your own sanity (less fighting with IE) and for your clients sake, that you get a copy of Dreamweaver and you design your site using CSS.
Click to expand...


But it's next generation!!1!1!eleven!!1! :D
 
baleensavage said:
Ack, that site violates two of my own Web user pet peeves: Resizing the window and popups that even Firefox won't kill. Plus music on a homepage is generally a no no unless you are a music site or multimedia site.
Click to expand...

Strange firefox kills the pops here, and yeah music in the background is mostly a no-go.
I always open my sites in a new tab though so didn't notice the resizing untill now. But still all I wanted to show was the main page, how he made it simple yet good looking. It's not my site though so sorry can't help it :p

p.s. just noticed he also has a 10pixel black gap at the top that seems bugged. Ah well ignore this example. Anyone else knows a clean and simple but good looking site
 
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