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Portfolio / Journal - 3 themes - Feedback please!

M

majorp

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Nov 28, 2005
314
0
UK !!!
Wouldn't mind a little feedback on 3 themes I have done. Which one you think is the best. How can I improve it. I'm learning so any criticism is welcome.

You can change to each theme using the theme switcher in the sidebar.

Please be honest, I can take it!

http://tinyurl.com/39exv6

Thanks

PS. I know about problems with IE, I'm working on them.
 
I honestly really like the paper theme. It's simple and appealing. And is def. unique. One small critique is on the contact drop-down, your contact email and links start off as white and are hard to see against the transparent white bg.

Overall, I'd say it is a very tasteful use of JQuery and theming of wordpress.

On your dark and light themes, I feel like your hidden panels are not obvious enough - finding them is probably too subtle a task to ask all potential clients/employers to do. On the light theme in particular, it's difficult to discover the large upper panel.

Over-all, though, I think you are on a good track with the project. It comes across as professional and not student work.
 
The paper theme is my favorite, but you have a lot of white text on light backgrounds. I can see that it's there, but I can't read it. Also, I would have the sidebar shown by default and then give visitors the option to hide it. Or show it for a moment when it loads and then hide it. The idea is to let your visitors know that it's there. Many people won't spend enough time looking around to find the dropdown option.
 
With it being for an Interaction Design student I find the site hard to navigate and interact with. Things are very un-obvious on all themes. Items you want people to click on need to be more apparent and look "interactable" so they know they can click on it. The side bars lack contrast in some areas as other have mentioned. The paper theme looks the best, but that side bar is hard to find. I wouldn't have known about it except that I JavaScript disabled by default for new pages. It should be out always or at least by default.

Your search field should also have a search button to be complete. I also think the search text field could use a border on it, just something subtle to give it a little depth. There's a lot of empty space at the top of the page. I'd bring it up so people can more quickly get to the content. The brown section also has a lot of empty space that doesn't seem to serve any purpose.
 
Thanks for your input!

I have changed the white text and made the navigation appear by default.

I'm trying to optimise images etc and have managed to drop total image size by nearly 200kb! (should never have been this big in the first place but I was using .png's)

Is there anything else I can do to speed things up?

http://tinyurl.com/39exv6
 
Can you add a load script that launches the blinds/dropdown effect once the page loads fully? That way the viewer would see the reveal animation. It would be a nice transition.

As is, there really is no point/functionality in being able to hide it, except to show off some javascript bling capabilities, so you might as well show it off with the reveal.

Also, I miss the two different colors of the teeth-borders at the bottom. Now they are the same salmon color. I also liked how the shapes/teeth would have fit together if your space in between had been taken out. Now the shapes are vertical mirror images and I feel like that is a slight loss of playfulness/detail.

Lastly, your version number at the top left is partially covered by a transparent horizontal bar, and that is a bit distracting/tacky.
 
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