looking for opinions on the new design

[jonra01]

Well, I've shot my mouth off in here enough times that I figured it was time to give you guys a chance to critique my stuff.

I've been working on a new design for my personal site for a couple of days. I did the layout in Photoshop and then created the site in Dreamweaver (mostly). It still isn't finished, needs some minor tweaking.

This is only the index page. I still have to come up with a design for the inner pages. It's all css and javascript - no tables. I have to take the styles out of the html and put them in the stylesheet, but it works for now. Some of the links don't work, because I haven't created those pages yet. The links that do work just point to the current pages on the site.

I'm looking for criticism, good, bad, and ugly. Do you like the design? How about the way it functions? Load too slow? Not flexible enough? Any suggestions on improving it? Should I junk it and start over? I promise not to be offended by anything you might say.

http://www.jonra.com/blog/newndx.html

John

[JWJ]

I love it ... it's excellent.

In an instant your visitor can see the purpose of the site, what it's content is and where to find it. It took me a moment to realise that the 'menu' was the whole screen itself but that was probably just me being a bit slow.

I didn't take notice of the loading speed but I was not aware of having to wait (but I am on broadband). I will not critique the content because, as you know, I have commented on that elsewhere. That said, I am most defintley looking forward to seeing all of your content again under the new design.

Excellent job .... well done.

[Sharron]

oh I absolutely love the front page! You really should tell me how you utilized Adobe to do that without using slices. I was a tab thrown off balance when I left the front page and bam, a entirely different color scheme and layout. I was not expecting that, it was like hey is this the same site?

I would say stay consistent with the colors throughout, it is very dramtic and compelling.


EVEN ON MY 24000BPS DIAL UP CONNECTION IT LOADED VERY QUICKLY, I didn't notice any lag.

[activewebs]

Brilliant , ace , wow

This is a new concept in design to us, its so different, its really really good

Would you mind if we tried this style on one of our sites in the future? it is very inspiering

We also are on broad band so load time was OK

Rich

[jonra01]

Thanks for the comments, all. I've been tweaking it and am almost done. Still need to separate the styles from the code, but that's about it. Then I can start on a design for the inner pages. I have no idea where to start on that, but hey, that's part of the fun.

I know it's kind of a shock to go from this page to the old design. As of now, I'm planning on using a color pallete for the inner pages. I have one chosen already. Whether I'll use color to indicate different sections of the site is something I haven't decided yet. It's fairly simple to experiment using css, so I'll probably try a number of options.

Anyone who wants to use this layout idea is more than welcome. I stole the idea from someone else. Who said, "Good artists borrow, great artists steal"? That's been the nature of the web from day 1. Find a site you like and borrow some of the ideas, then improve on them.

Sharron, I don't use slices at all. I don't think they give you enough control. Once my layout is done I turn on and off layers as needed to see what I want then select an area with the rectangular marquee tool - copy merged - file/new (this defaults to the size of your selection) - paste - save for web. I do this for every image I need including text titles and menu images (if used). It takes a while, but as I said it gives you total control. And, it results in smaller, more compact images.

Thanks for looking everyone,

John

[OldAndInTheWay]

sure I like the design, clear and attractive just make me want to know what's the stuff hide inside.

if you like CSS tricks you can even replace javascript onmouseover by CSS (that's what I attempt to do on my homepage to popup photos)
the original idea is due to Eric Meyer's CSS edge

great photos of lake superior which looks like a sea.


ah, just one thing to improve : the text accross the pictures (when mouseover) is not marked enough.
Patrice

[jonra01]

Patrice, thanks for the feedback and for the link to eric's site on css.

I looked at his page about loading images with hover and it doesn't look like it would work for this site. He also states that it won't work for IE 5.x. I think I'll stick with javascript. The few users who don't have it enabled will still have alt tags, cursor change, and text links at the bottom.

I'm not sure what you mean about the text on the images. Do you mean they aren't obvious enough or that they should be a different color to make them stand out more? I was actually planning on cleaning them up a bit to make them standout a little less. Right now, the centers of the closed letters like 'a' and 'e' are too dark.

About lake superior - it is the largest of the Great Lakes. It has 4385 km / 2726 miles of shoreline and is 406 m / 1,332 ft. deep at the deepest point. The Great Lakes contain 25% of the world's freshwater. Michigan is surrounded on all but one side by 4 of the lakes. Our shoreline is equal to the Atlantic ocean shoreline from Maine to Florida. And, it's all clean, clear freshwater.

Sorry guys, couldn't help bragging about my favorite place.

John

[OldAndInTheWay]

thank you John for your answer,
I have been long to answer because it was last evening I wrote the comments.

about the text coming when the mouse is over the images it is just difficult to read. my screen resolution is 1280x1024.

about css tips:
my website is only personal and non profit and I learned from the stats that the most part of visitors is using recent browsers.
Everyone connected to the web is today able to get a recent browser for free.
software developers won't make anything for ms-dos system anymore.
Even my xp don't accept my cubase midi software that was nice on my old 95 windows.

you can take a look at my homepage based on popup image with CSS it's working in IE 5.5.

talking about your area I really apreciate the description about lake superior, we learned a little about it (school days are a bit far away now)
and I understand you like that place.

BTW I also appreciate the area I am living now that's why I made my site dedicated to landscapes photography.

patrice