I you would like to give me some feedback on my site and also help answer a couple of questions
I would like some text to appear above all the main images when you click on the thumbnail. How can I do this? Is it with a hide target layer?
Also when my girlfriend looks on her laptop she has to scroll down to see the thumbnails but when she clicks on each one it always jumps back to the top of the screen so she has to scroll down each time.
And lastly is there any way to stop the nav text across the top re-flowing when on a smaller screen?
I would like some text to appear above all the main images when you click on the thumbnail. How can I do this? Is it with a hide target layer?
How are you getting the main images to change? Same method for a text layer with the same settings as the main images.
Also when my girlfriend looks on her laptop she has to scroll down to see the thumbnails but when she clicks on each one it always jumps back to the top of the screen so she has to scroll down each time.
Why not align the thumbnails at the top so they are visible on a smaller screen. There is a newspaper saying “above the fold” - same principle applies on the web.
And lastly is there any way to stop the nav text across the top re-flowing when on a smaller screen?
Make your navigation Div ‘item4’ wider to accommodate larger text.
I can’t offer any technical advice. From a design standpoint I really love the simplicity of it. My only suggestion MIGHT be to make your contact info red to stand out just a bit from the larger type. Even just making the bold Email & Call words a bright red might do it, on the opening page and the get in touch page. You used that splash of color very effectively in your ad campaign for HotProspects.
How about a form on the contact page in addition to the email address?
Yes, there is a way to stop the page from going to the top from the bottom thumbnails. Can’t remember exactly off the top of my head, but you need to set the External link protocol to javascript - I think. Do a search on the forum, there is detailed explanations.
Clean up the headers type for the titles. Things like “hello.” and “If you’d like to discuss a project…” The quality is bad, at least in Firefox, and might serve better as actual HTML text. You could try and do that in Arial, set the font size to be something like 24-26px and then give it some CSS by putting ‘letter-spacing: -1px’ and see how that looks. The text now is somewhat blurry.
Set your Page Default HTML to be ‘XHTML 1.0 Strict’ or ‘XHTML 1.0 Transitional’, HTML 4.01 is out and if you’re trying to get a gig then I’m sure people will want the latest code buzzwords, even though you used FW to make it happen. It’s also good that your site validates.
For your portfolio you should consider having the menu there be highlighted for the current page, because you click on ‘Some of my work’ and who knows what they’re looking at.
Since you are looking for work or jobs, you should consider putting your contact information somewhere on every page.
On the home page I’d push over the text on the left a bit more so it fits better into the ‘slide’ idea. You might want to consider adjusting the leading or ‘line-height’ of that opening text so it breathes a bit more.
You may consider adding more color to your site. I understand the black and white, but perhaps highlighting color here and there might make the projects bounce. This might work for links to e-mail, links in the portfolio page, changing the black background of your logo so it’s different on every page, who knows. I always try and highlight things I want people to notice.
You may consider pulling some design from your blog page into your site itself to have more of a visual consistency across the board. You use heavy black text on the main pages, but in the blog it’s a lighter gray / grey. It feels like now the two are different parts when typically they should fit together seamlessly.
The link in your logo graphic on your blog goes back to your blog, but on the actual site the logo isn’t linked anywhere to anything. Is that supposed to be that way?
Name your CSS styles. Employers and job people look at your code and they look at your CSS styling. They’re going to know you used FW and, as we all know, FW isn’t used in professional offices. If you’re cool with that, I’d still consider naming your styles properly. Instead of ‘style34’, it could read ‘highlight’ or something. If you look at the pro’s, this is how they work.
Kind of along the lines with 9, name your DIV’s properly. Item1, item2, etc…isn’t how the pro’s work. Name things like ‘header’, ‘body’, ‘footer’. Think of your site as a letter you want someone to write back to you about (contact).
Thanks Dan, that’s some really good feedback, could I clarify some points with you as this is my first Freeway site.
How do I apply CSS styles like letter spacing and leading. I did want to have all the text as HTML but the bigger it went the clunkier it looked, plus can I adjust the paragraph space?
Ideally I’d like my blog to match my site but have no knowledge of how to edit the Wordpress theme?
I’m not sure what you man by point 5. Do you mean make the text box narrower?
Having a menu higlighted for the current page. Is this done is the link style or just by changing the text colour on that page.
Sorry if this sounds a lot, probably more to come. Oh I’ve always wondered, what do the pros use?
Thanks
Paul
On 29 Oct 2009, 4:23 am, Dan J wrote:
Here’s a top 10 list about the site:
Clean up the headers type for the titles. Things like “hello.” and “If you’d like to discuss a project…” The quality is bad, at least in Firefox, and might serve better as actual HTML text. You could try and do that in Arial, set the font size to be something like 24-26px and then give it some CSS by putting ‘letter-spacing: -1px’ and see how that looks. The text now is somewhat blurry.
Set your Page Default HTML to be ‘XHTML 1.0 Strict’ or ‘XHTML 1.0 Transitional’, HTML 4.01 is out and if you’re trying to get a gig then I’m sure people will want the latest code buzzwords, even though you used FW to make it happen. It’s also good that your site validates.
For your portfolio you should consider having the menu there be highlighted for the current page, because you click on ‘Some of my work’ and who knows what they’re looking at.
Since you are looking for work or jobs, you should consider putting your contact information somewhere on every page.
On the home page I’d push over the text on the left a bit more so it fits better into the ‘slide’ idea. You might want to consider adjusting the leading or ‘line-height’ of that opening text so it breathes a bit more.
You may consider adding more color to your site. I understand the black and white, but perhaps highlighting color here and there might make the projects bounce. This might work for links to e-mail, links in the portfolio page, changing the black background of your logo so it’s different on every page, who knows. I always try and highlight things I want people to notice.
You may consider pulling some design from your blog page into your site itself to have more of a visual consistency across the board. You use heavy black text on the main pages, but in the blog it’s a lighter gray / grey. It feels like now the two are different parts when typically they should fit together seamlessly.
The link in your logo graphic on your blog goes back to your blog, but on the actual site the logo isn’t linked anywhere to anything. Is that supposed to be that way?
Name your CSS styles. Employers and job people look at your code and they look at your CSS styling. They’re going to know you used FW and, as we all know, FW isn’t used in professional offices. If you’re cool with that, I’d still consider naming your styles properly. Instead of ‘style34’, it could read ‘highlight’ or something. If you look at the pro’s, this is how they work.
Kind of along the lines with 9, name your DIV’s properly. Item1, item2, etc…isn’t how the pro’s work. Name things like ‘header’, ‘body’, ‘footer’. Think of your site as a letter you want someone to write back to you about (contact).
To apply a CSS style that isn’t found in FW, but should be, you use the Extended button in the CSS styling window. So you’d create a style, name it something like ‘titles’ or even use ‘h2’ or ‘h3’ for it and then set the font to be Helvetica, set the size to be 24-26px, set the color to be ‘black’ and then click on the Extended button and enter ‘letter-spacing’ for the ‘name’ and enter ‘-1px’ for the value. Click OK and then Publish out and see what it looks like. I think it’ll take some tinkering in font-size for you to get what you want. But I feel that HTML text is always a plus. (NOTE: to see the results you’ll have to ‘View In Browser’)
I was saying that it should be seamless, but you could just match the style of it. That could include things like styling the text the same color, leading (line-height), and so on.
Right now the space around your logo fits better than the spacing of the text on the left. You might want to move that whole blurb of text (the ‘hello’ and underneath that) over to the right about 10-15px so it sits properly. Visually since the logo is smaller, you’ve managed to align it properly with the top and right side of the white box. But the text on the left doesn’t match that. I don’t feel that it needs precision here, just a kick on over a few pixels.
Well it depends on how you setup your list items for the menu on the portfolio page. You should have created an unordered list and you could have used the CSS Menu action to make it look cool. Instead you spaced over, put a pipe character, and then spaced some more. Go ahead and use the CSS Menu action and play around with it. You’d set it to ‘horizontal’ and then you could choose backgrounds and what not. It’d look much better and cleaner.
As far as what the Pro’s use. To me the Pro’s use Text Editor’s like Textmate and they don’t use ‘generators’ like FW. They tend be people who use their own style of writing code and like having the control over it. They care about validation and they care about customizing it on their own without a horde of Action’s to save them. It’s all interpretation. I’ve met people who use TextMate and I’ve met people that haven’t found ‘the one’ program they like using, and then there’s those Dreamweaver fan boys who live and die by it. Me, I prefer using FW sometimes as a jumping off point in the design process and then I take it to TextMate and grind out the details.
A great deal of it is personal choice based on what you feel is
important in terms of features and how you like to work. But sometimes
there are also requirements, expectations and preconceptions (or
prejudices) from employers (companies) of what constitutes a “proper”
or “professional” design tool to be considered. And make no mistake,
to these companies professional is synonymous with being able to code.
As Dan said, coding offers a degree of control and can be personal and
expressive in its own right and those people will only feel restricted
by code generators.
In my job searching/interviewing experience if you don’t use
Dreamweaver or hand-code using a hardcore text editor you are often
considered an amateur in the corporate world. Perhaps it’s not
fair…or maybe it is depending on your point of view and how you
choose to define “professional”.
That’s true Todd about the interviewing/experience. A majority of the time, the interviewer is an HR person who is looking for keywords in the ‘filter’ interview and if you’re not dropping them every so often that might mix things up.
I know that I’ve had Web Directors tell me that they hate Dreamweaver and that they use text-editors, but couldn’t name what exactly they used. I had an interview once where the entire corporate site was built in Frontpage and they loved it. Enough said. Another company was all about ‘web standards’ and they had a completely separate web design company working on their site and it didn’t validate and it gave java-script errors.
I read a quote the other day that read,
“Never be afraid of anybody or anything because remember that the ark was built by amateurs while the Titanic was built by professionals.”
Kind of stick to that idea and work out what’s best for you. Not everybody lives up to their title, they just got it so they could sound important. Some people deserve it, as well.