Comments on: 2 steps forward; 6,124 steps backward

By: Misha Griffith

Misha Griffith — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 15:04:21 +0000

Amen, brother, you are preaching to the choir! Ten years from now, designing sites and browsing them will be a WYSIWYG affair, and we will all laugh at the gyrations we are suffering. But yes, our assignment is due in just a few weeks. Aside from what you think are problems, I thought your site, on the whole, was one of the best we critiqued. I love your choice of title font-very period. And I agree with Laura-make the site three columns across and skip the buttons. It is an introductory page, let it be so. I totally disagree with Dr. Petrik about one-word buttons–if only because I had a terrible time navigating with them on our assignment to use the screen-reader. Your concept has an old fashioned elegance to the problem. They feel like “calling cards”. Those were specially embossed cards the wealthy Victorians carried to announce themselves when visiting. The really special ones had photographs on them. I think it is where we got the modern tradition of business cards. Anyway, I would give the navigation statements a different look than just underlining. Another font, perhaps?

By: veprek.com » Blog Archive » Design Critiques

veprek.com » Blog Archive » Design Critiques — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 13:58:18 +0000

[...] because I thought she did a really great job and the critique got a little carried away, and on James’ blog. Perhaps I’m saying this because I know that for this project, I worked nearly non-stop on it [...]

By: Laura

Laura — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 13:55:34 +0000

I really, really like your site design. I mean, you’re lucky to be working with such cool images, but you also came up with, I think, a rather creative horizontal layout. It’s a little different and it works. So, to your design question: I would keep this design. I would consider making the columns wider so that the three cover the whole body section adn there is no troublesome gap on the left. Your photos at the top and bottom are excellent. I have a couple of comments that may help.

1) Try making the background color of the whole page the same color as the light color in the header so that it blends.
2) I think the three different fonts you use in the header and then titles just below are distracting from one another. Try repeating the top one in the titles below, and make those your “buttons.” I would also take out the links in the paragraphs and the text that essentially says “click here.” Instead, I would make what you currently have as link text into a subheading, like “Overview of the Corps of Engineers’ involvement in the Canal Zone.” Make it slightly smaller than the title but larger than the main text. The title and image should be clickable, but I would not add a link in the text.

As to your development issues with Dreamweaver and IE, I would download Firefox and use that with its developer extension, so you can see where your troubles are. Then, check it in IE after you’ve gotten it where you want it in Firefox, and do damage control.

Let me know if you have any questions. I’m happy to help.

Laura