ngray

Ok I've done a basic makeover of this Driving instructor website which is a fairly basic and simple design (the best I could do!). It appears to work fine in FF, IE6 & IE7, but I'm only 90% happy with it. It needs something else.

What would you change? I can see it needs something but I can't see what. Any suggestions from the professionals greatly appreciated. None of the links work, it's the template I'm worried about.

ngray

OMG is it so bad that those that looked (I saw you!) ran away screaming?

So, I've made some changes after a bit more coffee. It's really the header section I have a block on, unless you have any other suggestions too (bin it is one acceptable suggestion).

Those with exceptional insight may have noticed that my skills lie more in development than design (NEVER?!) so some inspiration would make my day...

TygerTyger

Ah, just the other side of Reading! Well it's certainly very clear and easily read, looks good for search engines. I guess if I had one suggestion I would make the backgrounds a bit fainter, they are just a bit too in-your-face and clash with the text a bit much. And it'll have the added bonus of shrinking the filesizes.

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Tim

I'd lose the speedo background completely and change the text from blue to black. It's not easy to read IMO.

The layout is nice and simple but I'd also consider softening up the red and blue colours that are predominant in the site. It does give an instant impression of being a hobby site created by an amateur and I think changing those colours would alter that.

Hope that helps rather than hurts and good luck with it

ngray

Brilliant, some good pointers, thanks for that both of you. Maybe put the speedo into the header instead? After I've lightened it.

I was wondering about the blues and reds myself too, so thanks for confirming my thoughts. The red came from the previous incarnation of the site - the red of an 'L' plate.

Helps and hurts, but only to remind me how much I've yet to learn about design

Terra

I didn't comment at first - everybody has their own design style / taste and I my first reaction just was - no, don't like it. However, that's neither helpful nor constructive and good design also should not be about "liking" hence my silence.

Having said that, after a 2nd viewing (and the disappearance of the background - very welcome), here's my thoughts:

-> due to the line under the header and the left column layout, it looks a bit "boxy", almost a bit as if it was frames (although it isn't)

-> the image (wing mirror) looks a bit lost - quite small, and looks a bit lonely

-> the design of the left column and the design of the page look disjointed, i.e. almost as if done by two separate people

-> my eye is drawn to the blurry image of counter but that doesn't really present the purpose of the site

-> the site is flexible width and goes across my whole screen (1280x1024) but the header / logo is squashed to the left (nb: on smaller screens, the header background goes behind the links & makes it hard to read)

Not sure though what to suggest instead - looking at other site designs & being "inspired" (i..e. knicking the best bits) is often a good strategy. Edith

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Simon

Actually I thought I`d replied to a previous incarnation, no pun intended, and somehow missed this new thread.
I too am also not a designer by any means, if some of you could see the first versions of some of the sites i built you`d be shocked! So feel free to ignore anything I say

I had a v. quick look yesterday lunch time , but didn`t have time to reply, I`ve had a quick look this morning at the site and i agree the site looks better without the background, so thumbs upf or that design change.

In relation to the comments about the variable width of the page and what happens when it is viewed on small monitors, you can use the css "min-width" to specify the minimum width of the site so that you can guarantee even on a tiny monitor it will still look how you wanted it to look.

Personal oppionon now about the top links, if a link isn`t active because the page isn`t written yet, i`d prefer to see it as a link maybe with a small under construction logo, although they can look tacky, and when the user clicks on the link show them a js alert saying coming soon, either that or don`t display the link at all.

The mouse logo at the bottom of the page, while you do expect that it can be clicked on you don`t know where the link will take you, its not obvious enough that its the site of the host/designer.

When I wake up a bit more I`ll post more comment as I think of them.

Good luck,

Simon

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Adam

Howdy!

I must confess to being one of those who looked and did nothing but I had to go to work so at least I have an excuse! However this morning I have been having a jolly good look; my findings and opinions below!

- site doesn't validate. See here. Only two errors which are easily fixable.

- I use a 1680 x 1050 display - when I maximised my screen some things looked a little odd. The scrolling box on the right doesn't seem to be in the same column as the logos. Also when the main text reached the bottom of the box on the left it wraps under it. I think it would be neater to keep it the same width all the way down.

- not sure about the speedo image in the header - it moves about and IMO I'm not sure you even need it?

- when you click to book the site completely changes - is there anyway to customise the booking pages to match the site (colour on left, header image)

- I like the simplicity of the site. It's readable, the content is good.

- Edith has a good point about looking at other sites and borrowing (rather than knicking!) the cool bits. I still have a lot to learn about design too and other peoples sites inspire me and give me ideas to play with.

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ngray

Ok thanks for that feedback, after an annoying session with DreamWeaver taking AGES to connect when simple FTP connects instantly, I've made some more changes based on your comments.

That's a simple template change being needed on the booking system software so I can do that sometime soon. But thanks for reminding me

That one's bugging me. I made the div position relative instead of absolute but it's still doing it. Time to read the CSS manual a bit deeper.

Should look reasonable now, but still more work to do. I also fixed the validation issues, thanks for pointing those out.

Simon

I`ve not loooked at the code, but i would only expect text to do that kind of thing when you have one of the divs with either the atrribute/value align=left or the css equivalent of float: left, if all you divs are position absolute and position relative then i don`t know what to suggest.

Simon

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Adam

you have your left div and rightpanel div within your content div. Try using them seperately, and using position:absolute on them). This should help your text issue but I'm not sure about the rightpanel. I gave up in the end trying to get 3 columns with CSS and went back to table!

[edit]
been having a play and using percentages as div width seems to help.

moved the righnav to under the left div. moved content to be a div just for the middle content. Changed the widths in CSS. Files attached. Needs some teaking probably but gives you an idea.
[/edit]
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PS - take out the position:absolute from the content div.!

Attached Files

Archive.zip (4.0 KB, 43 views)

ngray

Thank you Adam, very kind of you to look into it at such detail. I haven't had a chance to work on it yet today (well it is Sunday) but I'll certainly download that file and try again with what you suggest.

I'm not going to give up and go back to tables though (may regret saying that). I've found on some occasions FF doesn't seem to like % widths. Anyone else had that? Or is this a naiive question?

Other than that, does the site look any better now? Ok onto chapter 2 of "how to design a website" now.

ngray

Thank you everyone for your suggestions. I've made quite a few changes now - what do you think? It's still under construction so not everything works, but most of it is there.

Adam

looks much neater now that the text stays in the right place and the everything on the right is lined up. I also like that you have darkened the background on the left to make it stan out more.

You have a few more error snow when you validate the site!

Apart from that all good!

webmantra

When designing what was the lowest resolution that you're designing for? I usually design with 800x600 in mind. When I resize my browser to that, you page scrolls left to right. Up and down= good! Left to right= bad :-(

ngray

I've made a LOT of changes now, including a new skin for the online booking system. Be gentle with me....

Adam, I've not addressed any validation errors yet, but will do so soon. It should all work now, including the click to book section.

Adam

looks much better now the booking system is the same!

In 800x600 you have to scroll left and right a tiny little bit - not enough to annoying though I dont think.

My one small criticism would be the clio image on the first page - because it has a white background it blocks out the faded one behind.

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red-defender

My only comment is to ensure that you set the body background colour in your CSS. You are assuming that everyone has their browser background colour set to white, whereas I know quite a few people who use a different colour..... My browser BG colour is pink, so your pages look very strange!

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MrBen

I've noticed a couple of point about your secure setup. Firstly, using HTTPS brings up a warning dialog box when using Firefox.

Secondly, when you exit the online booking system you're links still use HTTPS which means when you return to the rest of the site you get another warning about some content not being loaded via a secure connection (I think it's just because of your use of Google Analytics - you can fix that though by using a different bit of code for Google, see here). I'd look at just making the bits you need use HTTPS and the rest just plain old HTTP either by using full links for web pages or .htaccess to rewrite/redirect URLs (links to images etc should either be relative so they are loaded securely if the page has been, or fix them to load securely). I'm not sure if the search engines will see HTTPS & HTTP pages as two pages or the same page actually so that may be another reason to do it too...

The site looks good and is fast to load too Only other comment I'd really make is to maybe look at darkening the main body text - you've got grey text on a grey image! Not very contrasting, particularly for making the site accessible to all.

Ben

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jmc

I don't know about anyone else, but in IE, I find the main nav menu a complete pain in the butt! Rollover effects (highlighting) don't work unless EXACTLY positioned on the menu text, drop-downs hide behind other on-screen elements, some of the menu items don't even appear to be links!!! They disappear instantly when you hover them.
Aghhh! IEEEEEEE!!!!!!!
Other than that, coming along nicely! eh.
John Mc