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☖ Forums → Showcase → Web design W.I.P.
Web design W.I.P.
2004-10-11, 9:29 PM #1
For uni, I had to build a site for a school project, so I whipped one up over the course of a week or so. Although the rest of the people in my class are doing personal sites, I created an addition to my site that emphasizes my 3d work.

There's not much there currently, but like i said, its a WIP.

http://www.pwizard.com/3d

The flash navigation is temporary, I'm planning on improving it some more and making it look better.

Comments/questions/virgin sacrifices welcome.
2004-10-11, 9:36 PM #2
The main font is terrible. I'm not a fan of the design either. I'd suggest looking at some template sites to get an idea of what professional sites tend to look like. I'm not saying you should copy them, but you should make your work at least as polished as those sites.
[This message has been edited. Deal with it.]
2004-10-11, 9:47 PM #3
yes, I'm thinking of replacing the courier font. It looked good at first with the background imagery, but as the design evolved it lost the appeal.

i'm thinking of trying verdana next or some other sans-serif font.

What don't you like about the design in particular?


Using image-driven designs and a soft look on the graphics is my style. I create the layout/images in photoshop in one piece, and then slice it up in imageready. I then go back and add the content in Homesite 5.
2004-10-11, 10:23 PM #4
What I dont like about it:
The logo isnt anti aliased properly, you might want to look into that. Maybe the 3d Services shouldnt be transparent, it might look better.
I dont get whats with the checkerboard sidebar. It doesnt seem to flow right with the logo.
The Flash nav bar is okay, but the fonts ther elook a bit blurred. I also dont like the animation running in the background. I get what you are going for, but it doesnt look right to me.

Yes you should change the font. A sans serif font might work best here.
It might be nice if the page didnt scroll for that copyright information. Subtle colors and getting rid of that ugly yellow link would make it look alot nicer.

You should also check to make sure it looks good on multiple browsers. It doesnt seem to display properly in IE for me.

Hope all of that stuff helps :D
[01:52] <~Nikumubeki> Because it's MBEGGAR BEGS LIKE A BEGONI.
2004-10-11, 11:13 PM #5
i could go on and on, but ill just say something simple and leave the rest for everybody else: increase the hit area on your flash buttons and manually kern the text so its even.
"...Those living for death will die by their own hand, Life's no ordeal if you come to terms, Reject the system dictating the norms..."
2004-10-12, 3:09 AM #6
stfu i likes it
Code:
if(getThingFlags(source) & 0x8){
  do her}
elseif(getThingFlags(source) & 0x4){
  do other babe}
else{
  do a dude}
2004-10-12, 7:46 AM #7
Quote:
Originally posted by Pagewizard_YKS
Using image-driven designs and a soft look on the graphics is my style. I create the layout/images in photoshop in one piece, and then slice it up in imageready. I then go back and add the content in Homesite 5.


I wasn't going to say anything about the way that it was made. However, since you brought it up, I'll just say that Imageready slicing is terrible. You want to learn XHTML/CSS. Not only is it standards compliant, but it saves your clients money because smaller code means les bandwidth used. Other then that, my method is similar as well. I first do the whole design in Photoshop, slice it by hand, then write up all the markup in Vi.

What I was refering to was your graphics style. It doesn't seem very professional. Like I said, just browse high-profile template sites and even the sites of other designers for a little inspiration.

As for some more criticism, you probably shouldn't use a black background. White would be a muich better choice for a professional site. Also, I'm running my resolution as 1280x960 (yes, the proper aspect ratio for my monitor) and your design abruptly ends. Might want to make some sort of transition there.
[This message has been edited. Deal with it.]
2004-10-12, 7:53 AM #8
Everything about it screams, "I just read a tutorial on how to do this, so I'm doing it!"

The design, the layout, the flash, the 3d sphere you call art, everything.
TAKES HINTS JUST FINE, STILL DOESN'T CARE
2004-10-12, 9:34 AM #9
Oh and you might want to run your sites through the w3.org validator. You seem to have alot of small errors that can be fixed easily.

Suggestions for the html: You have alot of empty Alt tags. You might want to add the description for the alt tags especially if you are going to be doing professional web design. Some states require that on their servers all images have alt tags. I know that for here we are required to do alt tags on all of our projects.

SPECIFY DOCTYPES!
<!DOCTYPE html
PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">

Meta Tags! Your clients are going to want their sites to be searched for, therefore you need to have meta data in the html.

Instead of using a fancy program to do the html, go in with notepad and edit it yourself. It looks like with whatever program you are using, it is adding in extra stuff that you might not need.
[01:52] <~Nikumubeki> Because it's MBEGGAR BEGS LIKE A BEGONI.
2004-10-12, 9:34 AM #10
Its a good start, everythings feels maybe a bit too large. Also it makes me sidescroll. (running in 1024x768)

Definitely change the font as most of people have said, and fix the anti aliasing on the logo.

Other than that its pretty good.
/fluffle
2004-10-12, 12:28 PM #11
This is slightly off topic, but I wish you wouldn't lie on the main site, pwizard.com.

The entire thing looks like you just ripped off a template, including the text, throwing in PageWizard design where ever it was necessary. You claim to have a talented team of the best individuals to do the coding on your payroll. If you have two clients, one of which is your own Jedi Knight fansite/mod site/whatever it is, I don't see how you can have a payroll. You also claim that it takes about a month for this talented team to put a site together. I do similar work by myself, which you claim not to do, in significantly less time, and I guarantee for less money. There's no reason a website should take more that 15 total hours of work, bar having to completely scrap one idea and start from scratch.

You also say, on the main page, that "Our expert team creates our projects entirely by hand-written HTML coding." yet in this thread you admitted that you used Homesite 5.

If you expect to actually get clients, you need to offer work that you can actually do for a price that's reasonable, and in a reasonable timeframe.
TAKES HINTS JUST FINE, STILL DOESN'T CARE
2004-10-12, 12:47 PM #12
I'm unsure of what to say other than that it's straight up ugly. I couldn't tell you what exactly to change, though. Sorry
A desperate disease requires a dangerous remedy.

A major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that it gives people what they want instead of what a particular group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.

art
2004-10-12, 9:13 PM #13
I think Zully and Sine said what I thinking, but I'm too nice to say.
[This message has been edited. Deal with it.]
2004-10-13, 6:45 AM #14
Weee, here we go:

A. Bryce 5 is not owned by Metacreations. Corel owns it. Metacreations owned Bryce 4, but they went out of business.

B. Flash as a design tool for business sites is a bad idea. A very bad idea. When you make a business website, you want maximum compatibility. Not to mention your implementation of flash is rather pointless, the same effect could be achieved with a couple div tags and CSS-P, and a gif.

C. That font is horrible. Seriously.

D. You know how to use Wings3D, Bryce, Maya, Lightwave, and 3DSMax effectively? Wow, that's more than everyone I know that has been in the 3d modelling business for years don't even have that much experience. Everyone tries to focus on one program, so they can become really good at it.

E. Did I mention the font?

F. Your page has a very bad looking black line in IE. Look above the navigation bar.

G. Home should be on the far left, not the far right. We read from left to right, and Home should be the first link.

H. How much are you going to rehash that logo?

I. I really, really, really hate the black border on the side. Either find a way to keep the site to fit the entire page on all monitors, or add a border on the right side.

J. Bryce sucks at textures outside of its own program. (And itsn't very good even in that respect, unless it is water or skies.)

K. The color scheme is bad. The blues just doesn't fit at all, especially on the left border.

L. If you say you know how to write a page hardcode, do it. Using programs can make some seriously nasty code.

M. Your <body> tag lists link and vlink as the same color. Not a good idea. Let people know what they have clicked on, change the color.

N. That border on the left of the text made entirely of colons is not only bad design for a graphic web page, but doesn't look good at all.

O. Your side border is an image built to fit an exact size page. What if the user makes the text area longer? The border just disappears, that's no good. Use some CSS and make an extending border that fits no matter the length of the document.

P. Going off my last comment, it seems like you made the text, and built the site around it. You should always keep in mind of any changes a person might want to do, such as more text, etc. Even if this design isn't necessarily going to be used, at least show people you know what you are doing.

Q. I recommend you start using XHTML. It's becoming much more of a standard nowadays.

R. Your 3d models aren't that impressive. Especially the ones in the foreground. I can't really tell what the bg ones are, but at least they look more complicated.

S. All my comments are in addition to what everyone else has said, including the W3 validator, learning CSS, problems in different resolutions (At least make it work great for 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768. Those are common resolutions.)

T. Google likes text more than flash. Keep that in mind when trying to make your site searchable. Also, Google doesn't look at meta tags, but you should still have them for other engines.

Well, I think that's it for now, I could probably go into more nit-picky stuff, but that covers the basics.
2004-10-13, 9:48 AM #15
1. i haven't added meta tags or cleaned up my code yet.
When I work on it at uni, they unfortunately force us to use Adobe Golive, which puts a bunch of worthless s*** in the code. I hate f***ing Golive b/c I have to go and clean up the mess it makes of my code.

2. What antialiasing on the logo? I used Extensis mask on that logo, and it looked pretty clean to me at the time.

3. At this point, I'm getting to like the site less and less myself. I'm thinking about scrapping it and starting over. I'll turn this one in for credit, but the site that i'm actually going to use will be rebuilt from scratch.

3. Xhtml sounds like something I should work on-- if I only had the time to do it. I'll get around to it at some point, I'm sure. College/organized education sucks. I've always done better by learning on my own.
2004-10-13, 10:07 AM #16
Holy ****, people. Keep your personal Page bashing to the girl advice threads where it belongs. From reading your ****ing twisted descriptions of his site, I would have thought you were talking about some clan webpage whose webmaster got a hold of frontpage and just figured out how to insert animated gifs. That's simply not the case. The page looks great! God..
"it is time to get a credit card to complete my financial independance" — Tibby, Aug. 2009
2004-10-13, 10:12 AM #17
...
Page requested that we critique his web design. This website is meant for selling his service of web design. A client has to see a neat, clean, working website.
I for one feel that most of the comments on this thread are very useful for him.
Considering he is trying to attract customers, we were helping him to refine his site so that a possible client would be interested in what they saw.

By the way, this is the aliasing I mentioned.
[01:52] <~Nikumubeki> Because it's MBEGGAR BEGS LIKE A BEGONI.
2004-10-13, 10:18 AM #18
That's b/c its only 72 pixels per inch, which is the typical web standard. In retrospect, i should have used 150 ppi for smoother curves, but its too late now to fix this. I could up the resolution in photoshop, but it would just shrink the image and probably interpolate it when i resize it. interpolation in images = s***.



It is a tradeoff between quality and load time.
2004-10-13, 10:23 AM #19
Also, as far as the background goes, I wanted to try black this time. On virtually every project that I've done, I've used white.

And what is this black line in IE? I loaded it up and I didn't see anything.
2004-10-13, 11:20 AM #20
Quote:
Originally posted by Pagewizard_YKS
That's b/c its only 72 pixels per inch, which is the typical web standard. In retrospect, i should have used 150 ppi for smoother curves, but its too late now to fix this. I could up the resolution in photoshop, but it would just shrink the image and probably interpolate it when i resize it. interpolation in images = s***.



It is a tradeoff between quality and load time.


Resolution has nothing to do with how an image is viewed online in the manner that you're describing. An image at 72ppi that takes up a 1" by 1" square is going to be 72px by 72px. A 1" by 1" square at 150 ppi will result in a 150px by 150px square. Considering that web browsers, unlike printers, display images based on the number of pixels, using an insane resolution won't make things more crisp unless you're planning on keeping it at that size.
TAKES HINTS JUST FINE, STILL DOESN'T CARE
2004-10-13, 11:59 AM #21
okay, how do you recommend that I fix it, then, short of redoing it?

The original photoshop file is like that too.
2004-10-13, 12:19 PM #22
You can't. You have to redo it.
TAKES HINTS JUST FINE, STILL DOESN'T CARE

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