Still a work in progress, but what do you guys think?

http://www.pagewizardwebdesign.com


I'm trying to break my habit of using tables and depreciated (but still functional) tags for everything, and I think I did a fairly good job.

The one place (aside from the nav system) where I couldn't make it work without tables were the two columns, so I had to cheat.

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Now a question:

So far the most annoying thing that I'm not sure how to fix is a is a CSS problem...

I'm using things like



(in the cascading style sheet layout.css, applied globally across the new site)

to create dotted lines to separate different places on the layout. These render fine in Internet Explorer 6 (haven't tested 7) but do not want to render in Firefox 2.x Is there a way to fix this, or is it one of those unresolvable CSS incompatibilities?

You have to specify a unit for "2". 2px seems to work fine.

That did it. thanks.

*smacks forehead*

Honestly?

Your typography needs a lot of work. It doesnt feel professional yet.

Take out "Professional Website and Graphic Design."

#1 the type on it is horrible, it hurts to read it.

#2 its placed oddly.


Gradient + dropshadow != a good logo.

I could go on and on. Im willing to help though.

Go for it.

Too many gradients and drop shadows. Your tabs at the top require JavaScript for the effects, which is okay, but you an do it with CSS.

On the Clients page you have "Click here or click picture to go to site". Not only is that grammatically incorrect, but "click here" is a big no-no, it's silly and very mid 90's.

You also have rounded edges in some places, but sharp in others. Pick one. I would avoid rounded edges, because everyone is doing that these days. And it makes it look like something for children so they don't poke their eyes out.

how? My memory fails me at the moment.



On my list of things to fix. I mostly cut and pasted that content from the old site, and it has a lot of legacy code in it. i plan to go over it tomorrow, plus I have things to add anyway.



Good point. I'll think about which one to use. I'm partial to rounded corners, though.

depreciated

vs.

deprecated



And, if you're ever looking for a good book on JS, CSS, or XHTML, I highly recommend you check out books published by O'Reilly.

For the site itself, the all-caps of the <title> are a bit off-putting. And, as Emon said, you can do the button effects using the hover (subclass?). Also, to me, the single rounded corner seems to emphasise the lack of roundedness of the other corners. Uniformity would be good.

Everyone else pretty much got the rest of it.

I think the layout is awfully wide, considering it is fixed width. Also, the dropshadow on the text goes down, while the dropshadow on the on the curved bar (the one where the tabs reside on) has a dropshadow which goes up. The page has no DOCTYPE specified. You still have a ton of attributes (width, height, background color, etc) embedded in your HTML code instead of in your stylesheets. You have a lot of tags which aren't closed. You should make all of your tags lowercase.

There are a ton of tutorials on the net for making a site with two columns using CSS and no tables. I've even done it on my (incomplete) site http://www.sinesententia.com/.

"Welcome to the Pagewizard Web Design Website"

I see you've taken Padding Sentences 101.

Your site is to a professional's site as a 3 year old's drawing of a cat is to a photograph of a leopard.

Everyone else has covered most of it, but they forgot that you lack any and every ability to use photoshop (or whatever program) well. There isn't as much of a demand for "professional" websites around high school students, so you really ought to step your game up.

So, do you always use Imageready for your clients? Lawl.

Not a big fan of the full page layout.

Design Trends: (What professional sites these days are doing.)

http://www.webdesignfromscratch.com/current-style.cfm
http://cssmania.com/


It would also be a good idea to ensure your code adheres to W3C standards. Why? Having standards ensures your site effectively works with all browsers. Browsers these days are horrible. (i.e. IE-7.0(below 7.0) doesn't render .png alpha transparencies, some attributes of display -table aren't valid in some browsers, etc.). Clients (especially businesses) will be more impressed with a professional who adheres to current standards then a web designer using legacy code.

[url]www.w3c.org[/url]
http://validator.w3.org/ <---- html validator
http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/ <---- CSS validator
http://webstandards.psu.edu/articles/whyWebStandards/ <---- a few reasons why to adopt web standards.

It doesn't validate cause he used Imageready to make his site.

Thanks for reminding us again.

You can't charge people for building them websites for 1999. You should consider just up-and-redoing the entire site from scratch. Learn CSS (Which, if you REALLY sat down to it, could take a day. Maybe a week to learn. About a month to master), work on compliency, and consider NOT selling your services. Honestly, you're not currently qualified.

I only used imageready to make the navigation tabs. There's a huge difference between using imageready for one thing instead of laying out the whole site with it.

I suppose that it possible to make the image slices line up perfectly by hand, but why do things the hard way unless you have to?

That's exactly what I did. The old site was a lost cause, so I scrapped it. Any legacy code in there is a temporary fix until I figure out how to make it work with CSS.




Yes, in the last 2 days I have learned a lot about it. I learned the basics years ago but I do admit that I needed a refresher course. Feel free to check my style sheets if you don't believe me.

Uhm, because the way Imageready did it isn't the right way?

Your Photoshop & design work is very amateur. I'm not qualified to comment on anything else, I'm afraid D:

"Why do things the right way when you can do things the easy way" is what you're saying.

The next person that I see display "Professional Web design" when they are neither qualified nor professionals will suffer a horrible horrible amount of pain and agony.

With that said, you have some talent in you but there are several things that need work. Starting at the very top, the gradient tabs and the horribly simplistic font are very boring. They do the job, but that is it. While I'm not saying go for something overly flashy, something a little more decorative and interesting will go a long ways to making the site interesting.

Secondly, some images that show off you graphic design skills, by all means not a collage but some tasteful images, will add some interest and again show what you can do for a website. A basic layout with text does not show off what you are capable of.

The biggest mistake you can make is relying on your portfolio. People need to first and foremost like your own website, otherwise, you're ignoring the very foundation of this house you are trying to build. (god worste metaphor (?) ever, stab me)

Lastly, the fonts, especially news titles are more annoying than attractive. They feel too big, (and I am running at 1600x1200 res. I feel for anyone lower.). Go for something a little softer on the eyes, that works with the flow, rather than having something that'll try to rip your eyes away from the content you are desperatly trying to read.

Hopefully this helps out a bit and I appologize if I have the diplomacy of a raging bull.

Adding to what Jep said, I think the main problem is the block capitals in the logo (And the fact that it took 30 seconds to make in photoshop) and the capitals on the links...and the headlines.. Block capitals just look unprofessional.


Also, your copyright symbol doesn't display properly (in firefox at least) because you've copied/pasted the symbol into the HTML then set the charset to UTF-8. Setting the charset to ISO-8859-1 should fix that, but the proper way to do it is using the HTML entity for that symbol. (I believe it's © though I may be mistaken.)

You're also using tables for layouts and your HTML is rather messy and inconsistent.

The overall look of the site is good though. The colours work well together, you just need to sort out the code.

I didn't mean to critique your site so harshly but since you're offering web design you should really know how to do it right.

Here i go!

It really bothers me that even at 1280x1024 the page scrolls. It makes it worse that it only scrolls a little bit.

Why is your navigation there? Its not really associated with the content. Maybe also reconsider the positioning of the links. I personally think Clients shouldnt be on the end, contact should. While contact is important, its more important that people see your previous work.

Your logo... What is it? Yes i know its a piece of paper, but why? What the hell is the background? Does your logo work in 2 colours? Probably not. A good logo should be simple and make sense. Hell, with a name like Pagewizard Web Design, you can pull off some sweet logos with just text.
Speaking of logotype! Yours isnt special at all. What is it? Arial capitalized? Try something like Helvetica Neue. The gradient doesnt fit, the outline doesnt really need to be there, and why a drop shadow? nothing else has a shadow....
Also, Pagewizard is a big enough word. try doing something like:
Pagewizard
Web Design

You can adjust the kerning of the text (illustrator and photoshop will do this) so that top and bottom are equal widths.

And now for the content section.
Get rid of the tab, it doesnt need to be there.

Why the heck do you have so much room devoted to the news? You have 2 things that should probably just be announced in the services section. I think you should just get rid of the news column, and maybe add a SMALL SMALL SMALL updates box. Doing this will let you restructure, and you could add more useful features there. Maybe you could do a small set of screencaps of the other websites youve done. Do something that will catch the users eye. Right now its boring and blue. And its a bland blue too...

For the front page my suggestions are:
Move the nav below the logo. Fix the logo. Ditch the news, I can garuntee you nobody cares, theyd much rather see what they came for (what you're selling).


Okay looking around I have to ask you seriously. Are you the only one doing this? Or is there really others? Cause if there isnt others you may want to reconsider saying "us" so much.


I like the change you made to the clients page. You should probably make the names of each company a link as well.

Alignment is key, a lot of your stuff isnt aligned with anything. take the time to line up text and images and stuff will start to look a whole bunch nicer.

Your title graphic is HUGE. I have degrading (alcohol intensified) vision but damn!

Also, the gradients make it look very amateurish. You don't want that.

I just love this on one of his websites. The title is "LAW OFFICES OF DAVID D. MORIEL -- A PROFESSIONAL CORPORATION."

Wow, really? A professional corporation? Well hell! I wasn't expecting that!

I remember that logo.

The site is getting there. As has been said already, it feels like you're trying to shove "professional" down every visitor's throats. This is not good for you.

Hahaha, yeah I noticed that too.