Today, I've become drawn to the design aspect of the Web- something Jude and I share. I really do appreciate well-designed webpages and admire the effort that goes into conceptualizing both the aethetics as well as the usability behind them. And after this weekend, I must say that I have new-found respect for all you web-designers out there. It's such mind-numbing, tedious work- just one little error can profoundly mess up the whole structure of the page. Such a pain, but in the end, also very gratifying...
The site is about as good as I can get it with what little HTML skills I have (anything's better than my Google Pages one which really looks like a glorified Powerpoint presentation). It's nothing fancy- I just used the wallpapers I made a couple of months ago as the anchor design and revolved different color paletttes for each page. A huge thanks to everyone who commented on which wallpapers they liked, but in the end I made a few more that just had a single color so it wouldn't be too distracting. It's meant to be my professional website so it's no where near as fun to read as the blog (well, we try to make the blog fun to read...).
One huge problem I have though is that because it's CSS script (she talks like she knows what she's saying...), it doesn't show up well with IE6. A third of the main text gets chopped off. It looks fine on Firefox , Safari, even Linux, and I haven't even checked Netscape (do people even use Netscape anymore???). Jude and I wonder how many people still use IE, and according to Chrispy, it's substantial enough. What's wrong with you people? Wake up and smell the tabbed browsing! Anyways, if anyone has suggestion on what I can do to the code to make it show properly on IE, I would be most grateful. Until then, it's actually a little comforting knowing that only a small(er) group of people can view the site in its multi-colored entirety. I'm still a little nervous about putting so much of myself out there...
So anyways, ladies and gentlemen, my second (and hopefully, final) attempt at a professional webpage:
(I'm going to change the link from my avatar in the blog sidebar so it'll link to the new site from now on.)
7 comments:
Nice work! I'm impressed by the web design skills and implementation of a non-computer person.
My only comment/suggestion is to move the footer because it's hard to read your address/email on the pretty wallpaper.
Answer regarding web browsers: it depends upon your audience. And almost no one uses Netscape anymore, it's true (probably 1.5% on an average site.)
IE typically makes up 80-94% of visitors' browsers, Firefox an aggressive contender with 10 - 18%, and Safari maybe up to 4%. Pretty much nothing else matters, and people using "alternate" browsers are used to seeing a screwed-up view of the web. Like you say, wake up and smell the tabbed browsing!
Actually, IE 7 has tabbed browsing. Check it out!
I love your new website! It looks great! I do have a couple of suggestions:
- like Cari mentions, the footer is a little hard to read, same goes for the menus (except when you hover over them). Maybe you could place a bar of solid color behind the text?
- on the home page, I wonder if a blue that has more blue (and less green) would look better? I'm a sucker for blue, though!
I wonder if someone from the KNC can help you with the CSS problems?
Wow, doctor Koh!
heehee, it's like a usability report here!!... i've made some changes to the menu so it's clearer now but there's nothing i can do about the footer. i might change the color of the font to make it stand out more.
as for the browser issue- i'll figure it out over the weekend. if not, i'm going to start tapping on the wealth of resources you SI people have. before you know it, i'm going to start sending you people my code and getting you to fix it!
Very charming!
It looks pretty good, Serene! Cool...
Yahoo has a toolbar that allows IE users to use tabbed browsing, do decrease the sucky-ness.
If I were to add my 2 design cents, I'd say just let people scroll to the bottom, and take out the middle scroll bar. (And maybe use sans-serif fonts for general text? OK...it was 4 cents!)
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