Welcome Guest! To access all forums & features, please register an account or sign-in. → Why register?



Looking for design feedbacks


16 replies to this topic - - - - -

#1 Guillaume B

    GuillaumeB

  • 961 posts
  • Joined: 11-August 03
  • Location: EU

Posted 14 January 2013 - 13:20

hello,

I am looking for feedbacks on a personal website

I currently own a small personal at
www.guillaumeb.com
It bears a wood texture and makes use of drop/text shadows

Though it has nothing to do with skeumorphism, for some reason, the hate around this trend is making me feel like the site can look a bit dated.

So I am currently playing around with something more minimalist at :
http://guillaumeb.com/beta/a/

My question is simple : Which of the two do you prefer and why ?
I know i'm asking this question in some Microsoft related forums, so i would not be surpised if many of you vote for n°2 which is closer to the Modern UI principles but i thought i would see how things turn out anyway.

Do not hesitate to tell me really what you think :)

Thank you very much


#2 +Seahorsepip

    http://seapip.com

  • 940 posts
  • Joined: 23-January 11
  • Location: Vlissingen, Netherlands
  • OS: Windows 8 Pro

Posted 14 January 2013 - 16:37

You make a very big mistake with buttons :/
Add the padding and line-height to <a> and not to it's parent, otherwise the text of the buttons and not the button as whole will only function as a link/button...
Edit: This seems not the problem at your more minimalistic site ^^

Also .htm in your urlbar is really bad lol, try hiding it trough htacces ;)

And in the minimalistic version I suggest to speed up the fade in transition, it's way too slow.
If you're able to make everything into 1 html file for a way faster website, using hastags for navigation is a solution to get multiple pages in 1 html file.
As example you can look at http://seapip.com

And I hate the over use of skeumorphism, it's making sites messy and most of the time even ugly, yes apple uses it but they use it atleast correctly (in most cases).

#3 nik louch

    ..:::..:::..:::..

  • 31,391 posts
  • Joined: 14-January 03
  • Location: Leicester, UK
  • OS: Windows 7, OSX, Android, Ubuntu
  • Phone: Galaxy Note II

Posted 14 January 2013 - 16:40

Quote

If you're able to make everything into 1 html file for a way faster website, using hastags for navigation is a solution to get multiple pages in 1 html file.
As example you can look at http://seapip.com
Off topic: His site loaded faster than yours (for me)?

#4 LUTZIFER

    Resident Evil

  • 2,316 posts
  • Joined: 09-January 02
  • Location: Vancouver Island, BC CANADA
  • OS: Windows 7 Ultimate
  • Phone: Google Nexus 4

Posted 14 January 2013 - 16:43

Very nice! Love the wood look. You don't see that often.

Actually, I really like how your title/logo and navigation stay on the side like they do, and the other part scrolls, nice setup.

#5 LaP

    Forget about it

  • 3,203 posts
  • Joined: 10-July 06
  • Location: Quebec City, Canada
  • OS: Windows 8 Pro

Posted 14 January 2013 - 16:57

I'm not a fan of the font to be honest. It's a little bit thin and it makes it somewhat hard to read.

The wood design will get old really fast. It also looks 1995 to me.

The minimalist design is better imo. A problem with your minimalist design is the text does highlight when you mouse over it but you need to click the button under it to acces the section. The text should be clickable to acces the section or it should not highlight when you mouse over it.

You don't have a better quality picture of you ? It looks like an old 40% jpeg saved for 56k ... might as well put a 36k warning to go with it.

The minimalist design lack some colors/life/theressomethingaboutmary imo. I'm not saying you should put a rainbow in the middle of it but while i might be wrong in my personal opinion metro/minimalist design will get old really really fast. It's also sort of a design trend and following it doesn't set you apart. There's a reason people dropped the black text over white background design of the early 90ies. Maybe adding a color picture instead of a black and white one? Colored titles? Different font for titles than paragraphs? I don't know it's your call you can leave it like it is right now too i just think it looks a little boring and conservative. It's okay for a cv but for a portfolio i dunno. This said it is my personal preference only if you like it this way then keep it this way.

Looks like the responsive design works great. I quickly tested it on many resolutions and it looked good on all of them.

#6 AWKM

    Neowinian Wise One

  • 2,707 posts
  • Joined: 28-November 03
  • Location: Canada

Posted 14 January 2013 - 17:02

View PostSeahorsepip, on 14 January 2013 - 16:37, said:

Also .htm in your urlbar is really bad lol, try hiding it trough htacces ;)

what's "bad" about having the file extension?

#7 +Seahorsepip

    http://seapip.com

  • 940 posts
  • Joined: 23-January 11
  • Location: Vlissingen, Netherlands
  • OS: Windows 8 Pro

Posted 14 January 2013 - 17:06

View Postnik louch, on 14 January 2013 - 16:40, said:

Off topic: His site loaded faster than yours (for me)?
My hosting sucks lol, if you use spider or any other tool you will see that most of the waiting time is the file request time of my hosting :/

View Posttechnikal, on 14 January 2013 - 17:02, said:

what's "bad" about having the file extension?
It's better for seo and makes your webpage look more professional(and complex) then just a simple htm file :p

#8 Mikeffer

    Miniman

  • 4,340 posts
  • Joined: 02-October 06
  • OS: Win 8, Win 7, Vista, OSX, iOS, Android, WP8 and various Linux distro's
  • Phone: HTC 8X

Posted 14 January 2013 - 17:13

View Posttechnikal, on 14 January 2013 - 17:02, said:

what's "bad" about having the file extension?

It's just not 'pretty' i guess.

Not bad attempt at minimalism but it lacks something, even if i can't quite put my foot on what that something is.
I think it may be the font, or possibly the line height.

#9 +littleneutrino

    I am the Little Neutrino

  • 13,236 posts
  • Joined: 25-July 05
  • Location: Newark, Ohio
  • OS: Windows 8
  • Phone: Nokia Lumia 928

Posted 14 January 2013 - 17:16

i like the design and it works well for the most part, there are some elements that look strange due to the wood grain not matching up.

#10 Mikeffer

    Miniman

  • 4,340 posts
  • Joined: 02-October 06
  • OS: Win 8, Win 7, Vista, OSX, iOS, Android, WP8 and various Linux distro's
  • Phone: HTC 8X

Posted 14 January 2013 - 17:21

View PostSeahorsepip, on 14 January 2013 - 17:06, said:

It's better for seo

Doesn't make the slightest difference if you remove the extension (.php, .html etc) via .htaccess on SEO.
However, using .htaccess to rewrite URL's so they are humanly readable and clean (prettyfying) will make a good amount of difference..

#11 +Seahorsepip

    http://seapip.com

  • 940 posts
  • Joined: 23-January 11
  • Location: Vlissingen, Netherlands
  • OS: Windows 8 Pro

Posted 14 January 2013 - 17:24

View PostMikeffer, on 14 January 2013 - 17:21, said:

Doesn't make the slightest difference if you remove the extension (.php, .html etc) via .htaccess on SEO.
However, using .htaccess to rewrite URL's so they are humanly readable and clean (prettyfying) will make a good amount of difference..
I thought it did :/ seems I was wrong there :p

#12 Mikeffer

    Miniman

  • 4,340 posts
  • Joined: 02-October 06
  • OS: Win 8, Win 7, Vista, OSX, iOS, Android, WP8 and various Linux distro's
  • Phone: HTC 8X

Posted 14 January 2013 - 17:26

View PostSeahorsepip, on 14 January 2013 - 17:24, said:

I thought it did :/ seems I was wrong there :p

You know what Google are like, that could change tomorrow :D

Even if you were aiming for the keyword "php", having .php extensions wouldn't do anything. They're not taken into consideration, in the same way that the type of image isn't taken into consideration for SEO.
Also, you can use .htaccess to create your own file extensions, hours of fun ;)

#13 AWKM

    Neowinian Wise One

  • 2,707 posts
  • Joined: 28-November 03
  • Location: Canada

Posted 14 January 2013 - 18:03

View PostSeahorsepip, on 14 January 2013 - 17:06, said:

It's better for seo and makes your webpage look more professional(and complex) then just a simple htm file :p

Nonsense.

#14 Tom

    Neowinian Wise One

  • 3,175 posts
  • Joined: 06-October 09
  • Location: United Kingdom
  • OS: Windows 7

Posted 14 January 2013 - 18:07

Just an FYI, having any style in your HTML is extremely bad practice. Make everything in <style> an external stylesheet.

#15 hckngrtfakt

    GFX n00b

  • 138 posts
  • Joined: 08-March 12
  • Location: Los Angeles
  • OS: Win8
  • Phone: iPhone

Posted 14 January 2013 - 18:15

Style feels outdated, some text is hard to read, and code is inconsistent (your favicon uses a relative path, while your background image is on absolute)

Also, what Tom said about your CSS (Y)