New portfolio

[pixelfuze]

I finally got the site designed and coded up and I'm really happy with the result :)

I'd like to say it's final, but my laptop is being a ###### so I can't test it in IE6...and I'm biting my nails at the thought of it. But hopefully I'll iron out any IE6 bugs ASAP..if you guys find any bugs I'd be very grateful to know

Anyhow, let me know your opinion and any feedback, all welcome. The jquery and thickbox script's were a real pain..I'll definately be using Lightbox next time.

Pixelfuze

[smctainsh]

I love the site. Great job. :) The only thing that really sticks out to me is the use of the colour for highlighting - the different colours can get a bit distracting and when I first went to the site, I was thinking "where should I focus my attention?".

However, overall, a great site. Well done.

Smctainsh

[pixelfuze]

Thanks for the kind words Steve, and for the feedback. I will most likely have a play around with the font colouring tomorrow as my eyes are hurting from staring at the neon colours all day right now. I'm tempted to dull them down a bit now you've said that, don't want blinded and confused potential customers :blink:

[Popcorned1]

All of my websites comply with web standards

No they don't.

[digitalsoft]

hmm, site is nice. though i think you could make something a little more special after looking at your client designs.

[pixelfuze]

As I said in my first post thickbox was a real pain and as you've so kindly pointed out, the thickbox css doesn't validate which is none of my doing (but my CSS does, as the link at the bottom of the page shows).

Perhaps I will have to strip out thickbox and go with lightbox instead, as I know that validates fine with minimum effort.

Edited July 8, 2008 by chillyjames

[DrawLand]

Nice choice of colours! I also like the JavaScript image scroller, it suits it very nicely. :)

[Echilon]

Nice choice of colours! I also like the JavaScript image scroller, it suits it very nicely. :)

Agreed. Very slick site. (Y)

As a first impression though, it seems light on content.

[Jase]

I like the design very much there is just something that I think could be improved.

1. The little greyish buildings don't really look right, they look rushed.

2. The header is way too spaced out you have your rainbow lines on the far left then you have a giant space then you have "Pixelfuze" then another giant space then you have your slogan then another giant space.

Other than those little things the rest is fine, love the contact form, and the javascript image scroller (Y)

[FlibbyFlobby]

Nice site. It's simple and to the point. I'm not so sure if the colour scheme works, perhaps it's just personal preference though.

You also might want to look at jCarousel Lite instead of plain old jCarousel. It will do what the current one does on your site, only its 2kb in size. Nice degradation when Javascript is disabled too btw.

[pixelfuze]

Thanks for the kind and constructive comments folks, I've taken them on board and am reworking the design slightly.

As a first impression though, it seems light on content.

Yea I've been having that feeling too, I was thinking of adding a few more pages and a slick site navigation in the header. I plan to release some open source templates that I'm currently working on to hopefully promote my services and add quality and creative ideas to the open source community - with the idea being I add a template section to the site for people to download from.

Nice site. It's simple and to the point. I'm not so sure if the colour scheme works, perhaps it's just personal preference though.

Yea I think/hope it's totally personal preference as I just love the colours I used and have done for years. In fact quite a few of my wardrobe items have those colours in :p I just hope my personal taste hasn't put people off..

You also might want to look at jCarousel Lite instead of plain old jCarousel.

I'm reading into it right now, thanks a lot for the tip!

[wing.]

In firefox the contact and about images are kinda cut in half this meant to happen ?

[James123]

Looks quite nice decent browsers.

I'd like to say it's final, but my laptop is being a ###### so I can't test it in IE6...and I'm biting my nails at the thought of it. But hopefully I'll iron out any IE6 bugs ASAP..if you guys find any bugs I'd be very grateful to know

Indeed, IE6 completely butchers it. Plus you used transparent PNGs which IE6 doesn't support.

[pixelfuze]

Haha noooo! Oh the horror :no: I expected as much..

Yea I can easily sort the PNG's for IE6 with a bit of CSS, but the jCarousel is fubar :p

IE6 fixes have been put at the bottom of the pile until the current project I'm working on is complete, but rest assured that monstrosity will be corrected soon. Many thanks for the screenie!

Edited July 15, 2008 by chillyjames

[Zenicanin]

Haha noooo! Oh the horror :no: I expected as much..

Yea I can easily sort the PNG's for IE6 with a bit of CSS, but the jCarousel is fubar :p

IE6 fixes have been put at the bottom of the pile until the current project I'm working on is complete, but rest assured that monstrosity will be corrected soon. Many thanks for the screenie!

About 1/3 of internet users use IE6, so it's a pretty important group of users.

As far as your site, it looks great in FF3. I like the colors, it's a little too dark for my taste, but I know it's usually hard to design a website for yourself. I always have problems designing my portfolio. lol

[pixelfuze]

About 1/3 of internet users use IE6, so it's a pretty important group of users.

I know that, I never said that it wasn't important and I was neglecting IE6 - it's because my computer is running Vista x64 and it's impossible to get a copy of IE6 on it, which is why I had a laptop running Windows XP and had a copy of IE6 on it to test with. But as I said in the first post, my laptop is down :(

I'm currently looking into VMWare and the Microsoft Virtual Machine software (using a Windows XP virtual machine), as I understand it's the only viable solution to test in IE6 under Vista? Its just quite time consuming and costly to learn a new software package, just for IE6..

If anyone has any alternatives I'm open to suggestions.

but I know it's usually hard to design a website for yourself. I always have problems designing my portfolio. lol

It's extremely hard! I'd spend weeks designing something, perfect it, then browse some CSS galleries and just totally scrap mine and start again because I wouldn't think it's up to scratch or the colours were wrong etc. I think i'll give my current site 6 months before I tear it down and start again ;)

Edited July 15, 2008 by chillyjames

[Fusion101]

First off i really like the site and you have put alot into it and it shows.

secondly, I'm not sure what screen resolution you designed the website for but when you look at the site using 800 x 600 the top part messes up slightly.

Here's a piccy:

[pixelfuze]

In firefox the contact and about images are kinda cut in half this meant to happen ?

No it isn't. It looks fine in my firefox 2 and 3, and firefox at work so i can't say I've ever came across that bug. Anyone else experience this? Myabe it's your browser specific settings?

I'm not sure what screen resolution you designed the website for but when you look at the site using 800 x 600 the top part messes up slightly.

I designed the site for 800x600 as a minimum resolution, but must of overlooked padding the logo in from the stripes when resized. Thanks!

Edited July 16, 2008 by chillyjames

[sweetsam]

You claim that your site is accessible. But when I hide images some content disappears and there is no text replacement which can not be considered accessible. You have a contact form stuck inside a list element. Not sure how that would count as semantic. IE6 butchers the site and I suppose you are already aware of that. When the resolution is reduced to 800/600 name on top is covered by the graphic. I would recommend using a suitable positioning with z-index to avoid that from happening. Brand name should be visible in all resolutions. There seems to be some sort inheritance problem for the text "Pinnacle Luxury Car Hire". It appears bold in IE7 and normal in Firefox 3. There might be some people out there who would wanna print your site for future reference. Take a look at print preview of your site. I mean no offense. Just pointing out a few things I noticed.

[Fusion101]

Glad I could help :)

[pixelfuze]

You claim that your site is accessible. But when I hide images some content disappears and there is no text replacement which can not be considered accessible. You have a contact form stuck inside a list element. Not sure how that would count as semantic. IE6 butchers the site and I suppose you are already aware of that. When the resolution is reduced to 800/600 name on top is covered by the graphic. I would recommend using a suitable positioning with z-index to avoid that from happening. Brand name should be visible in all resolutions. There seems to be some sort inheritance problem for the text "Pinnacle Luxury Car Hire". It appears bold in IE7 and normal in Firefox 3. There might be some people out there who would wanna print your site for future reference. Take a look at print preview of your site. I mean no offense. Just pointing out a few things I noticed.

Thanks for a thorough analysis. I'm fairly new to accessibility, but I'm very interested in it and from what I've studied and read to date I'd say a lot of accessibility guidelines are very opinionated.

1. All images have alt tags, background images don't require alt tags and all my heading images are replaced by text when the CSS is disabled.

2. The contact form in a list element is semantic in my opinion. It is a following element to the About section, which asks that the contact form is used to contact me for work..so it seems appropriate to me that it follows in a list item, and is probably the most practical method to present it.

3. Yes, I'm working on IE6 :p

4. I totally agree with the brand name, as was pointed out in a previous post. A mistake on my behalf which I will correct later.

5. No idea about "Pinnacle Luxury Car Hire" text. It is an H4 and only inherits style from the body and the H4 styling in the Thickbox css. I'll look into it.

No offence taken, it's all constructive criticism and appreciated :)

[FlibbyFlobby]

The IE6 jCarousel bug is a common one, and can be fixed by re-applying the width to the carousel div using jQuery after your jCarousel code:

$('div.slideshow').css('width', '644px');

As for supporting 800x600, I really don't think this is necessary any more. 1024x768 is fast surpassing it, meaning you've got at least 960px to play with (more or less). Andy Budd's Stuff and Nonsense site for example supports a minimum of 1024x768.

The same is slowly starting to apply for IE6 too. Even 37 Signals are phasing out IE6 support in their products, and I see many developers are slowly doing the same. It's not feasible (nor realistic) to be supporting a 7 year old browser which is not only riddled with quirks and bugs, but also has been superseded once, soon to be twice. I'd still recommend giving your site basic IE6 support at this point though, you can get IE6 for free (and legally) from Microsoft in the form of a VirtualPC image from the IEBlog if your desperate.

You should also consider creating a container class to help remove some of your duplicate CSS too:

.container { width: 700px; margin: 0 auto; }

<div id="header">
	 <div class="container">
	 <!--content-->
	 </div>
</div>

<div id="content">
	 <div class="container">
	 <!--content-->
	 </div>
</div>

etc...

I do agree with you that forms in list elements is semantic in some cases (i.e. a navigation list with a search box in it), however in your case I'd disagree. I see no reason for the 'about' and 'contact' sections of your site to be in a list. Really I'd do them as logical divides. The only semantic case for a list I see on your site is the jCarousel slideshow (which you might want to make loop back round to the start when finished btw, using jCarousel Lite this can be done! :p).

Keep up the good work.

Edited July 16, 2008 by ziadoz