Major Redesign for my website

[Mr Initial Man]

http://mrinitialman.furtopia.org/index.shtml

What do you guys thing about this site?

[Greyfish]

I don't see any design in this website at all. This site would make a beautiful minimalist website design look complicated. The word design can be defined "to plan and fashion artistically or skillfully", this website does not show that. Hope this helps :-)

[Mr Initial Man]

Well, I wanted to keep it simpler and cleaner than my old design.

[Greyfish]

It just seems way too simple and way to clean, maybe add at least a little color somewhere.

[Mr Initial Man]

Before I ask the next question, what browser do you use?

[aj_nsc]

I think it looks great for a personal page.

[Greyfish]

I'm using FireFox. I agree with aj_nsc its perfectly fine for a personal page, but thats not what it is. You have a page on there with the title "Website Designer For Hire", future clients are going to want to see what you design skills you have, what your abilities are, and if you will be able to meet there needs, giving them a description of what you can do is not enough sometimes, you need to show them what you can do. If you don't have a portfolio page showing your other website projects, the only they can look at is your page.

P.S. Super clean coding, I love it!

[aj_nsc]

Website designer for hire eh? Missed that page...I'll throw my support back at GreyFish's comments, if you want to be hired then you need to show them what you can do rather than tell them - dress it up a little. My design inspiration for what I think are really well designed and fancy (yet still really simple) websites nowadays comes from webcreme.com

[Mr Initial Man]

Did you like my dropdown and tabbed menus?

And, yes, I'm a stickler for clean code. Thank you. :)

Seriously, I'm no graphic designer, though, so my page is pretty simplistic. My earlier page was kinda... hideous, really.

[Greyfish]

Yes I like your dropdown and tabbed menus. I've never really seen a tabbed menu system like that, its pretty interesting. Take aj_nsc's advice, go checkout www.webcreme.com for some inspiration, you'll probably see some websites that have the simplicity your looking for, but also have a fresh, clean and colorful design that most clients will be looking for.

[WebJoel]

Menu's right on the left hand side, so take a look and see what you like. -A bit unweildily explained. I'm just glad it wasn't left on the right hand side instead, -that would have really messed things up...! :eek:

Remember, your audience may not be a native English speaker, and this plebian way of writing is ...confusing.
And I'd say "The Menu is~.." instead of "Menu's~". Even though the latter is still correct, contractions are difficult for non-English and this is needless confusion. That is literally "Menu is on the~", which is grammarically wanting without "The" ("Our", etc.) before "Menu".
It's a little too informal for visual text media.

Generally, when anyone says 'oh, the site is very simplistic' or is 'free from graphics/uses graphics sparingly', -I tend to immediately think "I like it already!" but this reminds me a bit of the web prior to 1999. A bit dated. But it is clean at least. :p "Design", -as stated previously, does not come to mind.

[Zoocaro]

It looks like an aviator designer/creator website. Navigation needs a little work and could use some color but as a personal website think you have done a great job

[Zoocaro]

Avatar

[Jeff Mott]

I agree with most everyone else here: There's a difference between a simple design and no design. This is much closer to the latter. If you aren't artistic, then find a template you like. There are plenty to choose from.

On the coding side of things, increasing the text size (people do that) breaks the page. And the text doesn't resize at all in IE. And your flyout menus also don't work in IE.

Yes, yes... we all hate dealing with IE's maddening bugs. But the simple fact is that IE 6 and IE 7 each have about 40% of the market; four out of five people are browsing with IE. You can pound on your keyboard and complain to your coworkers all you want, but in the end we all need to suck it up and deal with it.

[Mr Initial Man]

I agree with most everyone else here: There's a difference between a simple design and no design. This is much closer to the latter. If you aren't artistic, then find a template you like. There are plenty to choose from.

I always thought of using others' templates as a kind of theft, or at least dishonest.

On the coding side of things, increasing the text size (people do that) breaks the page. And the text doesn't resize at all in IE.

*Sighs.* I see what you mean. I never thought of that.

And your flyout menus also don't work in IE.

Yes, yes... we all hate dealing with IE's maddening bugs. But the simple fact is that IE 6 and IE 7 each have about 40% of the market; four out of five people are browsing with IE. You can pound on your keyboard and complain to your coworkers all you want, but in the end we all need to suck it up and deal with it.

That was actually deliberately coded. I didn't want to deal with IE's bugs, so I dealt with it by making sure that the page is completely usable without Javascript.


Talking about resizing text and how stuff people do breaks pages and accessibility issues, I was honestly tempted to do something like this. (http://mrinitialman.furtopia.org/index2.html) At least THAT'S devoid of issues.

[Mr Initial Man]

EDIT:

Doesn't matter what coding I have avoiding Internet Explorer, the menus won't work anyways, but the page remains perfectly usable..