Hey guys, just working on a webpage for our development team, got a concept front page up, which can be viewed here.

http://www.vgnz.com/sam/test/index.html
(temp url)

Just wondering if it all displays properly on your guys computers (links arn't done yet) and if you have any suggestions. I'm quite pleased with it so far as I am learning html at the moment and havn't made an actual page layout with it before (used to using real basics for websites I have written for).

The main requirements I am wanting to meet with it are;

- Easy to navigate and a clean layout
- Decent looking of course ;)
- At least a little unique
- Simple (refined is the word) and fast loading

Do you guys think the requirements are met?

Hey wozza,

Your page loads fine and displays correctly. The color scheme on your logo is nice but you must strive to eliminate that ellipse, which along with the spiral, is a design taboo on websites.

I think your page is resolution indepedent which is good cos many non-hardcore gamers will be browsing at lower resolutions, typically 800x600 - 1024x768 some even at 640x480. I'm at 1280x102; my only gripe is the sea of black you are using as a background. I think dark gray is a more acceptable color.

Check out these sites for tips on web design:

http://www.useit.com/
http://www.37signals.com/dnf/

Why would ellipses and spirals be taboo in web design? I've never heard that before.

Here is a couple of thoughts for you that popped into my head when I was looking at your site.

Like jaggu I am also browsing at a high resolution and the content fills only about 1/3 of my screen surrounded by two huge black lines on the side. This is a pretty easy fix if you change your table with from the fixed width of 500 to a percentage probally some where around 80-90%

For your navigation at the top right you should look at making it more obvious that you can click on home, about, game etc. either make them look like a button or underline them.

I would put some text under your screen shots to explain what they are. This can be really simple like (More Screen Shots) or (Daily Screen Shot) then underline if of course so its obvious you can click on it.

The logo needs a little bit of work as well. Just from a use standpoint it would be really tough to print your current logo on a t-shirt or a business card. Logos are pretty tought however so best of luck there.

The bottom of the page looks a little odd with the black line that extends across the bottom. I would suggest that you either run the table the full length of the page or continue the grey outline around it.

And my final thought which is just a personal preference is to add some little rounded corner images to cut down on the blockyness of the site. These one need to be 5 pixels x 5 pixels so they take 0 time to download and I personally think they make the site look nicer.

Thanks for the idea's so far guys! :)

I'm definatly going to do something about the bottem of the page, not sure what though yet, maybe just bring the blue or grey (or both) bar around and back under it...

As for the width, I'm quite happy with that. I personally have a preferance of fixed width sites as opposed to stretching sites. I'm actually at 1280x1024 - definatly don't want lower resolution users not to be able to see the site properly though;). I am going to try out a few background colours though.

Hmmm - didn't think of a T-shirt before, I have idea's for letterheads and business cards pretty much figured out though. I'm also working on an abbreviated logo which could look good on T-shirts, it's just the eye part of the current logo.

Hmmm, I have never heard the elipse/spiral thing before either?

I'm also working on a couple of other tweaks as well. :)

Ditto everything Morgan just said :)


I think that working on NON-blockiness is a good idea.

See how these sites throw in some curves or non right-angles to break things up visually.

http://slashdot.org/
http://www.imdb.com/
http://www.amazon.com/
http://thesims.ea.com/
http://www.msn.com/
http://www.yahoo.com/

Sometimes they do it to punctuate the content at the point as well.

Also, WAY too much contrast with the black bars in the text. Less is more. Try killin the Grey, and just use shades of blue in the content area. Then when you do yor screen shots, they will be the spot that the eye is drawn too.

I think your logo would look pretty cool with that Mac Plastic look. Kinda like that QuickTime logo: http://www.apple.com/quicktime/
You can find tutorials on line to make that style.

But having it do a internal dropshadow, yet in front of your eye elipse is just plain wrong :P But really, it's mood will be better if it has some anchors in reality since you are useing the idea od shadows, you are kinda commiting yourslef to maeking it make some sense physicaly.

Next try to have the logo break out of the top by extening the BG of the indext at the top all the way accross and behind the top of the logo. That may mean you need to break the logo into chunks and places the chunks it a table.

<quote>Why would ellipses and spirals be taboo in web design? I've never heard that before.</quote>

why spirals are taboo: http://www.splorp.com/critique/

why swooshes (full or half or delta ellipses) are taboo: http://50cups.com/swoosh/index.asp

they have been beaten to death in logo design. so try something new if u have the time.

The main problem with the logo's on those pages in my opinion was that none of them actually had a need to be in the logo at all, where my ellipse actually makes part of the picture suggest some imagery. It was a pretty interesting read though! :)

I have taken into account two suggested changes so far, colour scheme and the bottom of the page. I think it's an improvement so far, what about you guys? :)

http://videogames.co.nz/sam/test/index1.html

Ok I wiped up this little screen shot as an example of what you site looks like on my screen and what I see as a problem with it.

http://www.rainfallstudios.com/image/misc/screen.gif

I shrunk it down to save time in the down load so the numbers are a little tough to read but the numbers are 27% 46% 27%. This means that you’re using less then half the screen space on my monitor which is really a waste.

One thing which is important in your home page is the space above the "fold" which is an imaginary line at the bottom of the page where the user has to scroll. Its’ name comes from newspapers and the fold in the middle. It’s important because you really want as much as possible above the fold because that is what most people will see.

Anyways that my 2 cents