http://stuweb.cms.gre.ac.uk/~as234/925/design11/design11.htm

http://stuweb.cms.gre.ac.uk/~as234/925/design11/design11.htm

view it in IE please as firefox is messing it up! too tacky?
anyother suggestions?

I'm gonna pull you up on that firefox comment as firefox is fully standards compliant. The 44 Errors would be why your site won't display properly in firefox.

In any case
in both browsers you're stretching the images, your logo is smeared ,try experimenting with export quality
In firefox black writing on the links doesn't show up so well on a deep grey background, make it that hover blue all the time
In both You havent specified an explicit font for the items : recommend verdana
The default style button looks dreadful on both, recommend experimenting with CSS on it.
In IE the top menu flows over 2 lines

You need to seriously address your standards compliance. you ought to be developing with firefox and making workarounds for IE not the other way around. 44 errors is dreadful, at that rate you could get a job at microsoft, their msn spaces website ahs an average of 286.

i am not worried about the compliance, my main concern is the layout ie how it looks, its just an initial design i plan on doing with CSS + html eventually.

cheers for that tho!

oh and for me in IE the top menu doesnt go over two lines?

how can you not be worried about the compliance????

the layout, IMO, is lacking. Images are skewed, out of line, and slow loading. You need to size the logo properly.

You need to get everything lined up, and work on a colour scheme.

To be brutally honest, i'd be taking it back to the drawing board. Devise a concept on paper first.

Good luck!

i am not worried about compliance because i just want to get a design first. as i said if the person i am making for, likes it. i will actually do a compliant design with CSS later. the thing is that i am more worried about my uncreativity !

thanks for the comments, any idea on the colour scheme though?

okay, a good place to start (well, after identifying the needs/wants of client) is a colour scheme.

check out this site.
it's a program called Color Impact, and it helps create colour swatches based on a single hex imput. it does a good job of it. i typically make a handful or two of swatches and store them away, and if i'm ever struggling for a colour scheme, i just pull that out.

that should get you started.

good luck

What was said:


What should have been said:


Without compliance you will never have a solid design.

Best of luck.

^ whats the point in thinking about compliance when i dont even know if
a) design is good
b) the person will accept it? and if he doesnt then i would have wasted loads of time in compliance when i could have just started another design?

Whenever I design a site, I constantly check compliance or im shooting myself in the foot when it comes to release time. I develop on firefox because I have common sense enough to realise that as it is W3C compliant, I will have no issues displaying my compliant code on it. At just before release, I implement workarounds to make it display identically in IE and opera.

Most of the people in here are web design PROs. As in they do it for a living. I recommend you take their advice.

As for your last point, there are always other clients. And quite frankly I don't rate you as a web professional if you start off with scrappily designed code made to fit internet explorer that malfunctions so badly in firefox.

Try to change the background color outside of the border.

Those little thumbnails at the bottom are a wopping 1797.37 KB. You need to resize the image for a thumbnail before you upload to the net, not after, with IMG width and height. 1798K takes over a half a minute on dail-up to load a thumbnail.

I agree with Markisdee (BTW love the new avatar)

Although i also agree with the compliance issue, I can understand why you want to just thow a design out quickly.

The colors are OK.

Try to limit your width to 790-800 pixels. Will fit most browser windows. One of the most annoying things on the 'net is horizontal scrolling.

The picture is flashing too fast. A more "elegant" approach would be to fade from one picture to another. Flashing always turns me off...

You need to have something in common between all the pages. Maintain your color scheme. Keep the same header. Etc.

The link to "About Us" takes me to a page that doesn't even look right on IE.

BTW - I haven't opened IE in 2 weeks since I swore off using it. I suggest you do the same. Even show your client that Firefox is superior.

Good luck.