PING Site Critics

Site's serving pages again.  Take a look at 

http://www.lowgenius.com/3_1test.asp

and let me know what you think.  It's still sort of preliminary; I 
haven't done the menu work that i want to do yet, for instance.  Right 
now I'm concentrating on visual elements.  I'm desperately trying to 
stick to my guns on the brown thing - I really like that color range, and 
if I can get my shit together with the other elements I think it'll look 
good.

But, rather than what I *haven't* done, here's what I *have* done:

Changed the CSS to use more closely coordinating colors (no more blues, 
whites, etc; everything is brown shades)

Eliminated the gradient fade both in the body cell and in the background 
of the page banners.  There's just no way to eliminate the "banding," 
which I think is ugly.  I'd honestly not noticed this due to my monitor's 
idiosyncracies; I'm using a dual-monitor setup right now while I'm 
waiting for my Radeon 9700 to get back from warranty service, so I am 
able to see things a bit better (the color on my primary monitor is very 
dark and hides some things like this.  That's what I get for using a free 
monitor that I literally found laying on the side of the road, but it's 
not that bad, and it's a 21-inch NEC, so I'll cope with it for now rather 
than going back to a 19".  It's just a PITA because I can't adjust the 
brightness properly - when I change the brightness, the color just goes 
wonky).  Anyway, I digree, the point being that I'm only using the 
gradient in the menus and the bottom cell with the &copy notice in it.

Eliminated ALL of the yellow border graphics.  Too much of a pain in the 
butt.

Went with an all lower case text motif, as I think it compliments the 
subtler coloring scheme (and on a more metaphysical note, compliments the 
subtler, more relaxed public face I've been wearing for the last three 
years or so).

I'll be restructuring the menu system later today, but I think I'm going 
to stick with the "category menu across the top/page menu at the left" 
structure.  Many sites use this kind of structure successfully, and 
there's just no GOOD way to get a good menu structure that can cover all 
the material without either emplying some kind of java manu system - 
something that hasn't worked particularly well in the past for me - or 
having a gigantic list o' links on every page, or abandoning templates 
altogether and doing each page by hand, which is also a pain in the butt 
(there are already well over 100 pages in this web; it would be senseless 
for me to abandon the convenience of using page templates).

I've also examined (and bookmarked!) the links that Krusty provided.  
These are an excellent resource, and I'm definitely keeping things like 
the "10 rules of good site design" in mind as I go through this.  Thanks.

Like I say, I'll probalby never get things to a point where everyone 
thinks it's perfect; ultimately the one I have to please is me, since the 
site is an expression of me, and I think it's important that it maintains 
my "personality" and so forth.  Still, I was obviously making many 
mistakes in my previous layout.  I think you'll find this less cluttered, 
easier on the eyes, more readable, and (when I get the menu changes 
finished) easier to navigate.  Over the next week and weekend, I'll be 
re-writing/consolidating many of the "about" pages and so forth as well.

Thanks to everyone, especially Krusty and Pete, for their forthright and 
helpful suggestions.  I look forward to your continued feedback as I 
struggle toward convincing people that I actually know what the hell I'm 
doing.

-- 
John Henry
-Now playing: Winamp stopped
http://www.lowgenius.com - if it's not one thing
http://www.rspw.net - it's the other.
I don't remember half the time if I'm hiding or I'm lost, but
I'm on my way -- Soundgarden