Critique please, devallenger.co.nz

[Nik Coughlin]

Hi,

http://devallenger.co.nz/

Thanks!

 

[dorayme]

Hi,

http://devallenger.co.nz/

Thanks!

It is more than good. It is certainly good enough to move on to
your next project.

 

[Andy Dingley]

http://devallenger.co.nz/

Pretty damned good.

Maybe a little bigger on those RHS thumbnails? I'm looking at
1600x1200 on a vanilla monitor, not anything huge, and they're small
enough that I can't see any of the detail in them. Your target market
isn't exactly low-rent, so they may have the same issue.

 

[Els]

http://devallenger.co.nz/

Very nice - except I don't have Garamond on my pc, so I see my generic
serif font, which doesn't look like you put any thought in the style
of the main content. I have no idea what Garamond would look like on
the page, but I'd suggest using a few more serif fonts as fall-back
between Garamond and generic serif, to make sure it looks like the
font was a conscious choice for the design.(my personal choice would
be Georgia ;-) )

 

[Travis Newbury]

http://devallenger.co.nz/

It looks almost as good as Caroline does. What a hotty

 

[AGw. (Usenet)]

Hi,

http://devallenger.co.nz/

Thanks!

Nitpicks:

The grey text in the bottom black box has very poor contrast against
the background, making it somewhat difficult to read.

Having the separate "Q&A" and "Contact" pages seems a bit redundant.

You seem to have quite a number of empty or redundant divs on each
page.

A matter of personal taste, perhaps, but the huge amount of black
space in the banner seems a bit unbalanced to me, almost as if there's
something missing.

The four women on the left are nice enough to look at, but why are
they there? Who are they? My first response was that they were
models used by whoever this company is, but since the first lady is
apparently the boss I'm left wondering if the others are staff
members. Confusing!

When I load the "Personal Image" page in Firefox I get an intermittent
problem with the diverseConsulting.png image: sometimes the text flows
round it, and sometimes the text treats it as background and creates a
confusing mess.

If "Personal Image" is your default index page for the domain name it
shouldn't be the second item in the menu at top, and shouldn't be
available as a menu option when it's the page being displayed.

"Landscape design" is hardly part of "interior design"! I'd also lose
the photo with the bright red toilet; it'll appeal to some but make
others think your client has absolutely no sense of taste!

 

[AGw. (Usenet)]

Nitpicks:

One final point: it's a mistake to mix cases in file names. Users are
too prone to not writing them down properly, and it's too easy for
anyone maintaining the site (and it might not be you in future!) to
create broken links by failing to observe exactly which characters
happen to be capitalised.

 

[Neredbojias]

Well bust mah britches and call me cheeky, on Wed, 24 Oct 2007 02:18:49 GMT
Nik Coughlin scribed:

Hi,

http://devallenger.co.nz/

Thanks!

Very attractive! Seems to work well, too.

Reference was already made to this, but I would reduce the height of the
banner as it really takes-up a lot of viewport, especially on lower-rez
monitors. Nevertheless, good job.

 

[Jim Moe]

http://devallenger.co.nz/

The layout emphasizes the pix far more than the text. Is this
intentional? With a viewport about 850px wide the main content is jammed
into a narrow column to the center right.
The images on the right do not seem very, um, professional.

 

[Nik Coughlin]

The grey text in the bottom black box has very poor contrast against
the background, making it somewhat difficult to read.

OK, will alter, thanks.

You seem to have quite a number of empty or redundant divs on each
page.

Looks like it, but they are actually used to position corners (needed for
drop shadow effect) and other background images -- variation on sliding
doors technique.

The four women on the left are nice enough to look at, but why are
they there? Who are they? My first response was that they were
models used by whoever this company is, but since the first lady is
apparently the boss I'm left wondering if the others are staff
members. Confusing!

Yeah, they are staff. I will clarify that, maybe a caption "Our team".
Thanks for pointing that out.

When I load the "Personal Image" page in Firefox I get an intermittent
problem with the diverseConsulting.png image: sometimes the text flows
round it, and sometimes the text treats it as background and creates a
confusing mess.

You mean, for a short time while the page loads? Or does it "stick" like
that?

If "Personal Image" is your default index page for the domain name it
shouldn't be the second item in the menu at top, and shouldn't be
available as a menu option when it's the page being displayed.

Agreed, the client is thinking about what they actually want on the home
page (I suggest summaries of the other pages), so that is placeholding for
now.

"Landscape design" is hardly part of "interior design"! I'd also lose
the photo with the bright red toilet; it'll appeal to some but make
others think your client has absolutely no sense of taste!

I will mention those points to her, thank you. I personally think that the
copy and photos need work but that's not my job (thankfully!) and she is in
the process of reviewing the content at the moment.

 

[Nik Coughlin]

Very nice - except I don't have Garamond on my pc, so I see my generic
serif font, which doesn't look like you put any thought in the style
of the main content. I have no idea what Garamond would look like on
the page, but I'd suggest using a few more serif fonts as fall-back
between Garamond and generic serif, to make sure it looks like the
font was a conscious choice for the design.(my personal choice would
be Georgia ;-) )

Good point. It was worse before, I made a typo and the fall-back was
sans-serif instead of serif; I am so used to using sans-serif on my pages
that I typed it without thinking.

Cheers

 

[AGw. (Usenet)]

You mean, for a short time while the page loads? Or does it "stick" like
that?

When I looked at it before, it was staying wrong until I refreshed the
page; I didn't check to see if resizing shifted it. Just now when I
tried it I got the same problem but it corrected itself when the page
finished loading. And now I can't reproduce the problem at all!

I will mention those points to her, thank you. I personally think that the
copy and photos need work but that's not my job (thankfully!) and she is in
the process of reviewing the content at the moment.

I figured that they'll either understand that some spit and polish is
needed, or they won't; as you say, it's down to them.

Incidentally, if you're intending on publicising the site without the
"www." then you shouldn't really have it in the site's graphic.
Inconsistency can look unprofessional because it implies lack of
attention to detail. I'm probably just one of the 0.01% of people
who'd notice, though!

 

[Adrienne Boswell]

Hi,

http://devallenger.co.nz/

Thanks!

Really nice except for one thing - the color chosen for #mainnavigation li
a is a bit dark and was hardly noticable for me against the black
background. That may be because my monitor tends to be dark, but if it's
happening for me, it might be happening for others.