Dear folks. I've finally bothered and moved my lazy behind to sit and make my OWN website. I've still got to finish off the "Contact Me" page, but the rest of the stuff is uploaded and running. Here is my portfolio http://www.wyred.in {Meant to be pronounced as Wired}. Please go through my work, and offer advice / feedback etc. Thanks for looking! Cheers, Courage.
Not bad at all! A few pointers: The background image doesn't have to be a PNG. If you would choose a GIF with a limited color palette, you could reduce the file size significantly. The content space is too small for my taste and makes browsing tedious. I like the hover effect on the menu. Your pages lack textual titles; I know there aren't allot of pages, but it's still feels strange without them. I like the portfolio script, but I'd prefer to click on the tab I want. The hover thing gets annoying. Your contact page leads to a 404. I'm guessing you've not finished this one. Apart from that, it's pretty good!
Definitely not bad, clean design, I enjoy the logo. I'd think about being able to offer more content and agree with steelfrog, you need a broader range of content space available. Loading time is still an issue (remember, there are still people running 56-128K) Definitely not a bad start though. Keep tinkering!
Your customer sites are very nice. Yours a bit too grungy, but hey that's just personal taste. Those sliding tabs are a weeeeeee bit hard to navigate and they slide straight away over whatever you are looking at if you are just a little bit to careless with the mouse. Read "Don't make me think" - the classic of web usability.
The logo looks a bit napsterish... And I agree, the sliding tabs can be kinda tough to handle. Something I usually consider when creating effects & tricky bits like the tabs is how would someone new to the 'net handle it? Would my grandma understand what's going on and be able to use the site...?
Fixed layout over fixed sized image - instant /FAIL/. Absurdly undersized fixed font size sends large font users diving for the zoom the moment they get there. In terms of filesizes, your mainframe.png is twice the size I consider maximum for a single SITE, and 50% larger than the largest site I'd ever deploy. Precomposite that down as a .jpg for deployment, since an alpha transparancy .png is generally ridiculous. I'd also try to find a way to 'layer' the footer over a looping middle to at LEAST open it up to dynamic height. What you've got is an art *** painting with some content slapped atop it, not a website.
To be honest I prefer your personal page, much brighter and clean. I also think that your portfolio needs more than just a link to the design. Explain a bit about it, what it was you did etc etc. I have no problems with the sliding menu on the portfolio as I'm used to that style of navigation, knew it as soon as I saw it, but others might struggle, especially novice users who will throw their mouse out of the way to read the page. I think you also need a way of letting the user know which page they are on, perhaps having the navigation link for the active page a different colour (and no longer a link). I'm also slightly baffled as to why I have to scroll down only to find that I'm just looking at the rest of your grunge background. I shouldn't have to scroll to find there is no content. So perhaps making the content more important than the look would be better. Your website is all about selling yourself as a designer, you have to make yourself appear professional and able to design something people can use and navigate easily. So make sure the text is easy to read, make sure that the user knows where a link will take them (especially your portfolio), and try and build a site that is neutrally appealing, so any possible client will like it.
from a seo point of view, lose the css in the code reference it in the external stylesheet, and you definitely need more content on the homepage. the design is good and clean however, I personally feel its a bit dark.
yea the design is a bit dark to me if you gonna sell that kinda service but on the other hand something tells me black is going to be the new white.
Whenever I see a dark, blackish site like this trying to sell me something, I hit the back button pronto. Same with anything flash, I never hit the skip into button. Just show me what you've got up front. Don't make me think. The site is completely uninteresting from what I observed on the home page.