Clean site, but lacking spunk.

pbaugher — Fri, 28 Sep 2001 00:17:59 +0000

You really need to add some graphics... I like the simple layout, and speed, but none of the links look interesting enough to actually click on.

taff — Mon, 24 Sep 2001 17:04:53 +0000

Quote: Originally posted by mairving
I also don't much like visited links being different than non-visited

I'm not too fond of this under normal circumstances either. However, it can prove useful on a large resource site to help users keep track of where they've been. Ironically, the visited link colour doesn't change on the external, and more plentiful links.

Re colours: Including black and white, I count 8 different colours in play between the foreground/background. I would try to reduce the number to get a consistent theme going.

A lot depends on your much-needed logo. Once you come up with something, draw on that for a colour scheme.

mairving — Mon, 24 Sep 2001 16:35:04 +0000

Definitely need a logo. The colors are okay, pretty easy on the eyes. The one thing that I thought was odd was your hyperlinks. I hate underlined text. It may be a bit more intuitive to people but most people are savvy enough to figure out that if you have headlines that you can click on them. I also don't much like visited links being different than non-visited.

I would:

You have four different A values. I think that you need only 2. One for the Blue/White text navbar at the top. One for all the other links.
Reverse the A:link and A:hover values to:
A:link - text-decoration:none
A:hover - text-decoration:underline
Get rid of the visited links and make them the same as your active links. If you had hundreds of links on one page, then the visited link may help. In this case it doesn't.

A quick survey of other news sites found that it was about half & half as to using text underline. CNN was the only one I saw that used a style like yours. An even smaller percentage used a different visited link than active.

Anyway take my opinion and a few bucks to Starbucks and it will get you a latte.

Megan — Mon, 24 Sep 2001 15:01:50 +0000

I actually think the colours look fine. I usually recommend that people use 3 colours or less, but in this case the four you've chosen work well together and they're all very neutral tones so I think it looks good.

sianews — Mon, 24 Sep 2001 14:41:38 +0000

Thanks for the tips.

My old design had the outside links in the center of the page, but people said I shouldn't highlight other's content, so now I don't . I can't make graphics, so I never did a banner - I'll have to get one though. When the news submission software update is released, I'll be able to highlight my own content in the very top section of the index page. And as for colors, my old one had only 3, so I tried to make it more colorful this time, I guess that failed .

The Webmistress — Mon, 24 Sep 2001 13:55:47 +0000

I definitely agree with the other two on this one. The two blues don't work well together, you need a logo or the site name in a unique font to give the site an identity and the main section of the page should be the news.

Brooke — Mon, 24 Sep 2001 13:41:13 +0000

I agree completely with everything said - let me just add one more thing. In my opinion you have too many colors. I would think about changing one of them - maybe the blue bar along the top and bottom.

The top blue bar could be incorporated into your logo. The bottom blue could be one of the other colors!

Good start!

Brooke

Megan — Mon, 24 Sep 2001 13:35:19 +0000

First of all, you need a logo. This will help your visitors to put a face to a name so to speak, so they will be more likely to remember you and come back.

Secondly, your main content is news so you should put the headlines in the larger content area and move the listing of your other services (columns, forums, more about Sianews, links) to a navbar on the left side. Maybe have a few highlighted stories with a blurb and maybe a photo and then a list of links to the rest of the news. This would also allow you to indicate where those news stories are.