marc-h — Tue, 09 Mar 2004 12:39:01 +0000

Overall the design is good, I like the effect done on the large titles etc. As people have said before the navigation is a bit tricky once off the initial page. As you are offering web site development a slightly more professional look might be better. I initially thought this was maybe a personal site.

starter — Fri, 05 Mar 2004 18:54:27 +0000

i think your splash page can do with a bit of rollover effects on the links to make it stand out more, and prob some alt tags to tell them where they are going, just my opinion anyway, overall its quite a very different design and very polished.

iamlost456 — Fri, 05 Mar 2004 03:19:53 +0000

Welcome page loks nice, but to confusing. Would rather just go to main page and then navigate from there.

SirHans004 — Mon, 01 Mar 2004 00:29:28 +0000

1. I like the name. It's short and sweet. Shrum!
2. The splash page is good, but Joe Internet-user may have trouble realizing that the nav cube is right there.
3. Overall layout of site is good, perhaps a few more "highlights" or details with color might add something...
4. I agree with everyone, it's hard to navigate in the subdomains. (Or is it? I tried...)
5. Wow, this is unique!

A job well done!

ed_graphicd — Sun, 29 Feb 2004 11:19:44 +0000

Rivets, yah now I remember ... used to help my pa do some stuff at our old workbench ... been years now. U r right those things are just eye candy, leave em until the last (if you still have any juice left ), they r really minor.

Keep up the spirit babeee!! you are a cool dude ciao~

S_Shrum — Sun, 29 Feb 2004 06:31:29 +0000

Ok...here's what's happened so far (no love for the paper, eh):

icerider - ...The white/paper bg is little hard on the eyes

I'll admit that the paper b/g is a bit...bright. I wanted to use something in the b/g to give the page a bit more character versus a boring, blah color...as you can see now (http://links.shrum.net for example), I changed the b/g image to a solid color but even lt grey looks bright against the outer page b/g...if I go to much darker, I'm going to need to invert my text color which isn't a big problem, CSS and all

I'd like to stay away from going to the point where I have to change the text color to lt grey but it seems like that's the way things are going.

ed_graphicd - ...I think you should seperate your professional life from your personal life

Totally...I was thinking about this last night and decided to move this stuff out. It was always a pain to cluster the links togother. My shoulder demon always said "Well, you can use those areas as examples of what your content manager can do so in a sense it's work releated." I'm beyond that so I've taken those links out...besides, it's $7 bucks a year for a new domain name for a personal site (seanshrum.com is open...hmmmm).

ed_graphicd - ...Although I don't know what its called, I do know that those are not heavy duty

Rivets, they're called rivets. I can look around for something...bigger and more heavy duty. (snickering) I just don't want the things to pull from the content...more or less just eye candy but I'll look around for something.

As for the WinXP icons...argh.

It's really hard to have a constrained page size that spans multiple areas (subdomains) that have varying numbers of links within them. I'll look into this a bit more but I'm not too optimistic about the outcome.

Keep the comments coming...I'm taking it ALL in!

TIA

icerider — Sun, 29 Feb 2004 04:41:23 +0000

The white/paper bg is little hard on the eyes and bit too bright to me. Nothing really stands out and you might want to make the top links standout.

American Psycho — Sat, 28 Feb 2004 19:24:11 +0000

I'm opposite The Webmistress, I love the first page but then once you get inside the gray is *ok* but the white makes me look for my sunglasses...

ed_graphicd — Sat, 28 Feb 2004 18:22:52 +0000

I agree with Megan about the crumpled paper BG, (although nice job of making it tile). But generally, I like to read off a smooth looking surface, less work for my eyes, maybe thats just me.

I think you should seperate your professional life from your personal life, at least on the site ... well, at least on the navigation. So its more logical when someone who wants to hire you for a job for example, s/he can click in succession on a group of links, without mistaken-ly staring at your family photos for exmaple.

The colophon page is very charming (just love it), but it should be named just that 'Colophon', 'About' generally means About Me / Us. I forgot who said this exactly, but "We read best what we read most" it was reffering to typesetting though (was a typographer I think, Robert Bringhurst? somebody correct me!). For web navigation it works generally the same, its also the same for controls in an automobile like the left right signal control, hand break, clutch position (imagine if that was swapped with the gas pedal!). Same also for the tiny triangle button on DVD players, it always means 'play'. The tiny triangle button found on Windows Media Player or iTunes means the same thing too, good for all of us, no one needs to relearn/re-adjust to rudimentary info like that all the time. Yes I mean to say adhering to some basic conventions is a good thing, usibility wise.

Back to visuals, I like your homepage man, it looks a million bucks. unique.
For the insides the graphic border with the whats-it-called bullets, the round things you have 3 on the top grey area (inner pages) .

Although I don't know what its called, I do know that those are not heavy duty. and so makes your site, together with crumpled paper BG, seem a litle filmsy. Nice idea it is, but use another more stronger element, maybe neat screw with 'alan' key type opening, not too extream though not going for the WWF wrestling look, but whatever it is make sure it blends in though, no need to make those the star of your site.

The winXP icons ... just look at this site, I wrote too much already
http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/mysterymeatnavigation.html
(yes my child you have sinned )

Good effort dude! Most important IMHO is your navigation right now (Feb 29, 04) is confusing, first thing you need to fix is to group related items together. Generally I think you should place more emphasis on your products and ability, place your family links and stuff maybe at the bottom, maybe, just tell family: "the photos are in a link at the bottom of my site, the bunch of text links there, yeah" ... something like that

tenchi_63 — Wed, 25 Feb 2004 18:30:17 +0000

I actually like this version better. The bright crumpled paper adds a nice contrast to the darker backgrounds. Looks nice, but mess around a little more with the main table background. Other than that, I think it has been time well spent.