tcal.net site critique

dangerman

http://tcal.net/

hey lads the above is my 'new' website (it's been around in various forms since 1997) I'd be interested in comments on the design. Granted its a bit wordpressy, but thats inevitable and there'll be others updating hopefully at some stage so an easy to use cms is a must.

it all validates xml/css so i don't think anyone should have any problems but let me know.

Interested in aesthetics/fonts/usability/colour/load times comments.

One obvious problem is that there's no explanation of what the site is or is really about. Not sure whether I'll rememdy this or not.

And yes i'm aware its just another blog/news site to add to the 4 billion already but tbh i don't care much about comments on the content right now as that may change. The idea is to use this site along with others as a showcase for getting work.

Thanks.

Seth Brundle

1. as you say it validates correctly. excellent start.
2. I like the design except for the fact that as you scroll down you are introduced to more white space on the left. I like the colours, etc.
3. Load times are very quick on BB.

Not a criticism but is there a need for all the RSS feeds?

cgarvey

nice work.. my only gripe is all the whitespace. On my screen its over 75% white space, which is rediculous when I have to scroll down so far. Why not move the TCAL logo, navigation and feature logos along the top where, again, you have acres of space. That way the content can easily fill up the full width of the page? Even at 800x600, I have to scroll loads, even though there should be no need at all. Whitespace aside, nice and neat, and good and fast to load as well.

.cg

mneylon

Nice and fast to load, unlike some of the rubbish people throw up here!

dangerman

Why is everyone so harsh on whitespace? Whitespace is beautiful. Whitespace is your friend.

Seriously though, does it really piss you off or is it just a small thing? Also, I could continue on down the light-brownish hue down instead of stopping it after the menu content is done...but would that solve any problems..it would just be empty #EBE8C3 instead of white. I guess it might introduce more contrast and ground the site more when peeps are reading down near the bottom. Could even put in a 'back to top' dealy.

I'm running 1024x768 here on a monitor thats about to explode but i did have a look at higher resolutions. I like neat small centralised sites.

The space to the right of the tcal logo is unfortunately reserved for when I sell out and place ads all over the site.

Well the RSS feed i know is a bit pointless, just like the comments...no one's going to be using it. You could *almost* say the whole site is a bit pointless...But I'd say in a week or so the site will surpass slashdot's popularity so I guess it'll be useful then.

I'm not sure I follow when peeps say 'there's no need for all that scrolling' - it's a blog-style layout...there's always scrolling in them. I know from a product information/online shop etc. point of view you've got to get as much on-page without scrolling...but that's not the case where the primary content is what it is on this page. No? One thing I might do is reduce the amount of posts that appear before they zip off to the archive...specially if the posts are going to be long and rambly.

Thanks for all the feedback + compliments.

cgarvey

dangerman wrote:

Why is everyone so harsh on whitespace? Whitespace is beautiful. Whitespace is your friend.

Whitespace is *no* friend of mine!!!

Seriously though, yes whitespace in small doses can be nice, and I agree with your fondness of "neat small centralised sites" .. however you're just wasting space, and your design is forcing me to scroll when there is absolutely no need, whatsoever.

I don't browse that many blogs, but the ones I do browse don't force me to scroll anywhere near as much. I'm used to scrolling on /. or boards, or sites like that, but I only scroll if the topic is of interest to me.. whereas on your site I have to scroll to see if the topic is of interest to me.

I've attached a screengrab (reduced) of how your site looks on my display. I'd argue that that amount of whitespace is bad design, rather than a personal preference.

But like I said, everything else I like, and Michele is right .. it is much faster to load that most of the crap posted here.

.cg

dangerman

What resolution is that?

What would your recommendation be then? widen the content column and use up more space so more text fits on the page?

My thought on that is: no. Long lines of text are hard to read, and I much prefer the short small text than widening it.

This is exactly the case on all news sites, the bbc, etc. Once you scroll down past the links/menus etc. you're left with a narrow column of text.

But, i do take your point that as you climb into higher res it's going to look very white. I just took a look at this site which shows that the majority are using 1024x768 or higher.

So I guess I'll have a think about this.

cgarvey

dangerman wrote:

What resolution is that?

1280x1024

dangerman wrote:

My thought on that is: no. Long lines of text are hard to read, and I much prefer the short small text than widening it.

Fair enough, that's your preference. My point is that you're forcing that on me. So rather than giving me the choice of whether I like my web pages with narrow content, your forcing me to accept that. I do agree that popular news sites do this too. However all are (even if marginally) wider than yours, and all have content along the side to compliment the main content. That's not to say that's good though.

Why don't you consider the approach of most news sites, forums, blogs, cms', etc.. and have a summary of topics on the front page, linking to the full article? That way I wouldn't have to scroll too much, and would only have to suffer your forced preference if I was interested in the topic? That's my only suggestion if you want to keep all that whitespace.

.cg

dangerman

Why don't you consider the approach of most news sites, forums, blogs, cms', etc.. and have a summary of topics on the front page, linking to the full article?

I thought of this earlier, so what I intend to do is to have a latest articles link on the left in the menu so you can see all the article headings without scrolling.

edit: gonna try adding 100 or so pixels to the overall width and shifting the site around on the page.

edit2: there, its wider now.

Thanks.

stepheno

Looks great, nice site.

Perhaps increase padding between headers and paragraphs etc, its a bit cramped at the moment.

Also, why not extend the black border of the logo right the way around the whole content div?

dangerman

Looks great, nice site.

Thanks.

Perhaps increase padding between headers and paragraphs etc, its a bit cramped at the moment.

not sure i agree with this. I think it's pretty decently spaced out. In fact I notice in Internet Explorer it's more spaced out than firefox ... typical different css interpretation. What browser you on?

Also, why not extend the black border of the logo right the way around the whole content div?

Well, the line signifies the path we all take in our lives, and if that line was closed, that would signify death, rather than continuing life.

No way. I like the ambiguity of a line that just ceases... Peeps are blown away by the brashness of having a line that thick that just stops. I haven't had a lot of sleep these last few days.