Unleashed upon the world!

[wilco]

Just posted up a quick announcement about the project I launched today over here, but wanted to post up a link here to get feedback on the site itself.

 

www.bedrockframework.com

 

So what do you think? Any recommendations on what to change/improve?

[Adam]

I'm not massively keen personally. Think outer-glows and shadows have been a little over used... I do think though the white mouse over effect will look good if you can just get the shadows to blend better, perhaps a slightly darker gray just on the outside or something? Also I think the red image in the logo is a little too big.

 

Also another point to make is that in my mind, your design draws attention from the content of the page! I think perhaps a stronger font would be better suited?

 

Doesn't validate by the way...

 

Adam

[will35010]

I do agree that the red logo is a little big. It would help it blend better if you'd widen the table and increased the font. Other than that, it looks fine.

[nrg_alpha]

To suppliment MrAdam's comment on non validation, neither does your css

 

I'm also in agreement with the comments thus far (especially the logo being too large). I'm personally not a fan of large bulky graphic elements...The size of the logo dwarfs the lettering. They should be more comparable in size IMO.

 

I see your site is geared towards 800 pixel wide screens. IMO, I would consider perhaps taking it up a notch to 1024. Not that it feels crowded or anything. Just feels narrow compared to most modern sites these days. Admittedly, this is minor in this case, as you seem to give your content enough room to breath.

 

I'm not so sure about that initial top menu (downloads, tutorials and contribute). Feels detached. Almost as though it was added as an after though. On it's own, it doesn't look bad mind you. Just when I stand back and have a look at the layout overall, it feels somewhat disjointed. Perhaps having them as simple clean links instead? (in otherwords, without the yellow rounded corner interface that currently contains it).

 

What looks like a potential footer at the bottom (the light grey rounded panel) could contain footer info like a copyright notice, mini nav system, etc..

 

While I have no qualms with the background grey gradient, I feel it could be enhances with some sort of nice and clean, subtle tiling texture / pattern in it. Nothing obtrusive. Just enough to spice up the background somewhat.

 

The links in the grey right-hand side go from yellow to nearly the same grey as the panel itself when mouse hovering. I would consider heading in the other direction. Make rollovers stand out more.. perhaps having a white colour for your hover state?

 

Your site has some performance issues. Looking at the stats of your home page in yslow, it's a tad heavy clocking in at 550k with 47 http requests. Some things to think about:

 

- You have 13 javascript files.. consider merging some, minifying and gzipping them.

- You are using 20 css images. This too is a bit much. Consider reducing the count of those.

- You have about 35k in css files. These can be gzipped to save memory. by making your css files .css.php extensions and adding:

 

<?php
ob_start('ob_gzhandler');
header('Content-Type: text/css');
?>

 

at the top of those files, your server should gzip them prior to sending them to the browser (I think this is an apache configuration thing if I'm not mistaken, which I could well be.. in any case, I suspect most hosting providers support / provide this), those css files will be gzipped (assuming the browser in question also supports it), thus saving bandwidth and will be treated as regular css files. If not supported, then they simply aren't gzipped. That simple.

 

- Same goes for your .php documents. by adding:

if (substr_count($_SERVER['HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING'], 'gzip')) ob_start("ob_gzhandler"); else ob_start();

at the top of your page, if supported, it will also be gzipped.

 

-you can optimize your images through smushit. While the home page only managed to shave off 3.08k, it's still that much shaved off that isn't needed.

 

Overall, I do like the clean and simplistic look of the site. I like the colours chosen and the theme in general. Just could use some tweaking (code and graphically speaking) a little here and there.

 

 

[wilco]

Thanks for all the feedback! And thanks nrg_alpha for the optimization tips - that was something I really overlooked in a rush to get everything put together and ready to launch.

 

That extra menu in the upper right has really been bothering me too, just can't figure out what to do up there. Maybe it doesn't make sense to have a menu up there at all, I could use that space for something else perhaps...

[nrg_alpha]

One possible solution to the menu situation would be to remove the seach from the menu that it currently resides in, and place is just above it (so it is outside the menu system). In it's place current place, add a single menu item that is a dropdown that encapsulates the three options from the small most upper menu. As a result, you can axe that smaller menu altogether, yet retain your search functionality and the other three items. I do like the search where it is admittedly, but nothing stops from having that aspect redesigned to mingle nicely with the background outside of the yellow panel interface either. Just some food for thought.