Freesoft - Don't go easy on me!

[lucasl]

Hi everyone!
Freesoft is a freeware site which reviews freeware. Also, if you want some freeware that you can't or can't be bothered finding, go to the request page and we will find it for you!
[url=http://www.freesoft.logical-host.com]http://www.freesoft.logical-host.com[/url]

Well, what do you think? Don't go easy on me, but don't be mean. If you don't like something, say why.
Also, .com is pending. Does anyone know of a good short free domain in the meantime? Co.nr is taken.

Thanks!

[Albright]

For one, the jump in appearance between the Blog section and the other sections of the site is not good, in terms of consistency. You should try to make one look as much like the other as possible.

Second, the form on the Request page is not pretty. You need to have one of the radio buttons selected by default. The text fields do not line up; consider putting them all on new lines, directly below their header. None of these fields should already have text in them -- then the user has to go out of their way to erase it to write their message, if they even bother to do so at all. Finally (a pet peeve of mine), the "Reset" button is and always has been unnecessary. It's nothing but a source of frustration for people who accidentally click it instead of the "Submit" button and watch all the data they spent the last two/five/ten minutes get erased. Look at Google Mail, Yahoo! Mail, all major message board scripts... [i]none[/i] of them make use of a "Reset" button.

One more thing: Remember that not everyone in the world is unfortunate enough to use Windows. You should specify on the main page of your site that you only offer [i]Windows[/i] freeware. I am typing this on a FreeBSD machine and I'm saving up my doucats to be able to afford a new Mac.

[lucasl]

Thanks for the advice.
With the appearance, I can't do much about the right sidebar, because I need it in the blog and not the site. With the navigation, even though I set the text to x-large and xx-large, in the blog and the site, it is different. Do you know why?

With the request page, you are completely right, and I fixed it all up.

And by the way, I hate Windows too, and for this reason I'm not only doing windows. Notepad++ and Firefox are for Linux (hooray!), Mac, Windows and I think FreeBSD. This said, since Windows users make up something like 80+% of all computer users, much of the stuff on the site will be for Windows. I will try to keep it non platform dependent though.

[Albright]

[quote author=lucasl link=topic=118688.msg485267#msg485267 date=1166160279]With the appearance, I can't do much about the right sidebar, because I need it in the blog and not the site.[/quote]

Well, it's not so much that as it is that the colored boxes and such change position. I think the fact that you're adding a new sidebar wouldn't be so bad if every other element on the page looked the same, especially since the sidebar is on the right and, English being a left-to-right language, English readers tend to expect visual anchors (if you will) on the left. I'm not sure how much control Google gives you to changing the appearance.

The Request form is more beautiful. I'd allow for a blank line underneath the text fields for a little more visual separation, but otherwise it's solid.

My bad about Notepad++. I had just never heard of it before, so I assumed it was a Windows-only thing.

[ober]

.... this is pretty much awful.  There's no logical color scheme, there's no reason or rhyme to the layout, the text is all kinds of different sizes, there's no normal padding on the actual content, there's no styling of any kind being done... and the only decent part of the site is something you didn't even write!

Boo, I say, boo.

[JasonLewis]

to tell you the truth, i ended up changing the link to go to logical-host's website... it was a lot better.