How Was Your Day website

[GLD]

Hi guys,

Starting a new project and would appreciate it if you could take a look and tell me what you think.
It's basically a site where visitors submit anecdotes about their Day. You can then view the Days of others.
Could you please take a look at the design and tell me what you think? I know it's still imperfect in Opera and FF, but I'm working on it. Also, is the concept any good?
It would also be great if you could submit your own Day.
The link is [a href=\"http://howwasyourday.humaneightball.com\" target=\"_blank\"]http://howwasyourday.humaneightball.com[/a]
All help much appreciated,
Damien.

[AndyB]

Your code needs work :)

Your image optimization needs work - the header is 90+kb = death on dial-up

An html page should only have ONE set of HEAD tags, ONE set of HTML tags, and ONE set of BODY tags. You have lots - that's no good.

Graphically, it's uninspired but let's assume it'll get better as you work on it. You might want to adjust how the 'days' are displayed so that they are vertically aligned the same regardless of how long the day's description is.

As a concept, it's great. Properly 'marketed' it could generate lots of traffic. I assume visitor rating of a day is something that's coming soon. You might even want to consider allowing visitors to post a comment on someone else's day.

Take a look at [a href=\"http://www.clientcopia.com\" target=\"_blank\"]http://www.clientcopia.com[/a] - that might give you some ideas about graphics and content/features on a similar site.

[moberemk]

Hate your side menu-it's too big and when it's hovered over, it becomes too plain.
Very small site, with no border. It's next to impossible to make a site with so little actual content to actually fill up an entire screen. On your "Browse Days" screen, be sure to have it open up to your top-ranked days, with your five newest on the front page, just for usability. The worst thing, though, is that on your recent days screen, I can't even see the days, just the titles. Completely inaccessible interface design here.

[GLD]

Thanks guys - this is really great critique!

Andy - You're right about those tags, I didn't even notice. That's include() for you. I was meaning to vertically align them but couldn't find out how. I'll look into that. I was also thinking about implementing the rating system, but that will have to come later when we get more days. Commenting on other visitors' days is a good idea, I never really thought about so thanks for that. I'll look into coding that.

moberemk - You make great points, thought I must say I'm fond of my side menu. I'll also look into making the days - or at least parts of them - visible on the recent days screen.

Thanks again guys, this kind of critique is exactly what I'm after. Now I'm off to try and ffix what's not right. :)

[roseplant]

I love your site! I've being going through these review posts saying 'lame, ripoff, miami vice got a better colour scheme, ....'. But I like this. Great idea too, could be pretty cool if it went big-time - have you thought of blog integration, etc.? Definitely a market there. For now, get the code cleaned up. Here are some pointers:
[ol type=\'1\'][*]I submitted my day, waited 4 seconds and got a message saying something like 'Script taking too long, continue or cancel'. Uh oh... Worked out when I clicked Continue, but that needs to be fixed ASAP.[*]After submitting a day, give a prettier page than the plain text that comes up. Though I'm sure you're working on this. Right?[*]Front image (car crash) : 117.89 kB. Too big. Optimise.[*]That font looks like Arial. Ugh - only google can pull that off.[/ol]
All the best with the site!

[AV1611]

menu "JUMPS" sometimes vertically... Cute idea, but not my thing... most of the other things I noticed are already mentioned... but I happen to think that simple works in this case, in contrast with moberemk's remarks... I wouldn't feel I had to add much, just make what you have better... I searched for worse days, and it displayed three... I really wanted to read the bottom rated day, but it wasn't a clickable link... I certainly should be clickable...

[khendar]

I actually like the large navigation buttons. Perfect for the concept of the site. If anything I would move them up closer to the banner and reduce the padding between them, there is just a little bit too much white space.

In addition I would move the main content block up slightly - again for white space purposes and to eliminate some unneccessary vertical scrolling.

Make sure you remember to style the submission form. Serif font are evil (most of the time). Also the form seems to flow outside of the main panel in IE and comes very close to it in FF. Adding a little more space at the bottom or reducing some of the whitespace at the top could fix this.

Nice idea. Be interesting to see how much traffic you get. Good Luck :)

[GLD]

Thanks for all the comments and suggestions guys!
I'm working on a variation of the design which will take into account all of the things that have been said. I'l let you know when it's finished and hopefully you'll be able to give me some additional critique. :)