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Design

Orestis Pouliasis
Orestis Pouliasis
5,561 Points

Feedback for my new Project (Website)

As the title says, I would like you to check out my new website: http://fortherecord-news.blogspot.gr/ I have to apologise because it's in greek, althought you can use the Google Translate widget in the sidebar. Note: Social Media widgets etc will be added, no need to let me know about it. Please consider the following things when viewing the website:

  1. Is it usable (Good or Bad usability)
  2. Is everything working? (Broken links or whatever else)
  3. Does it look nice?
  4. Is the website's oriantation/design easy to use?
  5. What should be added or removed?
  6. Are the ads placed in an annoying spot?

Thanks in advance!

P.S. I am working on it right now, some elements may change with intervals of 5-10 mins.

2 Answers

Hi Orestis,

I really like elements of your site. I'd have to disagree with Garrett on the header (just a preference thing here of course :) ) - it's bold, creative, the colours go well together. And I don't think it's a bad thing to push legibility in some circumstances. It reminds me a bit of crackmagazine.net's header - the extreme letter spacing challenges the readability.

Some problems though - the colours in the top navigation aren't good, it's difficult to read the black on the maroon. And I wouldn't make so much of a contrast between the hover and the non-hover background colours.

Also, it would be nice if the alignment of elements was more consistent; the header, the nav, the adverts, the sidebar content, and the body content all protrude at different places.

I second Garrett's responsive comment.

My final opinion: the arrows on the right - the up arrow's useful, but there's not much need to go to the bottom of the page, so I would lose the down arrow. It would be cool to add a smooth scroll to this too, to avoid the sudden jumping.

Good work though. All the best,

Ede

Orestis Pouliasis
Orestis Pouliasis
5,561 Points

I fixed the bottom-top arrows, so as not to interfere with the sidebar. I can't really make it scroll back smoothly, the code I was given was both for up&down scroll. I will try fixing the colors in the nav menu, I was really thoughtful about it too. Thanks for your feedback!

Garrett Levine
Garrett Levine
20,305 Points

I have a few things to say about it, and this is coming from a pure ignorance user interaction perspective, as I do not understand a word of what is on the page.

I don't quite understand some of the choices made in the design of the page. I think that a lot of the design decisions made actively work against the intention of a 'news' page. While it is never a good idea to 'copy' a website it style, there are reasons that certain design choices work for certain sites.

The 'background', specifically the top part above the header/logo, is very distracting and draw a lot of attention away from the articles in the page. Similarly, the top header is frustrating to read, lacking a specific color pallet. As mentioned in the fonts course of treehouse, font is meant to be read. While this font may be interesting/unique looking, if a user has trouble reading/understanding what it is saying, it can be very off putting, and goes against the idea of words.

There is a lot of scrolling in this page, and I don't know how much scrolling users are willing to do anymore. I'd say that after your first 4 articles, the others are not going to receive ANY attention, unless someone is really looking for something. I would recommend only showing 3-5 articles of current stories, and having a button at the bottom that leads to an archive, maybe? Again, I have no weight in this discussion.

Lastly, I see that the site is not responsive, meaning that when re-sizing the browser , the site's elements to not shift to fit, or change in layout. If you intend to make this a successful news site, I recommend working towards making a responsive site, that is easy for people to use their phone and read.

All my feedback comes from concepts and ideas I've learned in treehouse, which there are courses to help you get a grasp on as well!

Orestis Pouliasis
Orestis Pouliasis
5,561 Points

I comprimised legibility for design, since it's not really necessery to "make sense of what is says", it's a logo, not a calls to action (my thought when creating it). I used AJAX, instead of forcing the user to refresh the whole page for more posts, and I can't do anything really for response-vility, (I have noticed it too), because its on Blogger, and Blogger just makes it diffrent for desktops, tablets and phones, but I am sure that it works cross-platform. Thanks for pointing out!