Let’s hear it.

Also, last time I tried this, someone was offended by my website’s content and we ended up talking about free speech and whatnot, and not much was said about the site design itself.

Hahaha…that’s too funny. =P Your’s offending? Nah..I can’t see that…lol. As for the design, it appears to be a color scheme change and such to the Default 1.5.. right? It’s looking good to me, keep up the good work, as well as the site content lol.. =)

spencerp

I’m not offended by the contents, I believe it’s hilarious at times! One thing I personally don’t link about it is the maximum contrast between the background color and font color. It hurts the eyes after a while, so a background color change would really improve it in my opinion.

Because the content is mostly written, you would be best to go for a light background and dark text as you can only read so many stories in white text on black.

Some funny stuff there, and a bit scary, but I’m sure you won;t be offering lifts to potential phycopaths in future.

Why not copy the website, and see how it looks if you make the content and post background white, and maybe colour the sidebars to match the banner.

That stuff is hilarious. I am totally going to come back and read some more later. (edit)

You don’t necessarily have to change the color of your text and background. Just increase the font size at least. I think that when we make aesthetic choices that slightly lack in functionality (is that a world?) we have to make some other compromises. And besides I think big font conveys an extroverted friendly tone as opposed to those gazillions of political blogs with micro print.

If you make the font bigger, maybe you could make it a dull gray like ccc or something instead of fff because the white glare is bad for your eyes and the contrast is a bit high.

I really like the aesthetics of this blog. I think it looks great and it suits the writing style.

Thanks for the feedback, I just changed the main body text color from white to grey, and it seems much easier on the eyes.

Now I just have to find the right sizing for the text.

I think it’s good how it is. I just read a couple paragraphs to see how it was on the eyes, and it wasn’t bad. Usually when making a dark theme you tend to make the font too small and too contrasty, but I think it’s fine

Using black can be difficult. IF you wish to get across a certain mood, then it can work. However you have black combined with bright colorful typesetting. Ekkkk!

To me, it feels a bit like you can’t quite make up your mind… Anarchy or fluffy pop culture. Choose one then give’r

Personally I would want a more broken look… No straight lines. Kinda like the site had been to hell and back! It would be a bit more work to implement but it would be more in keeping with your content

When a site is this heavy on content that has to be read rather than viewed (text rather than imagery), you seriously have to give consideration to how long someone can stare at a page before eye fatigue sets in.

I agree with lightening up on the background, and maybe increasing the font size a tad.

I also wish the site would go one direction or the other—either grungy or fun. Right now, it’s not clear by the design choices whether you’re doing a site that is anti-pop culture, or just humorous. The color choices make me think of The Dark Side of eBay, but the graphics say KidRobot.

Well, I don’t consider my writing to be either “grungy” or “anarchic”. I am not trying to rebuke any social norms with my writiing. I merely observe situations and exploit their humorous aspects. I would like the overall appearance of the site to be fun, and not necessarily that of lawlessness.

I’m not try to display any sort of anti-social behavior here, so please dont relate that to the site design.

Just came back to see what other people had to say and I take a look at it again since you said you changed the font.

If it were me personally I might remove the border and change the font so that it looks more relaxed, but it’s not me and what you have looks okay. And I do agree that I don’t like the colors. You could desaturate them a bit so that they’re not so garish. But if you really like them then at least they are easy to see.

Your site does look very ‘slick’ so if you want a more personal feel that might not be an advantage and I could think of several things you might want to change. But you didn’t say that you were going for the ‘out of my basement’ look, so I guess it doesn’t matter. On the upside what you have is uncluttered, well organized, easy to navigate, the colors match, and the visibility is good. Your logo is eyecatching, proffesional looking and you used your domain name – which means that people can remember how to find you again easily.

If you think it’s a good reflection of your personality than don’t worry about whether the site looks too pop or anarchist. Personally I did not think of either thing at all when I looked at your site. I was wondering if the pink in my own design isn’t too soft and girly for the image I’m trying to convey but 1) it worked with what I was wearing in the photo I have up, and 2) it’s easier on the eyes than red, plus 3) it fights stereotypes if people are expecting me to be nice because I have a pink website.

Veronica,

I was actually toying around with the border, and when I removed it, there seemed to be way too much negative space. I have a million ideas of what I would like to do with the site, but unfortunately, I have a very limited knowledge on writing the code.

I love the logo, and I will more than likely stick with the color scheme for now. But, you have a great point on making the layout seem more personal. It is very ‘slick’ now, which is not necessarily what I’m looking for. Ideally, I would like a relaxed, easy-to-navigate layout.

First, I need to find the correct style/size of font and then go from there. Any suggestions on a font style?

Thanks for the feedback,
-Mike

1) Yeah I was suspicious about suggesting that you remove the border because I’ve had that experience many times when I think that something would look better if I changed it, do so, and then gasp in horror. I was thinking about the empty space so I’m not surprised you said that.

One solution, that I don’t know if you’ve already thought of, would be to change your css so that the site takes up a relative percentage of the screen instead of a fixed amount. You only have two columns so it shouldn’t be too hard to do. You have a header, a body, and a footer. You could let these things take up about eighty percent of the screen maybe, or more or less – whatever. Then, within your body you can make the the sidebar a fixed width, and the content fluid. That way you don’t mess up your navigation and the content’s width will expand or shrink to fit the leftover room. You can also set a minimum width beyond which the content will not shrink, if you’re so inclined.

That way your site will look good on any size computer screen and you don’t have to worry about the negative space. Maybe you already thought of that and rejected it for some reason, but if you just don’t know how then I can try to help you.

2) Speaking of font, I don’t know if you’ve seen my site when I kept asking people for help but if you look in the comments section under the post “This site is under construction” there is a little debate about font between me and someone from here who went to take a look. Basically we were talking about the difference between a site that looks professional and a site that looks personal and I was going for personal.

You can read the long boring explanations about reader studies and personal preferences there but the gist of the conclusion we reached is that Verdana is consistently ranked as easier to read by viewers and is widely available on most computers. Since you’re having problems with the white (gray) on black background you might want to stick to an easy to read font like Verdana. Definetely sans-serif, though whatever you decide. Serif fonts are not recommended for the web because they are harder to read on screen (easier in print).

For my own site I chose Trebuchet MS and Comic Sans Ms. Trebuchet Ms is similar to the popular Arial, but said to convey more personality by those who purport to know these things. It’s a bit sassy. Comic Sans Ms is another font with loads of personality and is a real attention getter that was developed to be used for comics and I think it conveys a humorous tone very well. I did think it added more visual appeal and created a more friendly tone to my site after changing the font. But I had to increase the size slightly to compensate for not having chosen a very neutral font.

So basically I’d think about what you can do with Verdana, Comic Sans MS, or Trebuchet MS. If you don’t like any of those, the long discussion about various fonts and their merits or demerits can be found in those comments on my website.

I would like to try to edit my css so that it takes up a certain percentage of the screen on respective computers. Wanna help?

I was writing a little tutorial for you and I just realised something: your sidebar is on the right and I made mine on the left so if you want me to tell you how to do it your way it might take me some more time to experiment. If you want to do it my way I can tell you how I did it. Just depends if you’re attached to the sidebar on the right or if it was a fluke that you put it there. If you like it that way then give me some time to experiment and see what I can come up with.

Nevermind.
Go to https://www.veronicarose.com/index2.html

Play with the browser to see how it degrades at different resolutions. Now imagine that the whole background is black with gray font. See if that’s more or less what you want.

With relative width you will lose some control over the look of your page as it morphs to fit different screens. That’s why I think so many people prefer fixed widths. You can really control the layout if you fix it, but it means people with smaller resolutions scrolling or people with larger resolutions staring at a lot of negative space. That’s what’s happening with your site right now. I checked the site you have now in a few resolutions and it looks best in 800px, which is standard so that’s good. But at the upper end there’s too much negative space and at 600px you have to scroll to the right to see the sidebar.

With the fluid content though, it also looks best at 800px. So ultimately, there’s no perfect solution. You will have to make a decision.

I couldn’t get the min-width thing to work so I looked up some css tutorials and discovered that internet explorer does not support it. I’d have to apply a hack and it’s late at night so I’d rather not try to figure that out right now.

I think it looks okay on 800 px monitors, which are the norm and on 1024, which are more and more common. But it looks like crap on 600 px monitors. It’s going to need a hack to stop the text from shrinking if you want to use it. Probably a minimum size of 450px. The good thing is that hardly anybody browses on a 600px monitor anymore.

Well, it’s up to you now to leave it the way it is, or try to change it.