Recommended Web Tools Site Review

My initial reaction is that the design is very busy, with lots of different blocks of the screen doing different things. Amidst this, some of the important stuff is small and obscure. For example, Search is in a tiny font, while Subscribe-to-email-newsletter is far larger and more prominent. I for one am a lot more likely to want to search your site than to sign up to get email from you!
It looks as though you are gathering a lot of information. I hope that these hasty comments help you organize it!

Yep, WAY too busy. Needs to pull some of all that blue space into the text display columns – it’s not very readable. The blue is too bright – distracting. Font size would be fine if there was more neg space around it.

I’m with AndWat – the search situation needs rectifying. Larger more visible fontface, make a button stand out, whatever.

Ok I’ve ditched the busy background image and made it a blue-gray background.

I’ve switched my greys around to make the fonts more pleasant to the eye. I also increased the line height to increase readability.

Let me know if these things have helped.

I totally hear what you are saying about search. That, however, will have to wait until tomorrow.

I appreciate it!

That’s certainly an improvement. The background now fades into the background quite nicely if you know what I mean. And the change-around of the greys works too. I still (personal opinion only!) would like your text columns to be wider, so that the text has more negative space around it – there’s so much information, it runs the risk of disappearing simply because it’s “squashed” into columns that really are too small.

But it’s much better!

The combined space of the left text column and the main text column is already at the maximum it can be in order to also serve any 800×600 readers.

My guess is that the two center columns of this forum are just about as wide if maybe a little narrower (would have to peek at their style sheet).

Take the main text column. Do you want to see more space to the right and left of the text? ie more padding/margin?

Probably have to be a combination, so you cover the bases with most browser displays…. But yes, adding whatever combo of margin and padding to narrow the actual text section would help. It’s good that you’re covering the 800×600 situation, but making it not readable on my “small” screen (1280×1024) isn’t good either – and you really don’t want to know what it looks like on my “large” (1600×1200) one!

I realize I’m an anomaly – I use large screens at high resolutions AND I surf maximized, using FF1.0.6 in however many tabs I need. So my recommendations on the text readability might be off a bit….