Website: Marc Honninger

**crozer** · 08-23-2009, 01:10 PM

Hope you like it.
Website designed by me [founder of croZZin' Productions] for my brother.

>> dA LINK <<

***Chris*** · 08-23-2009, 01:26 PM

I'll have some critique for the main site in just a moment.

**crozer** · 08-23-2009, 05:40 PM

Originally Posted by Solaris

I'll have some critique for the main site in just a moment.

alright.
i'll be checking around.

***Chris*** · 08-26-2009, 08:03 AM

Okay, sorry it took me so long to get back to you, had alot come up in the last couple days, and I just forgot about it. Just a few things I wanted to hit on.

- All of the below critique is based on the original site found at www.miuziqa.com -

You have a good grasp of the basic principles of interface design. There's a couple things that stick out to me as needing some emphasis:

- The purpose of the site isn't very clear. I didn't actually know that this was a site for a band / musician until I see the "music" and "Latest Music" sections. This brought me to that conclusion. The general aim of any design is to ensure that the purpose of the site is fully realized. You want your viewers to know exactly what it is they are looking at. This will increase the effectiveness of the design, as well as the site overall.

- The very top headline needs some attention. As it stands, it's the only dark element on a purely light-based color palette. It makes the content stick out, only a little too much. A lighter, less conflicting color selection may have made this a more effective elevator pitch for the site. You also need to take a little bit off of the line-height for the headline. Line height needs to be evenly distributed between the text and the containing box. Right now, there's just a little too much between the lines of text, and there's not really enough whitespace to support the text element.

- Adjust your font sizing just a little. The navigation text seems to be an appropriate size, but the headline just below it almost seems massive. Compared to the rest of the content, an H1 header should be big, but only by about 10-15 px. This will provide a much smoother transition from header to subheader to content. You should never go beyond 28px for any header, unless the design specifically tailors to larger type. Check out Smashing's typography trends and practices article and base your selection on that. Using more adapted methods will give you a better idea of how and where to use large vs small type.

- Your content needs a little bit more detail. Not so much the content itself, but the formatting. Your header titles are a little too high, and the content formatting is a little bland. This may be because it's all the same, but you should definitely try using www.lipsum.com instead for filler content, rather than copy / pasting. It gives you a much more pronounced idea of how real content would look in your layout. The right section also follows a similar need. Some defining of meaning would definitely help the appearance. It will also make your content a lot more exciting.

- Some technical issues. When I zoom out to view your whole page, your footer basically disappears at 70% (in ie7), I don't know if it happens in firefox, but you should be aware, since IE7 is a somewhat current browser. Your footer in general needs a little bit of work, seeing as it's the only element using a black hue right next to white on greyish-blue. For some people, this may be a visibility issue. But my only issue is continuity.

Some validation errors:
28 errors as viewed on the w3c validator:

line 7 - You used a conditional comment, but there's no comment! Make sure you use the appropriate syntax for condition comments, which should follow this paradigm:

Code:

<!--[if IE]><![endif]-->

So in your code, yours should read:

Code:

<!--[if !IE]>
<link href="img/favicon.png" rel="shortcut icon"/>
<![endif]-->

instead of

Code:

<![if ! IE]>
<link href="img/favicon.png" rel="shortcut icon"/>
<![endif]>

The "--" are very important. If your comments aren't correctly formatted, the conditional effect will not work, and could risk actually printing this information on the page.

Line 16 / Line 30 / Line 64 / Line 65 / Line 76 - You forgot to use the "alt" attribute on your images. This is a usability issue. Alt attributes on images are important because they give the user something to look at should the image not load for whatever reason (disabled locally, didn't load properly, etc). This provides a placeholder and is very important for users who are visually impaired.

Line 47 - Under the div id "column 2", you have incorrectly used the bullet html tag, as there is no containing <ul>. This causes about 20 errors in your validation. Make sure that your bullets always follow the same syntax paradigm:

Code:

<ul>
<li>Button</li>
<li>Button</li>
</ul>

Line 74 - You have one closing div tag too many, and it shows on this line. There's a closing div tag, but no div tag open for it to affect. This may cause irregularities in your rendered page.

Fix those couple errors, and your page should validate as xhtml transitional. If there are any left, they should be fairly simple to correct. I am glad to help you get them validated if you require any assistance.

Validation in your web-design process can be a very important thing. To some it may not matter, but I've seen first-hand the effects of nonvalidated code. It's not overrated. In fact it can have some drastic effects to the end-result of your design, impacting how your viewers see your work.

That's all the critique I have for this layout. If you have any questions about what I've talked about, please feel free to ask!

Hope I helped! Thanks for sharing your work with us here at GFXVoid.

***Chris*** · 08-26-2009, 08:10 AM

Oh, and here's the validation result page:

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.miuziqa.com%2Findex.htm l&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=Inlin e&group=0

And I just wanted to ask...why are there so many meta keywords on your homepage?

You only need, at a maximum, 10-12. Using all those keywords does not guarantee that you'll get traffic. Using a concentrated, more precise amount will be sure to bring you more traffic than a list of 500 words. Keep this in mind because in reality, using so many keywords actually hurts your chances of being tracked by google or any other search engine. Sites with such a high number of keywords usually tend to get grouped with spam sites or sites that have been known to have malicious activity.

**crozer** · 08-29-2009, 09:37 AM

wow, wow, WOW.
i love this critique, i hope i could get this all the time, for free.
i am aware about many of those w3c errors that popped up. i have to mention that the website is barely 35% finished.

=====
And I just wanted to ask...why are there so many meta keywords on your homepage?
the meta-tags were just added from my main website. they'll be removed as soon as the main structure and coding of the web's done.

The purpose of the site isn't very clear...
I know. however, it's my client's decision. the web's topic is not music/bands, it is a whole mixed portfolio of an artist in general. music, photography, design, culture, etcc.. I do know what you mean, though.

The very top headline needs some attention...
Thanks for that. i was really wondering and having a bad time deciding whether it did fit or not.. and I think i will put my hands on it.

Your content needs a little bit more detail..
actually, i did use lipsum.com, though i copied the 5-paragraph result onto the html <p></p>. is there some other way of doing this?

Some technical issues. When I zoom out to view your whole page, your footer basically disappears at 70% (in ie7), I don't know if it happens in firefox..
i guess it's me, but i'm pretty tired of IE1-8's incompatibilities. i know i should test the website on both browsers, and even on chrome, safary and opera.. but it's somehow a way of advertising and indirectly promoting firefox (my beloved browser).

Once again, thank you very, very much for this delightful critique. i hope we can talk another time and share some tips and experiences with web-design/development, as i'm impressed by your knowledge.
add me any time: icrozer@hotmail.com

***Chris*** · 08-29-2009, 10:07 AM