[Exodyus] Designing a Better World

[Exodyus]

E X O D Y U S // Designing a Better World (http://exodyus.net/)

Well, I just finished this today.
Took me about a twenty minutes yesterday and about five hours today.
I finished it when I got off work - 5 hours straight, from 4 to now. <3

What do you cats think?

http://exodyus.net/portfolio/exoscreen.jpg

[Raw!]

Nice design du'.
I'ma go visit that site ;D

[LiNuX]

gotta love the logo - the navigation buttons could use a bit more work, especially the hover versions. I generally like smaller nav buttons but that's just me.

having a doctype with the coding also helps, just a coding tip :)

good luck finishing up

[Samus-Fan]

Love the shade of blue you used, and the banner is great, only thing I could say I don't like is the font on the nav bars.
That's about it, though.
Nice site

[Riku-Nara]

What Linux said.
Great links too.

[Jaykub]

I think it is a very nice start. The banner is nice, but I think the skin kinda look out of date. Other than that, a forum would be cool on it.
I would stay with that same color of blue its great.
keep up the work.

[Exodyus]

gotta love the logo - the navigation buttons could use a bit more work, especially the hover versions. I generally like smaller nav buttons but that's just me.

having a doctype with the coding also helps, just a coding tip :)

good luck finishing up

No offense to the rest, but someone who's intune with the inner workings of a site is always a wonderful help.

Thank you for the thoughts from everyone. I'm not going to try playing favorites, but Riku and Linux are the two people I trust the most on this site so far because of history.

What would you guys recommend on the link hovers?

- Hatin' on the font is useless also, simply because the logo has the same font as the links. Lol. I can change them, but I'd prefer not to.
- The Hover, Linux, is just simply a Linear Burn. Which means it fades to allow the background to show while "burning" or darkening the innards of the font.

[LiNuX]

yeah i figured out what the hover image is after a while lol, but it's not really about the effects, but more about how you use it. The Home and Resume buttons are perfect, you can still read it fully when hovering, the other three darken up, that's what you want to avoid. with navigation you are better off keeping things consistent. I've always found that to work for me.

And since you are using images for the button, the fonts are perfect. If you were to use text for the navbar like the gamers forum navbar then that font would be problematic.

also if you make the nav bar buttons smaller you'll be able to expand the middle portion of it. Remember that the middle content is the most important part - you want people focusing on that and not the navbar. This is totally from a webmaster's point of view and not a web designer's. Make that stand out and the website will do better. The objective is to grab the attention of the visitor for and point them to your main content. If you haven't noticed, most people commented on the navigation buttons lol.

Good luck :)

[Exodyus]

Content Updated!
http://exodyus.net

True, true.

I have all the pages coded up now - so I suppose I could go back and remaster the .psd, however bitterly annoying that would be. I'd have to recode the index all over again, too... Lol.

But that's the price to pay for advice.

What do you think I should do about the gray background? Anything?
- I'll shrink the navi a bit, but keep the idea similar.
- I'll change out those 3 tiles also for ones that aren't darker background-ed.
+ Recommend a lighter shade? Darker? A gray tone?

You don't mind the link or description, do you?


-shuffles back into CS4 with a huff and kicks on some KillSwitch Engage-

[LiNuX]

gray background is good, keeping it plain and simple, it again comes down to grabbing attention

and link and description is fine :)

Coding websites from scratch isn't as easy as you found out lol, getting it right can take a while, I usually spend up to a week on the coding of any template that I make just trying to get things right by tweaking little things and blah blah blah. Thought I'd get used to it by now after all these years but not really lol.

[Exodyus]

Updated Again!
E X O D Y U S // Designing a Better World (http://exodyus.net)

Basically, I took in a few people's advice and considerations - mostly Linux. Lol.

Linux:
+ Links shrank
+ I unified the link backgrounds
+ Expanded the mid.html box to contain more information

Jacob:
+ Added some flare to the background to visually stimulate

My Own:
+ Put a drop shadow on the entire thing
+ Added a fun little J33fism Easter Egg. <3

[LiNuX]

very nice work with the navbar - really like the way the buttons change side with the thing as you go down lol. Much better.

good job on the drop shadow, pops out the whole thing and you did it at the right places too. good work :)

i see that you are using css within the html coding, well on top of it, but I'd recommend that you have a separate style.css or similar css file and just connect everything to that one css file so that you don't have to go and change every single file if you want to change something with the linking or link hovers.

also add a doctype, it's better for search engines if you ever plan on getting generic traffic from engines

info here: W3C QA - Recommended list of DTDs you can use in your Web document (http://www.w3.org/QA/2002/04/valid-dtd-list.html)

good luck finishing up, looking great so far.

[Jaykub]

Updated Again!
E X O D Y U S // Designing a Better World (http://exodyus.net)

Basically, I took in a few people's advice and considerations - mostly Linux. Lol.

Linux:
+ Links shrank
+ I unified the link backgrounds
+ Expanded the mid.html box to contain more information

Jacob:
+ Added some flare to the background to visually stimulate

My Own:
+ Put a drop shadow on the entire thing
+ Added a fun little J33fism Easter Egg. <3

that makes it look 10 times better I think.

[Exodyus]

Thank you, sir.

I have a forum - also, that's what you were asking, but firstly - out of respect for Linux, I didn't post the URL. Secondly, it's for writers only.
So if you like to write and read and participate in bizarre storylines and just enjoy yourself - PM me and I'll link you. It's slow because it's only myself and my cousin, but it's great writing. Lol.

[KittyCat72]

Maybe my opinion doesn't matter as much as Linux and Riku here, but great work! I'm loving the banner.

[LiNuX]

Thank you, sir.

I have a forum - also, that's what you were asking, but firstly - out of respect for Linux, I didn't post the URL. Secondly, it's for writers only.
So if you like to write and read and participate in bizarre storylines and just enjoy yourself - PM me and I'll link you. It's slow because it's only myself and my cousin, but it's great writing. Lol.

you can advertise anything but porn and illegal stuff on here, I don't mind and I don't see it as disrespect so don't let that stop you :)

[Exodyus]

Maybe my opinion doesn't matter as much as Linux and Riku here, but great work! I'm loving the banner.

Eh, you're not so bad. Lol. <3 You haven't really jumped on the hate-me bandwagon yet...

But thank you for the compliment. <3

And Linux, I have a CSS page up, it's just not linked yet to the index, lol. A lotta good it's not doing, but I was still updating the CSS page when I threw the index back up. ;D

Also, I'll set the meta tags later.
I don't really follow on your doctype comment though. I'm not understanding.

[LiNuX]

I don't really follow on your doctype comment though. I'm not understanding.

a doctype is just a little tag on top of the html pages that tells the search engines what kind of a document it is, whether it's a php, xhtml, xml, html, etc. The link I gave you above has the most common, you can just copy and past them really - it's really useful for getting indexed with search engines

check this tool out The W3C Markup Validation Service (http://validator.w3.org)

good took to check your coding :) it'll tell you the errors as well as ways to fix them, as you notice, the firs error is usually "missing doctype"

[Exodyus]

HnM! Better?

I'll be designing another site - a little different from this one, next week and I'll need some more input and it's going to be solely geared at business...

Sadly, I'll take some input from the kids - but they need to understand the reasoning for the site before commenting on the graphical end... ;3

[LiNuX]

nice work :) not so hard now is it

good luck with the other site design :) show us when ready

[Exodyus]

Sadly, I'll be gone tomorrow ... you know, going down to the lake house is ... SO ROUGH.

Hahahahha... but I'd have had it done tomorrow, so it's postponed until Monday -start date.
<3

And this isn't the first time I've coded, holmes - I just don't care much about dealing with the validation sh;t and "coding needs" for most of the sites. Just a nuisance.

[Jaykub]

Got to say I truly love the dark background

[LiNuX]

Sadly, I'll be gone tomorrow ... you know, going down to the lake house is ... SO ROUGH.

Hahahahha... but I'd have had it done tomorrow, so it's postponed until Monday -start date.
<3

And this isn't the first time I've coded, holmes - I just don't care much about dealing with the validation sh;t and "coding needs" for most of the sites. Just a nuisance.

lol, well as a coder myself I have to make sure I get all my stuff correct. I find it more fun to code than to design actually, probably because I'm not a great artist, I have a hard time picking colors that go with each other - the links on the Dark GF theme was recommended by lemonrising if I'm not mistaken lol. I'm bad with colors but great with coding :D html and php.

if you don't care about all the little stuff then you may face problems in the future - little unimportant things can mess things up, and when you design it's always a good idea to check the design and code from different browsers to make sure it looks good in every single one of them - IE is a b**** when it comes to cooperating with css/html - so I use FF, Opera, Safari, and IE - hoping that 3/4 turn out right lol, IE is last priority for me. Thinking of adding google chrome to the list.

[Exodyus]

lol, well as a coder myself I have to make sure I get all my stuff correct. I find it more fun to code than to design actually, probably because I'm not a great artist, I have a hard time picking colors that go with each other - the links on the Dark GF theme was recommended by lemonrising if I'm not mistaken lol. I'm bad with colors but great with coding :D html and php.

if you don't care about all the little stuff then you may face problems in the future - little unimportant things can mess things up, and when you design it's always a good idea to check the design and code from different browsers to make sure it looks good in every single one of them - IE is a b**** when it comes to cooperating with css/html - so I use FF, Opera, Safari, and IE - hoping that 3/4 turn out right lol, IE is last priority for me. Thinking of adding google chrome to the list.

AWW~! I witnessed you coming out of your shell! LOLOL! <3
I'm such a horrible influence; I love it!

Well, Mr. Perfectionist - if you wanna code for me, then by all means. I'll have you know though that the HTML I used was literally generated from Photoshop CS4.

[LiNuX]

photoshop generates html? since when? lol...that would have made my life easier, I'd only have to tweak certain things then...

[Drake14]

Site's lookin good dude! might i add a slightly larger font. not everyone has microscope vision! but the logo is badass. I personally enjoy smaller nav buttons. Lookin good dude!

[Exodyus]

photoshop generates html? since when? lol...that would have made my life easier, I'd only have to tweak certain things then...

Are you kidding? Lololol.

Photoshop's generated HTML since Phsp 7.0, CS, CS2, CS3E, CS4...?

Click Save as Web & Device. Click the saving options and save HTML & Images to Folder.

I think I should get some Bonus GFP for helping the admin out!

[Drake14]

photoshop generates in html AND CSS :)

[LiNuX]

Are you kidding? Lololol.

Photoshop's generated HTML since Phsp 7.0, CS, CS2, CS3E, CS4...?

Click Save as Web & Device. Click the saving options and save HTML & Images to Folder.

I think I should get some Bonus GFP for helping the admin out!

I've seen the coding on your site, I do mine completely different - your thing is full of tables, I am better at working with div tags, I skipped the whole table phase lol

and I never really paid attention to the different save options, for everything web design related that I made, I just needed to be able to save as gif, png, jgp, and psd. And .ico for some stuff but other than that, I didn't care lol. I am more efficient this way.

good to know they have it, but not my style lol.

edit: you guys were talking about image ready right? thats the only place that would generate html for me - Not an avid imageready user and as I said, I am used to doing it the longer way lol, more comfortable with it, doubt i'll be changing methods any time soon