Critique request!

[DarkGrudge]

http://www.umnstudents.com

I finished up my new theme to my webpage in the last few weeks, and now I'm trying to step back and take an honest look at it. I was going for a simple, yet professional look to it, but I can't decide if I hit it or not. Our school colors are maroon and gold, by the way.

Any comments/suggestions?

[Laurey]

Well..

I like the colors, and though the font is mostly small - it's easy enough to see - so things are good there.

I really like your menu's & drop shadow use (course.. I do so love drop shadow and have forever.. dunno why <G>). But IMO you didn't over-use it.

I'm not fond of the the darker gray background (the lighter gray on the menu's looks nice), it fights w/the other colors to make things more somber than I feel they should be. I'd suggest using the menu gray for the bg, and white for the menu's - or vice versa. The scrolling "New in the Forums" is VERY distracting to me - a way to turn that off (or make it static???) would be good.

It is now 2004 (copyright info <G>). A Contact Us link at the bottom is expected (though certainly not required).

And my final 'complaint' would be - why so much scrolling? Is there a way to break the page into pages without loosing anything in the substance? Many do not scroll down the page at all - those that do, typically only will scroll 1 time.. using pg down - it was 4 pages.

All in all, I really like it. It's clean looking (even w/all the info) and navigation is clearly understandable.

-L

[YvetteKuhns]

I agree with Laurey's comments. By the way, Laurey, if you mouse over the scrolling, it stops. But if you mouse out, it starts again. I use a similar script with arrow up and arrow down buttons to scroll up or down, so the moving text doesn't distract readers.

You could color the scrollbars to match the site, though only IE users see it. The Got News? box is the only box that is not a different color from the background. The lighter gray to match would look nicer and make the text easier to read. The background color could be something other than dreary gray.

The site does look nice, have lots of (expected) contents and categories and functions well. Nice job!

[DarkGrudge]

I appreciate the comments, I'm going to play around with the colors on the "Got News?" box a little. Also, I'm currently tweaking the script for manual scrolling with the "New in Forums" (my javascript is a little rusty, so we'll see).

[(jj)]

I have to agree with the above comments!

Looks like you've put a lot of work and care into the design. Nice job :)

Only one thing I noticed that looks out of place for a college based site:


Made news submission more smooth


Isn't "more smooth" similar to "smoother" :D