Idiotic Productions - Game Development

[IdioticCreation]

Hello, I'm new. Obviously. I'm working on the layout for my Programming/Game Dev Web site. There isn't really any content at the moment, just an index page. So I'm really just looking for advice on the layout right now.
Also you should know that I have only tested it in IE7 and FF2.0, so it may be totally screwed in other browsers right now.
If you didn't already get the link:
http://idioticproductions.net
Regards,
David

[solidgold]

i really like that banner at the top, very nice, but i do think you should lose the w3c badges, just have a subtle link at the bottom, im not sure i like the links boxes down the sides, the colours clash too much with the banner etc

[IdioticCreation]

Yes the W3C buttons are temp. And I'll consider changing the colors of the navigation boxes. Maybe different shades of blue would look nice?

Thanks for your comments.

[Steax]

A more skyish blue might be better... For some reason I'm not so fond with the header, probably because it doesn't separate itself clearly from the body and because the logo can be hard to read. How about a slightly brighter hue or something for the body?

[ljm]

To me, the logo feels like it should be aligned to the right, because the ball is on that side of the text. I have a feeling I might be the only person who thinks that.

The sidebar on the left could do with being formatted a bit more - the plain text looks a bit dull in such a colourful design.

The banner looks great, but there's a lot of empty space to the right of it. I'd suggest either making the banner narrower, or finding something to put in there to give it a less spacious feeling.

[-chris-]

I think that the banner would look better if the shadow was closer to the text, and the text (all of it) were a bit bigger... Like steax said, it can be a bit hard to read. I think that if you want to use 3 colors on the side, you should go with brighter shades of the colors, and keep them in the same order on both sides. Also, as mentioned before, lose the W3C banners, not many people who visit gaming sites are going to care if your site validates. Once you remove the W3C banners, you will have room to spread your banner out some, and things will look better.

Good Luck!

[Kayo]

I like the banner, but all the details are in one are, I think you should expand all that detail acrss the banner. (logo further right, text bigger, etc)

as for the WC3 buttons, remove them, and just have it in the footer as text. I personally think that the side bars as good as it is IMO.

Its great that you use no tables. I want to know how you are going to layout the content itself.

[IdioticCreation]

OK, I've tried to incorporate most of the suggestions you gave. Rather then making the background lighter I made the banner lighter, so there is more contrast between the content and the banner. I changed the link bars so they don't looks so plain, but I'm still not sure if I like the little icons or not. They seem to clutter it a bit. I decided not to change to color of the side bars, because when I made the banner brighter it all seemed to go better.

Really, the biggest problem I see now is the big empty space to the right of the logo.

Thanks for all your help!

[-chris-]

I like the icons, but why do you have green on orange, orange on green, then blue on blue? Also, you could stand to bring the shadow closer, and then spread the text out a bit to fill some of the void. I would also use a different font for "Game Development", and add a slight shadow to it as well. Oh, and I prefer the links without the line, OR, without the underline on hover.

Oh, and can you add some Lorem Ipsum, or filler text to the content area so that we can see what it will look like.

[IdioticCreation]

Done, I left the underline. I do likes its.