Interlopers.net Forum - Half-Life 2 News & Tutorials

I agree with Ennui about the spacing. Try and follow simple guidelines when it comes to spacing. You want to have some negative space on the sides of your images and it will look nice if you have the same amount of space on either side of the images as there is from the bottom of the navigation bar to the top of the first image. It will make the layout look far less cramped as Ennui said. But as for the layout in general I think you are heading in a far better direction that the original idea. One other thing though, I like the orange text on the larger bold type but it is a bear to read when it is small like on the e-mail address and in the nav bar. You may want to choose a color that is less drastic, maybe a muted and less saturated orange.

Thanks again. I'll try to make some spacing and size adjustments once I have the color theme determined... And regarding the site as it is now, it's, uh, well, between versions I'm playing around with the orange contrast, but you're definitely right it won't work out everywhere (especially not in those amounts and on so small text).

EDIT:
Whoa, just that little horizontal spacing (or, rather, reduction of image dimensions) I introduced now helped a whole lot on general clarity.

Good improvement! For the font i'd suggest using a sans-serif font. The text in this size and type isn't the most legible combo. A sans-serif will make it easier on the eyes.

Thanks. Any concrete suggestions?

well you could go with the good ole Arial or Verdana.

Arial, Verdana, and Tahoma are popular for a reason. Trebuchet MS is a great title font, as is larger (16-20pt) bold Arial. Also maybe increase the line spacing a wee bit.

Well they are popular because they belong to the select group of fonts that can be viewed be anyone regardless of OS and browser. It's not because of their quality. Arial for example is just the poor man's Helvetica. And Helvetica is popular for a reason.

$ 0,02

magoc wrote:Well they are popular because they belong to the select group of fonts that can be viewed be anyone regardless of OS and browser. It's not because of their quality. Arial for example is just the poor man's Helvetica. And Helvetica is popular for a reason.

$ 0,02

# Andale Mono
# Arial
# Arial Black
# Comic Sans MS
# Courier New
# Georgia
# Impact
# Times New Roman
# Trebuchet MS
# Verdana

Chill with the font nerd rage, I'll go with Arial.

How's it look now?
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EDIT:
Good thing I'm not aiming to be a front-end web dude... I'd never have gotten half this far without your advice

Haha, I'm just the other way around. Gave me some inspiration though so if you still want something less dark maybe this example I made can help you out:

First of all, I just got renamed. Not that it's relevant to anything what so ever, I just figured you should know.

Yeah, that's pretty cool. I love the simple general theme and colorful buttons, but I generally like to show visitors as much as possible with as few clicks as possible so I don't think I'd personally pick the click-for-description solution (although it does take care of the image/text blocky-and-ugly-when-combined dilemma). Not that displaying the text from the beginning in that example would be any real problem. So, cool. I don't think I'll rip that off, though - I'd never come up with anything like that myself, and just copying what you did seems kind of cheap.

By the way, there seems to be a lot of rather skilled front-end designers here. I know Blink's background (obviously), but how are the rest of you connected to the business (if you are), and/or what educational backgrounds do you have (if any)?

And finally: If you have further suggestions regarding my current layout, please do let me know... I think I've depleted my initial supply of known improvementabilities.

More vertical spacing. Padding around the title of the map, the game its for, and the description /dl link, they are too close to the image. A 1px border around the image would be good also.

Like this?
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Also, the other three sections have been created.

krainert wrote:Like this?
http://krainert.com/private/site/
Also, the other three sections have been created.

No.
Some quick things are important to know when you're designing websites.
design for 1024 x 768 (with browser windows included) (right now your website is (too/) really narrow)
gradients are hot
javascript animations/image viewer are awesome

you're color-pallet is good tho

I am already considering making a simple image display feature... I just need to figure out some of the last technical stuff. Regarding the width of the columns, I did try out various values but went with this one because it lets just over two images fit per screen with a x1050 resolution (and probably just exactly two with x768) and doesn't take up any unnecessary space at all... Wider websites do lose some clarity. And yes, I only want one screenshot per map (as I'm not a professional, meaning, people can just go ahead and play through my work which they really should before accepting a new mapper on the team).
What kind of gradients are you thinking about? Like, on either side of the main column to make the background monotone (what Psy did/does)? The way I usually gradientize just ends up looking childish so I could really use some concrete advice there.