devlindesign.co.uk

Check out my website and drop feed :

http://www.devlindesign.co.uk


All feedback welcome, thanks in advance.

Your site is really good. Your navigation is easy as well. The only suggestion I would make is to make the design centered on the page. I love the design, great job.

Would you mind checking out my site? My post is right below yours. Thanks.

"Our designers are fully educated on all of the latest standards in web design concerning accessibilty and disabled users, to make sure that your website is optimised for everyone to use."

Does your design team realize your own site is the complete opposite of everything you claim here? And so is the only site in your portfolio.

Classic!

^
And how is my site not up to date with accessabillity standards?

I think you should list examples, so we know what you are talking about.


Also their are 3 websites in my portfolio last time i counted, dont know what school you went to.

Well I'll point out one key problem: images used for navigation and no text alternatives in footer.

Quite a nice looking site, but way too much above the fold. You have to scoll to get to any real content.

Well, when it comes to design it's often a matter of taste. The monochrome look seems to be in vogue right now but it bores me to tears.

The site looks great in general, though. It's a bit dark for a commercial site. I have seen a gazillion sites offering web design service and they are usually awful, so a double congrats by comparison to a lot of others. I would certainly consider it a big plus if I were a business interested in the monochrome blue look, but personally it's getting to where I gag every time I see one.

Bottom line: A really fine professional looking site, but way too faddish for my taste. A+ for execution, D for imagination.

How do disabled users with vision problems see flash then?

• Use of flash
• Use of tables
• Lack of CSS layout Features
• Images for navigation.

Need I go on...?

Aren't you a web designer selling services? I was going to explain things further, but then why should an established web designer need more explanation then what I said? You should be able to take the information and run with it.

Had you not been a web designer already selling their services, I would have been more detailed because I wouldn't expect as much from a new designer or somebody just doing their own site.

Don't add stuff and then be a smartass, because I only saw one listed under "WEB DESIGN" when I visited.

HAHAHAHAHA

Pwn3d!!!!!

I just got here but I love this thread already!

First imression: nice. At last an acceptable use of flash.
That lasted 1.748 seconds.

The frontpage looks like a very nice 'splash screen', but the big block of pointless images doesn't go away when you get into the site and you want information.

It took me a while to realise that there was a sub-menu. It's not obvious that it opens underneath the main menu. There's nothing standard about that. I had a look at your portofolio and all your other websites have similar problems:
- images for menus
- bad choice of non-contrasting colours

Last but not least, and I must have said this 10 times today:
/index.htm is not the same as /. Always link to /.

Ok, first off thanks to all for dropping feedback on my site, good or bad.

Let me clear some things up...
First off i think some people have taken an immediate dislike to me cos they think im some large multi national new media company that is raking in loads of cash. If people think that, great!

But ill let you in on a secret. Im 23, Honours Degree qualified in Applied Graphics with Multimedia Technology. However, discovered that since leaving uni design jobs arent coming easy.

So im now starting up my own New Media company e.g DevlinDesig.co.uk. Although im fully qualified i know there is probaly still bags of stuff i dont know.

While im happy to comply with most accessibility standards, im not gonna loose any sleep over the fact that visualy impaired people cant see my Flash creations.

Good point about the image only navigation, ill maybe introduce text links as well.

Dont understand what it is wrong with using tables? ive always been told tables are more widely accepted than using layers???

As far as the point about:

" Last but not least, and I must have said this 10 times today:
/index.htm is not the same as /. Always link to /. "

Never heard of that^ and dont understand the point.


And just to clear things up there has always been 3 websites in my portfolio, i didnt add more to make you look stupid- im really not that shallow.

Anyway, drop more feed if you want. And as i said im just starting this New Media Company, so if anyone on here does the same or has any advice let me know. Im typing up my business plan this week and starting to get stuff together.

You've been told wrong.

Tables are still very widely used but only because there are a lot of old sites about.

The future is semantic mark-up (XHTML) which keeps content and visual layout totally seperated.

Do some research and find out why this is the case.

Your site is far from meeting the minimal accessibility guidelines. There is no style sheet found you have many errors in your markup (http://validator.w3.org/check?verbos...esign.co.uk%2F) and implement many out dated and poor techniques. The layout is great and the site is wonderful but from a code standpoint you have a ways to go. Your site does not validate by any means and is not even close to being compliant with Section 508 or WAI. Fix these things before you claim to know the needs of disabled users and accessibility.

Simple things like alt tags on your images, print style sheet, making the site display correctly with CSS disabled (Which yours mostly does), titles on the links etc.. And always provide text alternatives to your navigation if you use images. Also, you use tables for your layout which you should also try to move away from. Tables are for tabular data not design.

You may also want to check out http://www.mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2004/08/sifr for flash accessibility stuff.

As for the flash, yours is fine. There is nothing mission critical about your flash content except for eye candy.

Love the site, hate the code base.

Now, let me clear some things up. Nobody thought this, believe me. Clear?

I dislike you because you claim.....

When nothing about your site or your portfolio sites suggest you know a darn thing about accessibility, disabled users or being optimized for everyone. False claims like so many others out there.

Then you say...

First off, you haven't complied with a single accessibility issue, not sure where you get MOST!

The fact you don't care about one type of disability usually means you don't care about any.


BTW, nobody here actually gives a crap whether or not you follow their advice. We just don't like people coming back and straight up telling us thier not. You want to ignore potential visitors/customers, go right ahead, we do not ultimately care.

Smug little ****...

If you're not mature enough to take advice from other professional web-developers, how are you ever going to listen to your customers?

"Honours Degree qualified in Applied Graphics with Multimedia Technology"
You were trying to show off, so I think you'd have said whether or not you got a 1st. Since you didn't mention it, I'm assuming you didn't.

A degree means nothing in this business, the sooner you realise it, the quicker you'll learn. And trust me, there's always more to learn in computing...

EDIT: Anyone wanna bet the guy never comes back?

Yep, I think you've devastated the devastator...

Regarding a degree I totally agree, I learnt more in the last 6 months of my degree doing my dissetation and since leaving uni than I ever did during the course, they don't teach you anything about the market and I learnt very little about css, web standards etc.

I'm also 23 and doing web design part time at the moment, with an aim to doing it full time starting just after xmas. I like to think that I know a fair bit about web design topics and definitely have opinions on them, but I realise there is far more scope than what I know at present, so have joined forums to learn more, not only to help my product and ultimately my business, but also to improve my knowledge.

Devatstator should note, YOU are asking for other people's help, critiquing your site and giving you advice, they are doing this voluntarily, show some respect and courtesy towards these people which know alot more than you do (which appears to be nothing past the visual side of a web site).

You should take their advice on board, being rubbish at a job and using fake claims will only get you so far, don't dismiss their suggestions because you "don't care"