blue-anvil.com

Hello, Blue anvil is my website/journal all about web design & dev.

I wanted to make it look less like a business, and make it more of a resource and showcase for my work, and hopefully I have achieved it.

I have totally converted everything to wordpress and made my own templates etc, whilst keeping it all semantic and valid.

Ive tried to keep it easy to use and accessible, and Ive inlcluded access keys for the main links,showing them with numbering.

For updates I have provided rss and newletters via feedburner.

Please can i have critiques on my site, I would like feedback on how i can make improvements.

Thanks
http://www.blue-anvil.com

Take a bow sir, this site is nice!!!

I remember seing it a while ago and there were still a few niggles with it. It has come on leaps and bounds in that time and it is great to see that you are as concerned with accessiblity as you are.

I found a couple of problems however.

• Last menu item overlaps right sidebar text when you increase the text size more than once.
• Not so keen on the cursor change when you roll over [valid XHTML] and [XFN] Change the apperance of things on the page...
• Your CSS has errors.

One thing you could do to further improve you're, above average, accessibility is attempt to make the main content area liquid.

Other than these two little things I love this site.

9/10

Thanks for the nice critique, Ive fixed the errors in the main sheet, the lightbox one has to stay broken

As for the idea about making it expand, I was thinking of making it into an em layout so it expands, i probably will since I do it on alot of my sites now.

Thanks again

P.s DIGG my articles!

I haven't looked too deep into it but by quick glance very very nice and slick. 8/10.

__________________

Thanks

Any advice to getting more diggs/subscribers?

Design: 3 1/2 out of 5

Even though it's a little too busy for my tastes, you definitely have a nice site. It's headed in the right direction, but I feel you've got a fair amount of work ahead of you where the design is concerned.

• The right box throws the whole site off balance. As there is no separate background to it, the whole site seems shifted to the left. Adding a background color to the side box would effectively fix this problem. Adding a rounded corner on the bottom right of it would also keep it from looking odd when the content reaches further down the page.
• "web & graphic design" is a little too hard to read on my screen in the header.
• Also on the right portion of the page, it looks odd to me to see such crucial information put above the rest of the site's content. It was the last thing I read when I gazed at your site. I recommend aligning it vertically just below the navigation.
• I don't like how those dots run the entire width of the content area. Or it could be that they're just too dark. At any rate, I think you should spend a little time on them. They should also use an <hr /> tag, not a <div>.
• On your contact page, I would advise you to supply your email address. There are ways to hide it from harvesting bots, and I am much more comfortable using an email application than a form.
• I think the cursor change over XHTML and other acronyms is fine.
• "Get a quotation for" on your quote page. Maybe it's a British thing, but I scratched my head.

Code: 2 out of 5
Functionality: 5 out of 5

As mentioned above, your CSS has errors. You've got a few oddities in your XHTML and it's a little messy too. Why not make your XHTML strict? You're almost there! As for functionality, I dislike the tag links, but they're somewhat useful. And it's good to see someone using access keys. Might I suggest letting visitors know about them by adding a note in a title tag?

Good replys ill work through them....except...


Evillllll.. Ive tried to make my site as semantic as possible, i do not class HR as a semantic tag since it is presentational, and since im seperating presentation from style HR tags are bad!

This is through no fault of my own, its because Im using 'lightbox', a script for showing images. Its a good script and I think its worth having a few errors, my main stylesheet has none.

Very true. I have to say I'm not so keen on the dots but I definately agree that the HR tag isn't the way to go... perhaps play around with bottom borders on some elements to get around this..?

Well any ideas what i could replace them with? A normal line to me just seeems too...normal..

O and i forgot to say

Quote, quotation? No? Its an english thing

Don't worry mate... In Las Vegas they don't get quotes... they just gamble for everything. "If i roll a 7 I win a free site!"

I'm confused. I've never heard anyone say bad things about <hr /> tags. Why do you want it coded semanticly when it's not corresponding visusally? Or am I missing the point?

It was vaguely in an online dictionary, but on my computer it stated it was solely for purchasing stock. I guess you can use it, but when I think "quotation", I don't imagine receiving a business quote. I can honestly say I've never seen it put like that before. It's obvious in context, but why use it when you can just use "Get a quote for..."?

But if you don't roll a seven, I get your car (even if there is an essay written on it).

Dont get what you mean

Ive made alot of changes based on your suggestions, so thanks very much. Gone elastic now, so its all resizable.

8/10

on the website:
I really like it. very very nice...
but it did make me wonder: how much of the end result is thanks to wordpress?
I'm not knocking your work at all, please do not get me wrong, but I'm rather skeptic of this new rush of CMS driven blogs and thousands of great open-source templates. I've seen many people who know peanuts about web-develoopment put together a great looking website in just a few clicks... perhaps this is the topic of another thread altogether..

on <hr/>s:
I always use hidden <hr/> tags to separate my website's header and footer from the content. I think they can be used just like headings to structure a document...

Spinal-thanks, and as for wordpress, it had nothing to do with my template, as I made it originaly static then converted it over to wordpress so i could make posts etc.

And trust me, i wouldent offer web design services if I ripped off open source templates lol

That's way nice. Congrats.

I think you might have gone too far in making your text readable in terms of font size and line height. For substantive reading, it's really better to have things normally compact, so that your eye can go back up a paragraph or two without scrolling.

simple but nice ... its kinda funny how you mix the blue and green

Why? It's nothing new...