Hi!

Can someone please give some feedback on this site: http://maresweb.homeip.net
I want the site to be simple, but it looks a bit too simple IMO.

I am also looking for a way how to make the two columns containing the menu and submenu as high as the main content. Any ideas?

Regards,
Sebastian

Geez, does anyone know why IE displays the site differently than Opera and Firefox? The blue line between the header and the menu/content is a lot thicker in IE and the space between each menu item is larger.

Edit: Fixed the problem with the blue line.

I think the style, it has a nice feel to it. However, those left & right sides columns need to go to the very bottom. I like the effect on the buttons, the larger border on the left, very nicely done!

The footer, it seems tiny, maybe make this 20 - 24px and center (Fiddle with margins/padding here!) and make it in the center of the horizontal bar, with a nice text colour and a few links to Home, Contact Us, Policy or Copyright note.

I like the feel,very nice job throughout! Keep us updated.


Regards,

What exactly do you mean? The two columns contain the menu and sub-menu which should be visible at the top of the page in my opinion.



Yep, the footer is not ready yet, but that's what I wanted to do.

Anyways, can someone help me fix the following problems which appear in IE:

- The whole box should act as a link, not only the text. This works already in Opera and Firefox, but not in IE.
- Reduce the spacing between the menu elements.

OK, I guess I fixed it by adding a width value.

That's an IE bug, sometimes it happens, sometimes not. You can't do anything about it.

Firefox is a diffrent parser then IE.

Setting a width for "#menu ul a" fixes the problem.

Looks nice and simple to navigate.

Thanks!

I have one problem... Instead if using a div with auto-scroll for the content, I would like the size to be non-fixed. However, I am not sure how to make the menu as high as the content or move the footer to the bottom when the content is too small.

Examples:
http://maresweb.homeip.net (Footer should be placed at the bottom)
http://maresweb.homeip.net/projects.php (Menu should be as high as content)

If you are going for plain, you've achieved your goal. Looks boring

I've noticed even Invision Power Board looks different in Firefox.

I am a fan of simple designs. I also don't have the time and talent for fancy layouts.

Floats unlike tables are following only their own height attribute. It's extremely hard getting the navigation bar to be as tall as the content, but you can use a background image to simulate it.

Or a JavaScript could be used, but I don't recommend it.

Along these lines, I recently made a website with a vertical side navigation menu that is a seperate page and is included in each webpage of the site in an iFrame. I found that search engines follows text links better and I only have to update the menu once and its effectively updated throughout the site. The last comments struck a chord with me though as I noticed that when the menu if filled to capacity with links they cause the menu to appear with a scrollbar in every page. Works fine as long as you don't fill it up!
I bet there is a much better way though!

I am not using floats.



iFrames...

OK, site is offline now. Doing some other work now...

Minor change: http://maresweb.homeip.net/v2/#

Old page still available under the old link now.

That looks nice. Looks like you fixed your problems.

I like the simplicity but it is still a little too plain. Maybe use an background-image for your header. Still simple, but if the image is attractive, it will add enough spice to make the design look "ballanced"

I changed the CSS a bit so the green background on the left is actually a left-border. This looks fine in IE Win, Opera Win, Firefox Win, Safari Mac and Mozilla Mac, but terrible in IE Mac as it can be seen here: http://www.fundisom.com/g5/

The address is http://www.maresweb.de/mwtest

Fixed! The menu DIV was missing a width.

Back to the design question... Is that green on the left OK? A friend of mine who is a designer said that it might look better/more professional id I'd use a light silver (#eee or something). What do you think? Another "problem" is which colors to use for the menu bar. What I need are:

- Color for the normal borders (currently, I have a light blue)
- Color for the hover borders (currently, I have a dark green)
- Color for the "parent" element of a sub-menu
- Color to denote which page is currently loaded - when viewing "Home" for example, the "Home" button should have a different color than the rest of the buttons

<bump>

By the way, after having the colors set up, I will try to make the site "fluid" (so it changes according to the text size specified by the user).

Unless you use a silver image as the background with a gradient, I personally think the light green would look a lot better than a silver color, and I use shades of gray quite constantly in my designs...so I think I might know.

As for the other colors, I don't know. I'm not sure I like the dark green border color, it seems to stand out a bit too much, or maybe not enough...not sure which. For your "parent" color, I would suggest leaving it the same rather than changing it, instead, make the "children" colors different as they are under a different level as it is anyway. This way here, they can have a different color and you wouldn't have to change it when selected, it would just show up when it shows up through your DHTML CSS change.

Current loaded page? What about black border/text?