The Red Brick Times

I picked up my second tech client last week. Both accounts are pretty small time and won't generate much income for me but I do have to say that, considering my present limitations, their low requirements kind of suit my situation. And hey, ya gotta start somewhere, right? Anyway, here are two layouts I generated for the latest client's new web site; layout1, layout2. Whacha think?
Posted 12:56 PM by whatley (8) comments

       Comments:

IMHO, layout1 highlights the text information as it is shown. Layout2 needs a killer graphic with moving active elements on the right to balance the text info on the left side. Perhaps a video graphic presented as an under-all watermark would grab some tube views.

# posted by  Andy : July 07, 2008 5:52 PM
 
Hmmm... yeah, I kind of see what you mean, though I think once the descriptive text goes in that might balance it. Extra links on that side would help too.

I personally like the second one better but feel the first one, more business like, would be a better fit for his client base. He hasn't said yet.

# posted by  whatley : July 08, 2008 5:08 AM
 
Layout 1 only slightly bigger. And I would add one of the midtones from the graphic as a background for the text to relieve the brightness.

That's a personal preference because high contrast bothers my eyes.

# posted by  A. O. : July 09, 2008 11:36 PM
 
1) The size of both layouts are called out by number of pixels (vs. percentage of available screen). Doing it this way ensures that a design looks the same on all displays and won't get pulled apart like taffy on bigger monitors. The downside is that you have to keep it to a bit less that 800 horizontally so even smaller monitors (which are still in the majority in a business environment believe it or not) can see them properly.

2) Buy some shades.

# posted by  whatley : July 10, 2008 4:52 AM
 
I cast my vote with layout1. Three reasons: compactness of information on the initial page, edge definition focuses attention to the relevant information, better rendition across browsers (looked with Firefox, IE, Opera and Safari). One downside, image loading in layout1 needs a preload to avoid fragmentary loading.
One comment: "More Stuff"? A bit too casual. Could there be a better term?

Layout2 is good but IMHO would be stronger with a clear body definition, perhaps a faded border.

From a maintanence POV I would put the stylesheet(s) in their on own directory versus including them in the image dir.

# posted by  jeichenlaub : July 11, 2008 10:30 AM
 
One other point. Layout1 degrades better if you disable the background images ... which suggests a more stable representation if there is a image loading problem.

# posted by  jeichenlaub : July 11, 2008 10:45 AM
 
Found a css warning in layout2 (Firefox.

Warning: Error in parsing value for property 'display'. Declaration dropped. Source file: http://reganofinancial.com/layout2/assets/css/common.css
Line: 27

Layout1 is clean.

# posted by  jeichenlaub : July 11, 2008 10:55 AM
 
The "Intro-Bio-More Stuff" was just to give the client an idea of how the headings would look. He will (eventually) provide me with all the text for this area.

Parsing error? Jeez, I've hit this over 20 times without any errors. Odd.

You're right about the fragmentary loading.

Thanks for taking such a close look.

# posted by  whatley : July 11, 2008 4:04 PM
 
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