Least Liked:
Retro Theater
There were many reasons why I least liked this one. First, the content uses only a very small portion of the screen. Secondly, the layout of the content is very bad and not consistent. Some parts have two columns while another part has 4 columns and yet another only has 1 column. Especially with the 4 column part, the text is extremely hard to read as each column only has 1-2 words per line and you aren't sure exactly how you need to read the sections. In addition the text styling is bad and not consistent as well. Some of the sections have all caps for the entire text which makes it harder to read. Another section has triple space lines and this section is next to a section that only has single spaced lines making it confusing as to exactly how those sections should be read. Also the "Benefits" or "Requirements" sections have a mixture of all caps text and normal non-caps text, making it even more difficult to discern the order in which to read things. Also, the section that has the 4 columns has some overlay of the columns so some of the words get overlayed on top of other words making them indiscernible. Another thing I didn't like about it is a cosmetic aspect; The content section has a .gif file used as the background and this file causes the background to look like it has static on it and it gets quite annoying after a looking at it for a little bit.
Most Liked:
Pseudo Sahara
The first thing that caught my attention on this page was the Desert image at the top. I like deserts and so that was a plus to begin with. Secondly, I liked how the background colors of the sand and sky blend in with the actual image picture making it seem like the image spans the entire screen. This is much better than when an image is cut off abruptly by another color. This design was also very easy to read. The section with links is apparent in the left column and each section of links has an appropriately named header in a "scroll" style header bar which partitions the sections nicely. Also, the header text styles go along with the theme of the design and gives it a nicer feel. Overall, I think the entire page flows very well is very consistent with the text and design. There was only one thing that I didn't care for too much with the page and that is the scroll bar in the upper portion of the left column. This could very easily be removed by a minor modification to the size of that section and it will make the page look that much nicer. This scrollbar is most likely the result of designing the page in IE as when this page is viewed in IE the scrollbars are not there. They are only there when viewed in Firefox.
2 comments:
One of the things I dislike about the sahara design is the enormous amounts of 'pseudo' whitespace on the right.
You touched on a very important point: design and our fondness of it is very subjective.
True. There is a fair amount of "pseudo" whitespace on the right. However, instead of just using a white color which would have made the page look quite bad, they used the color of the sky and desert to make it seem like it all blends in. While, I'm not a huge fan of lots of whitespace, having it blend in with the images was a plus and showed that they were trying to overcome the amount of whitespace.
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