Need some suggestions for my site

[Kasracer]

Well my site's basic layout is pretty much done. I wanted it to be very minimalistic, nothing very fancy and I don't think it looks all that bad right now. The only thing I don't like is my navigation links, they just look so plain. Since the page is already minimalistic, I think an image would just look out of place.

Suggestions?

www.binaryidiot.com

[Acidic]

I like it, excpet when I'm on the "home" page I would like a title saying thats where I am. I suppose you could do this differently too, ie. when I'm on the portfolio page, all the links at the top are the same colour except the portfolio link. Otherwise it all looks nice.

[CornedBee]

I think the links in the header are hard to read, the dark red on dark gray doesn't have enough contrast.

Your tutorials link is broken, you have a \ instead of a / there.

The nav bar should have a left padding, the content sticks too closely to the left window edge.

I also think you should place the copyright notice somewhere else, small as it is it somehow attracts too much attention in its place, probably because that's where you'd look for a page name.

[vbNeo]

I agree; on my flat work monitor I almost can't see the menu

*Edit*
And I'd also change 'CopyRight' to 'Copyright', shifting between upper and lowercase caracters in words is not a good thing when making a professional homepage(or anything else commercial really)...

[Kasracer]

Originally posted by CornedBee
I think the links in the header are hard to read, the dark red on dark gray doesn't have enough contrast.

I changed some colors around but I could read it fine as day

Originally posted by CornedBee
Your tutorials link is broken, you have a \ instead of a / there.

Fixed it. Firebird is the only browser that screws up on that

Originally posted by CornedBee
The nav bar should have a left padding, the content sticks too closely to the left window edge.

Fixed a little

Originally posted by CornedBee
I also think you should place the copyright notice somewhere else, small as it is it somehow attracts too much attention in its place, probably because that's where you'd look for a page name.

That is what I thought too, I couldn't find a decent place for it. I'll stick it somewhere

[Evan]

lookin good

[DeadEyes]

It's nice to see simple clean pages without crap all over the place.

I will NOT hold back new web technologies just to keep support for users using older web browsers and computers.

hmm... in other words your willing to cast aside the majority of people usng the Net.

[CornedBee]

As it is the page works in IE.

[Travis G]

Originally posted by DeadEyes
hmm... in other words your willing to cast aside the majority of people usng the Net.

I don't mind supporting older technologies. But I don't see the need in supporting proprietary technologies.

Yes, that means I'll cast aside the majority of the people using the web. It is their choice, they can live with it. What do they have that I need?

[Travis G]

Originally posted by kasracer
Suggestions?

An aural browser will read the left panel before it reads the navigation menu. You might want to put the navigation menu before the left panel in your page source.

Aside from that, it looks fine.

[CornedBee]

You might want to put the navigation menu before the left panel in your page source.

Or not. The ability to place content before the menu is often counted as an advantage. And looking at some pages with a text browser (esp. the online package database of gentoo) I must say I agree.

[Travis G]

Originally posted by CornedBee
Or not.

Well, unless you have a link that will allow an aural browser to skip the content that comes before navigation, then blind users will have to wait for content to be read before they get to the high-use navigation feature.

There may be some content that can be justifiably placed before navigation. I don't see that content on the site in question.

Now, links to skip to navigation or skip navigation are fair and will address the problem. If you use multiple stylesheets, having one for visual and one for aural, then you can turn off (display: none) the links to skip navigation in a visual browser and allow them to be read in an aural browser.

I've debated pursuing certifications in MQ/Series, Java, and Linux. The only certification I actually have is in accessible web development.

[CornedBee]

Interesting. Though I remember reading something about aural browser having an option of only reading links first.

[Kasracer]

Originally posted by DeadEyes
hmm... in other words your willing to cast aside the majority of people usng the Net.

Yes that is correct. It's a personal webpage so everyone else can go to... um... nm Marty will yell at me again

Originally posted by CornedBee
As it is the page works in IE.

Sadly, I use the bad CSS hack to allow the image in the upper left hand corner to display correctly for IE users. For now I'll leave it as is. The forum also has a PNG but I never applied the hack to it and I don't think I'm going to.

Actually, I just e-mailed Opera's development team because I think I found a bug. The way I sorted my sections in my project section, I used a class that did the samething as the class that label the webpages (i.e. 'Projects') except the font size is 5% smaller (I try to use percentages wherever I can for fonts). All browsers BUT Opera appear to make the font size 105% instead of the original 110%. Opera, however, does not like percentages in font sizes and only works correctly with 110% and a few other sizes, not including 105% so in Opera, they look like plain regular default text. Apply a font-weight: bold makes it look like it should on Opera, but make sit butt ugly in all other browsers and I don't see like making another PHP script to detect Opera as well.

Originally posted by Travis G
An aural browser will read the left panel before it reads the navigation menu. You might want to put the navigation menu before the left panel in your page source.

I took a web development course a long time ago (I didn't learn anything except how to make websites accessable to the handycaped, the HTML we did was basic "OMG <b> IS A BOLD TAG! CSS? WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?") so I know how to make websites accessable, I just don't care. It's a personal site and I'm sure they can manage without it if they actually want to see it.