Did I mention that I suck at website and logo design?

Posted on:March 20 2007

Because the next irrKlang release is coming nearer, I wanted to clean up the ambiera.com website a bit, IMO it is totally ugly, because it was 100% made by myself. So I sat down and improved it several times. Between each improvement iteration I made a break of several hours to be able to examine my last change more objectively. After 4 or 5 iterations, I really liked the result. Then I compared it to the current website version:

OMG, I thought: They are still completely the same! The only real difference is that the new version (left side) has more space because I removed the google ads at the right border. Damn, and I wasted a lot of time with this. Next time I'll really ask somebody who knows something about website and logo design to do it for me. :)

Comments:

Web design can be really annoying... it's tough to find that optimal design you want. And then there's the problem with browser inconsistencies. 'Nuff said.

In Firefox 2.0.0.2 on my machine, the lines between the links on the left on ambiera.com actually go *through* the text... probably something to do with my larger-than-default font size. (http://greendaemon.com/ambiera.png)

As long as it's usable, I'd say the site is good enough. It's better to focus on the important stuff, like the actual tools and libraries!

Michael

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2007-03-20 16:44:00

Well, I think the menu system should be simplified so that the menu-items are only visible when you select that page... so when i go to the homepage i see Home, Software, Community, and Ambiera and when I click on Software, it brings me to the page and then I see the software links. Still, site's looking nice. You could always move Irrlicht to that template and website as well... that'd be nice integration...

TheRLG

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2007-03-20 16:48:00

maybe it is because the content is the same. try to make it a webpage about umbrellas and people using them and it will look different for sure. (why do i believe that you won't believe?)

xaos

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2007-03-21 15:23:00

Haha not to deter your efforts but at first I thought the one on the right is the new one because it is a little nicer :P Either way, good job! You probably cleaned the code up a bit. Do you use CSS? Look for a sight called css edge it has some very nice things you can see.

BlindSide

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2007-03-21 16:56:00

Have you considered downloading an "open source" website design? There are two sites linked on my blog but I can't remember the addresses.

Stodge

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2007-03-22 16:40:00