Drawar

I've had a look in IE7, Firefox2 and Opera9 and they all like fine to me dude, dropcap looks fine :/

Yeah, logo design is a really difficult and subjective thing. I think offering case studies and design tutorials would be good to help people get started.

I hate designing logos.

Dugg it too, good stuff Paul.

I hate terms like this. Marketers love to use these "buzzwords" without any understanding of what they mean. I'd instinctively get them to give examples of Web3.0.

All too often people use bullshit terms like this in inteviews to sound impressive without "teh skillz to pay teh billz"

Good suggestion posure, a few people have mentioned that so I've made the change :)

Points for everyone.

I've given it a little tweak, if anyone has any comments :)

How about you reverse out the colors in the sidebar, meaning that you'd box in each sidebar link section (header and all) with a dark grey background (say, #444-666) and then make the text a light grey inside of it?

Wouldn't that be a bit strong maybe? Take the focus away from the content?

I've chatted to a designer friend of mine who has recommended a couple of things, so I'll try a few of those later.

I'm still welcoming suggestions though :)

Don't you find it overly monochromatic? There's a lot of grey.

I think my main problem is the right hand column, I don't think the "latest content", "recent comments" look good at all.

it should only be inheriting the hover state because that's where IE thinks the focus is. it's only when you move the mouse that it recognises it.

So setting focus to something different should bring things back to normality

why not set focus on a different element when the move is completed?

In IE you only see very small red dots (IE7 anyway) where the nav should be.

It's most confusing and I don't have the time right now to look, although I should do later on.

That's most odd, how are you positioning the navigation?

it should just be a simple case of

ul{
padding:0px;
margin:0px;
list-style-type:none;
}
li{
display:block;
float:left;
list-style-type:none;
}

and that should bring them into line without issue :s

I fell into it too; at uni they tried to teach us and failed. So I ended up teaching myself and just ran with it (well, teaching myself = Oli taught me).

A couple of years later I'm hired as a professional and really happy about it.

sIFR (scalable inman flash replacement) is where you have a specific flash movie with an embedded font that javascript writes into the page, replacing a region of text with the flash (passing the values of that text as a flashvar of sorts).

Meaning the font embedded in that flash movie is able to render on the page irrespective of whether it's web safe or the user has it installed.

It gives you far more creative freedom and it's far more SEO friendly because you're using JS to write in the movie, rather than having an image.

We've recently used this on the new Trafficmaster site, it's pretty snazzy and easy now that sIFR 3 is out.

Have a look at LussoLuxury.com, that has something similar, although I think he's using an iFrame. is that the behaviour you're on about?

Looks nice, should get a few users on that without much trouble.

I'd like to see some sIFR on the page headings, that'd spruce things up a bit.

As far as I'm concerned, whenever I build websites I try to make sure that the crucial aspects like navigation either:
1) don't depend on specific technologies to work
2) degrade properly

number 1 is an increasingly difficult notion in the climate of current design trends but #2 is crucial. If you've got something that relies on technologies to perform then you should have built it in a manner to allow it to degrade nicely.

Unless (as Oli stated) the content of the website is inherantly unaccessible - then you can push the boat out.

Recently we (at work) built an IPTV platform that relied entirely on Javascript/AJAX calls to operate - but given the app was only dealing with video it wasn't necessary to consider accessibility/usability/jesus.

Yup that would be useful, hit it with lots of content and you've got a winner.

Web safe fonts are quite limiting, so I'm normally using verdana or tahoma. Anything more exciting and it's probably safer to use sIFR

That's absolutely awesome :)

Funnily enough, Youtube.

See my post on the 10 best Photoshop video tutorials and all of those came from Youtube.

I find video tutorials to be a bit easier to follow (and believable) than conventional ones.

Should I just forget about it and move on?

Absolutely not. Not ever. If you allow non-paying clients to get away with it then you're allowing evil to exist within the industry. Make sure you get payment whatever the cost - if he doesn't want to pay then tell him (as I've stated above) that you'll sell the design on to someone else.

Then if he wants the website doing again once you've sold it on, he needs to pay for all your time again.

Eddie, the trick (as Oli has pointed out) is to make sure from the outset that the client understands that you're not a charity.

Sure you'll do work at a favourable rate sometimes but you don't work for free, not even if they offer you a verbal promise that "more work will come your way for good money". You have bills to pay and you won't get the time back if they don't pay - so ensure they pay something like 50% upfront with the site being physically delivered to them when they've settled the bill.

As for your current situation
If he hasn't paid for the website then I suggest you send him some correspondance (written preferably) stating that unless payment is made by [a specific date] then his website will be pulled.

He then has until [another date] to pay before you are entitled to strip back the branding from the website and resell it. After all it's your intellectual property still and if he hasn't paid, he doesn't own any part of it. So if he's not looking like paying, strip the branding and sell the design on (or use it for another project).

Clients/customers are thieving little sods at times, you sometimes need to play hardball to level the playing field.

"Yes, having the client say they like it on the first attempt."

100% excellent. Client's will normally come back with "can't we have red text on that green bit? make it stand out"

Comic sans? har har.

I'm not a designer, I'm a developer, but I do enjoy designing things.

ARGH sorry for some reason I hit enter prematurely and now have two threads =/

I've just made the change to my articles script so that the main content of the site is displayed in this way.

I've had a google based search on my site for a while (only on the internal pages, mind - as they are the most popular) and the usage has been fairly low. Beyond Oli looking for naughty words that is.

I'm yet to decide whether it's a worthwhile thing to have, I think having a "most popular posts" area and clear navigation is better in the long run.

8.23 in the morning is possibly too early for me to be involved in some Flash-bashing...

As for colour schemes - a tried and tested method is the age old use of browsing + Colorcop (the single most useful tool available). Find a site with a nice scheme, ColorCop it, and modify the hues slightly. Standing on the shoulders of giants (or the less lazy).