Re: Critique please

SqueakyWee wrote:

I've started designing a fan site for a British television sitcom (Black
Books). At the moment I only have the general layout up, and would like a
critique on the design if possible. The address is
http://www.squeakywee.co.uk/blackbooks/index.htm

I agree with the other comments about the brown speckled background: It

is hardly festive. The overall appearance is too restrained for
celebrating "The Best of ..."
The "Connect Savannah" logo that is tacked onto the Best Of star is
distracting; it crowds the image. It gives the impression of a manager
with no design talent insisting on having "Connect" slapped on the page
somewhere. And there is no link to "Connect..." anywhere.
The main menu has two typical design flaws:
1. It specifies a fixed size (12px). That displays rather small on most
screens. IE users cannot increase the readability because of the pixel
spec; use % instead.
2. It specifies Verdana. Verdana has a large x-height which offsets a
small font-size setting. Unless the user does not have Verdana, then those
users are punished with too-small print.
I use the Mozilla browser. It has a feature that allows me to specify a
minimum font size I use to make readable too-small text. Thus your menu
text is larger than indicated by the CSS. On non-home pages, the menu
wraps around. On the home page the menu background extends beyond the
speckled background.

bestof-screen.css does not validate. It has two errors and a small
number of warnings.
<http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/validator?profile=css2&warning=2&uri=http%3A//www.thebestofsavannah.com/>


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