[d7nh.com]

Thanks for invite me to your beta version testing survey.

My lady and I love your header, except the clouds. You are using too many colors, but maybe this is your style, hope it can make you different.

About the typo: I like the way you use Georgia, but the others, especially the footer with Century Gothic, aren’t good. I means you’re using more than 2 fonts for your main block (With me, header, main, and footer are three main blocks, they must be have a consistency look).

About the layout: I don’t like the way your recent comments display. Let’s try with a fixed height for there four boxes.

Your interactive design is good. Love the way you use Jquery. Overall, this redesign is amazing. Congratulation! So far so good, friend. Keep up your work!

Well, I will just go straight to the point of what I think:

* The general feeling is that it lacks of detail, and it really turns me off the moment I see it (well, it’s beta - so I just saying about the current state). The main reason maybe the choice of icons. I think it’s better don’t use icons at all, rather than use these.

* The design feel “flat”. Perhaps that is your intention, but generally, without the “depth”, there is always a “it-misses-something” feeling. A few details such as border, shadow will improve this a lots.

* Grid design doesn’t always work. See it here:

http://flickr.com/photos/leduytien/2712377103/

(I set it to be “public” so that you can see. If you prefer, I will delete it after you see it)

From this particular view, the boxes appear to be un-organized and randomly put. The content of the main box on the homepage will usually long, so this will happen when user scroll down.

You should first believe in your eyes first, not just blindly apply principle.

* I think the colorful thread background make the navigation links “invisible”. I like the idea of using the thread to help “direct” the eyes moving through the whole navigation, but with the low contrast of the link, it’s kinda “pointless”.

* Usability Test: false when disable all images. The Logo disappear (This is the result of the technique to hide the text using indentation -999px. I don’t really know your reason, but from my experience, there will be always a way to avoid this), navigation text disappear when hover the mouse over them.

Overall: 7.5/10

Sorry for saying too much (although you are asking for “less” That’s my habit when looking at anything - although myself perhaps not even be able to create something like them.

Another comment: I feel that your treatments for the typography of the right sidebar is not my cup of coffee. If I were you, I would make the sidebar in Georgia, because your choice of typeface (Century Gothic) added too much weight and it makes the design doesn’t look consistent. I saw you used Century Gothic here and there, although this is a great font but I don’t think that it works for small size content.

The bottom columns on the homepage need more attention. The article navigation on top of the post titles and the post meta look really out of place.

Hope those make sense. I will let you know if I have any further thoughts.

@Tien: who cares about the branding stuffs when it comes to an “Usability Test”? I think text-replacement is always good for SEO.

You aren’t a coder but the way you use jQuery is great. I think you can have a quick look here: http://ddth.com/showthread.php?t=194955. It maybe useful, just some basic functions.

@Min: I’ve read an article said that the text-replacement using text-indent is not good for SEO. Because of the web developer may add the keywords, tags in their web page and then try to hide them in the ‘real’ pages (it appears in the HTML of course). However, that’s just an article, if you have further information, please let me know.

Hi D7,

I think overflow is the way you try to control the height of some things with its properties: visible, hidden, scroll, auto. And in CSS2 we already have this.

However, it’s just like you take a ’soft’ control and you’ll get some new troubles when using this LOL. Try to ‘hard’ control by using PHP code.

I would really like to have your updated code to Min Tran’s CSS Swap Hover Effect, which you call CSS Swap Hover Effect 2. However, I can get to the demo page on your site but cannot find the code anywhere. I’ve looked in all of your links on the site as well as executed a search. Can you please help me?
Thanks.