OK, the title hopefully drew in the odd poster, and maybe will draw in a hit or too. Even better some comments may be forthcoming - let's have: the the good, the bad and the downright ugly.
Anyone who clicks through will see that the reference to blue is literal. Is the colour (gives away country of origin by correctly spelling colour) acceptable - meaning is it painful to read the text on the site or not. If after reading a couple of lines of text do you rub your eyes and click the back button hurridly to escape?
Yes, I KNOW the site isn't finished (given that the main focus is on the patterns/forms of WTF taekwondo) but it takes time and I want to know if I'm on track. I doubt there are that many martial artists in here (although I will admit, your Kung Fu is probably greater than mine). What I'm trying to achieve is to display the entire patterns on one page, yet give the user the ability to get detailed info on each move without navigating away. So yes, I know there are way too many images, and a dialup visitor will most liklely leave, but how many of them are left?
If anyones' still reading, any comments are appreciated but the top questions are:
1) Does the page design "work" and are the load times acceptable?
2) Is the adsense done "right"? IE is it too obtrusive?
3) Anyone got any experience (I would hope yes) of incorporating a blog into a site. Have I got it right, and should this draw in the traffic as the posts increase. I'm using Blogger - because in my ignorance I assume using Google's blogging system "garuntees" visiits from Googlebot. Should I have used Wordpress instead, or does it not matter.
4) I've realised now that the next pattern I add won't fit in one image and be wholly visible on an 800x600 screen. Do I still need to design for that res, or should I plan for 1024x768 as a minmum resolution as it wil work better if I do?
5) Since the SE's seem to be finding all the pages I put up WITHOUT the aid of a sitemap, I'm considering leaving that out entirely. Uploading a sitemap to Google, or creating an HTML one smacks of a "look at me" shout to the search engines. Thoughts please...

Here's the start point (might seem odd not to point you to the homepage, but you'll ideally understand why if you 'click'). The homepage is in the sig anyhows.

Taegeuk Il Jang

Many thanks in advance

Andy

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Andy Fletcher, not the famous one.

Hi Andy,

Go Blue, its your site and for some reason I like the look. Other than that

Sort the logo out, it has been made as a transparency for a white background. Go back to the original and set the background for the colour you are using.

As I have said I like the colour but reading it is a bit hard on the eyes.

Tell people how to use your site, I worked it out, but there are some very impatient people out there who will never read your blog. There is a glitch in the code that you will find fairly easily.

I think you have a great concept for the site, especially the way that you have all the moves laid out and the mouseover done with the explanation underneath.

Tweak the site, do not alter greatly. What you see in a year will differ but it has the makings of a really good site.

Keimos

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Keimos - Always learning something new each day
www.keimos.co.uk , www.keimos.net , www.selfpacedit.co.uk

Readability tests suggest reversed type is generally frowned on. With the pics, there's no problem, the white Gi stands out.

Of more concern than the white text is the blue links. Blue links on blue background? You're kidding, right?

Finally, I'd suggest adding a margin to the text area. The link thing and no margins are roughly as much of a potential problem as the blue. Color psychology and the interface is more complex than most color charts make it out to be.

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Design Crux - infographic design,
content strategy Visual Merchandising online

Your prospective customers do NOT care about W3C.
In fact, they have no clue what it is.

So why do you clutter your website with something about W3C?

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Dave Barnes
+1.303.744.9024
http://www.marketingtactics.com
sitting in my basement with my iMac

With the words of Keimos, Yes! that your website, you can choose any color coding buddy!!

I can suggest here just that your website should be comfortable to visitors (actually to your targeted visitors) and the text should be easily readable....

Other thing I feel after seeing your website is - you really require to do something with your logo.. It should have some clearity.

Best of Luck.

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Offshore Software Development Company | SEO Company | Travel to Peru

Many thanks for the replies!

Looks like I might have to have a re-think on the pages that are weighted towards text content. I have changed the link colours - they were badly chosen - kicking myself for not seeing it myself!

Keimos, I'm going to get those niggles sorted - thanks for pointing them out.

Dave, quite right. And in any case the W3C has enough backlinks right? I'll limit that to the about & homepages and tuck them out of the way a bit more.

Best

Andy

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Andy Fletcher, not the famous one.

Just off topic for a bit...

When I was a kid and I did a fictional story for a school project, I had a character in the story that was supposed to be from England. Not knowing how to "write" an English accent, I had used English spellings of words to denote he was talking with an accent. One of them was spelling "colour" instead of the American English "color".

The teacher marked "colour" as a misspelling and it dropped my grade on the project - even though I had explained to her the reason for spelling it that way!

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~Mark G.
Graphic Designer - Endoscopy Support Services, Inc.

i'm all for the colour blue, but you've gone overboard with it.

i'd suggest you swap the text areas to a white background, and make the text a darker blue, just to make it easier to read. perhaps use a dark-grey to bring the blue and white together a bit.

Not to cause trouble or anything, but can I ask where your logo came from?

It might just be a coincidence, but it's a very close likeness to the dragon symbol used by the popular video game Mortal Kombat.

I don't know who's symbol came first, but figured I would give you a heads up as this may become a problem down the road for you.

Maybe it's me, but is there something on the left that I am supposed to see? I only see half of the logo and only parts of the box on the left of the page.

I like the blue and the mouse-overs are nice.

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Yup, just checked and it turns out I don't own Konami, so you're probably right - will get one done myself. Thanks for the heads up - I only put it is as an afterthought really, so it's probably worth coming up with something more unique & memorable. Incidentally Rah, as this is post No 100 for me I'd like to add a little thank you for a well moderated and useful forum - cheers!

Anissa - you're worrying me - it should display right, or at least it does on the browsers I use. Could you let me know which browser & screen res you have? The only issue I'm aware of is the pages not fitting an 800x600 screen, which was a design compromise I had to come to after a lot of flapping about trying to get the pages to fit that size.

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Andy Fletcher, not the famous one.

I think Anissa's issue is resolution related, as I am seeing the same thing. Unfortunately, in IE at least, it's more than simply not fitting, about half of the left column is cut off, and can't be scrolled to.

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The best way to learn anything, is to question everything.

OK, quite right - must be an 800x600 screen. Just checked and get exactly the behaviour mentioned. Back to the stylesheet.....

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Andy Fletcher, not the famous one.