Comments purely about the design aspects:
1. Why a splash page? This is an archaic concept which is irritating and a sure way to get visitors to click the back button.
2. You appear to be catering only to those people who have resolutions > 1024X768. If I run with 1024X768 FULL SCREEN I still can’t see the right sidebar fully.
3. You should increase the left sidebar padding.
4. The header graphic is WAY too tall for my taste. It occupies around two thirds of the available real estate area.
5. The main content area is too wide. This obviously relates to (2) and (3) above.
It’s really up to you, if your eyes say the layout’s ok, then go for it. If there’s one thing I’d like to comment on, its the splash page. It’s not the splash design, it’s about having to click again to enter and read your stuff.
My 2 cents.
http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.americanflannel.com%2Fflannel%2F shows some issues with invalid xhtml, you should brush-up on current standards.
Make center (post) column fluid with a min-width. Too wide right now.
I didn’t even wait for the ‘splash/crass’ page to finish loading before I closed the window.
Thanks for the advice…
Splash screen is temporary – It’s actually going to be something out side of word press that has the same header but different items outside of the word press engine.
Thanks for all the comments about size – I don’t have any monitors that are 1024×768 or smaller so I hadn’t notice that (I actually set the width at 1020 so thought it was ok… it’s something that I was concerned about just didn’t follow up on)
Header graphic – thought so just wanted verification… once again on my new monitor it’s really hard to judge that stuff and i was in a rush to put it up. will rexamine.
The fluid width thing:
I really like fixed width stuff because I am overly obsessed with how the sentances look. (Same with fonts. I hate the way the page looks on windows machines right now that is another thing I am going to try and fix – on a mac the fonts are really nice and smooth looking but that’s just how macs default fonts i think)
Invalid XTML:
The image map stuff yea… I got that code cut and paste from Corel Photopaint because I couldn’t remember how to do it off the top of my head. The alt tags I understand. Not sure about undefined <center> though? Any idea?
For a fixed width center col. how big is too big?
You guys rock with your advice thanks!