Taste Crisis

[binidj]

The Fox and I are having a disagreement. Now usually when I ask him to look at one of my website designs his advice is sound and I end up taking it ... this time however I just can't. So I come to you as discerning members of the human race to see if you can help resolve this issue.

My preferred layout is here but the Fox feels that the lines are too stark (whereas I quite like the contrast).

His preferrred layout is here and whilst I'm quite proud of it as a technical achievement, I really don't like the appearance.

A couple of points to bear in mind:

1. If you use Opera or Safari you won't see much difference between the two ... this is just another instance of those browsers not handling code the way they should but at least this time the site isn't broken because if it!


2. Neither design has been shown to the client yet so it's entirely possible that they'll ask for a complete redesign.

Comments

[furzepig.livejournal.com]

First of all I wasn't sure about either of them. thenm I realised you'd cleverly done a variable width design and I'd gotten it extended beyond your intended width, which made the background photo repeat (any way to make it degrade more gracefully for different window sizes?). At the right width, it looked much more lovely. :-)

I like the first one best too. The second - whilst clever in the gradient department - just doesn't hang right visually for me.

Just a minor question/niggle though - have you tried the inner frame with the same thin black border as the bar? My feeling is that it may help balance it a little more, so the scrollbar is part of the whole box. I could do a mock up to demonstrate tomorrow if I'm making no sense and you're interested.

[binidj.livejournal.com]

Gold star for noticing it was a variable width design! Following on from your suggestion I did try an outline for the text box but it really didn't work that well. The solution which I have used for Internet Explorer should make it less intrusive.