The top navigation with the colored lines is great, similar to the bbc website http://www.bbc.co.uk/ where each of the topmost items have a different colored underline.
Now for the negatives:
those gradients in your main navigation ( ABOUT, DOWNLOADS, etc... ) is horrible. I see this a lot in bad Wordpress themes. It's dated, looks bad now, and will look worse in 6months.
The blue SEARCH font color on the blue background is a poor contrast choice.
Those Python 2.x, 3.x buttons look terrible too. It's the gradients, remove those inner grey gradients, it doesn't add anything to the buttons, doesn't even make them stand out.
Your code formatting screen looks great.
The responsive layout also needs work. The double navigation bar on ipad doesnt look nice. The search bar on the iphone is WAY too small. that should either be stacked / above / below the nav, not side by side on a 320px screen.
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web design is going flat, with big font types, and big images, everything is square, clean.
There's some odd execution-level details I noticed also: all the big grey buttons for downloads look pre-pressed because they use a dark-to-light gradient which makes them look beveled in. In case the designers have never actually seen a physical button in real life before, buttons pop out and need a light-to-dark gradient indicating that light is hitting the top of the button.
I agree. I looked at the wireframes in the proposals first and was very impressed. Once I saw the actual screenshots with the gradients and the dark color scheme, it no longer looked like such a big step forward.
Agreed, those buttons may be the weakest part of the design. Perhaps a compatible green would highlight them properly. Another choice might be black, but would be harder to pull off.
Now for the negatives:
those gradients in your main navigation ( ABOUT, DOWNLOADS, etc... ) is horrible. I see this a lot in bad Wordpress themes. It's dated, looks bad now, and will look worse in 6months.
The blue SEARCH font color on the blue background is a poor contrast choice.
Those Python 2.x, 3.x buttons look terrible too. It's the gradients, remove those inner grey gradients, it doesn't add anything to the buttons, doesn't even make them stand out.
Your code formatting screen looks great.
The responsive layout also needs work. The double navigation bar on ipad doesnt look nice. The search bar on the iphone is WAY too small. that should either be stacked / above / below the nav, not side by side on a 320px screen.
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web design is going flat, with big font types, and big images, everything is square, clean.
http://www.hulu.com/ http://www.uniqlo.com/us/ http://www.ebay.com/new http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/11/05/the-walking-dead-kill...
Personally i would keep it simple like backbone documentation
http://backbonejs.org/
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Good job though :)