What do you think of this website color scheme?

[eskimo2]

I’m a computer teacher at a 400+ student K-8 Catholic School.  Aside from teaching computers I do a variety of other tasks including administrating the school website.  The budget for our site is the cost of our domain name registration… and that’s it.  Our site is hosted on our school server.  Although I have been asking for html editing software for years, our budget has remained $0 and I us MS Word as a WYSIWYG html editor.  I do a bit of beyond Word editing in MS Notepad (Page counters, visited links underline color, etc.).  
The site has hundreds of student made webpage articles, also made in MS Word.

Anyway, I just redid the site color scheme and made a new logo to go along with it.  My boss questions the readability of the font and background colors.

My biggest question is: are the fonts readable?  
Note that the unvisited links are a bright golden brown and the visited links are a duller brown.  
Also,
Are the brown links too hard to read on the darker gray-brown background?
Is the tan text readable on the darker gray-brown background?
Do you like the color scheme?
What impression do you get of the school before you actually start to read/look at the site?

Lastly,
What browser are you using?
Did anything display strangely?  (Word webpages apparently can display garbled, but I’ve yet to see it.)
What is your age and do you have any eyesight issues?

Here is the site:
http://www.ihmgradeschool.com/

Thanks,

eskimo

[Gunslinger]

That's nice Eskimo.  Very CLEAN.  I think that's important in web design to have a neat/clean page that isn't all cluttered and such.  It makes finding things sooooooooo much easier and let's face it 90% of web hits from people intending to go to a sight are looking for something.

Personally I don't like word as far as web work goes, I'd rather use front page but I understand budget problems.  There are many free editors out there that I can't think of right now.

The only thing I can imediatly point out is a strange pink line under the principles name?????

no eyesite problems the font looks appropriate and I'm using IE6 or greater with 1024x768 resolution.


EDIT:
same thing with the staff links page.  Looks like words "mispelled word indicator" line carried over to the site somehow.  If you have word don't you have frontpage or do you have an aversion to it?

[eskimo2]

Thanks for the input.

I think the pink line is a “Smart Tag”.  If you hold your mouse over it, it will bring up options like adding their name to your contacts, send them and email, etc.  I’m not sure if it’s generated in Word or IE or only in a combination of the two.  You can also see them on dates or street addresses.  

Edit:

Looking at that staff page I can tell you that those folks who are underlined in pink have email addresses on the same network.  It looks like Outlook and Word are in cahoots.  

Budget = $0  
I have my own copy FrontPage at home, but do most of that site work at school, so I have to use Word.  

eskimo

[Gunslinger]

Originally posted by eskimo2
Thanks for the input.

I think the pink line is a “Smart Tag”.  If you hold your mouse over it, it will bring up options like adding their name to your contacts, send them and email, etc.  I’m not sure if it’s generated in Word or IE or only in a combination of the two.  You can also see them on dates or street addresses.  

Edit:

Looking at that staff page I can tell you that those folks who are underlined in pink have email addresses on the same network.  It looks like Outlook and Word are in cahoots.  

Budget = $0  
I have my own copy FrontPage at home, but do most of that site work at school, so I have to use Word.  

eskimo

cahoots indeed.  That's pretty darn nifty.  Doesn't frontpage come with office?  I figured if you guys had word in office you were bound to have frontpage.  But it looks nice so don't mess with it right?  

[Simaril]

Using Firefox at 1280, no problems.

The visited/unvisited link underlines are pretty close, but I can see the difference if I look. That's effective. The backgrounds and colors look good to me.

I have to say that the school menu page's gently falling logo was a bit over the top for my taste, but that may just be preference. You are working with elementary kids...

And my reaction is probably a Pavlovian conditioned response from sitting through way too many powerpoint presentations put together by folks who feel overwhelming urges to use ALL the features they can...



(.....Noooooooo, no more text waterfalls from the top border, noooooooooooo.....)

[Holden McGroin]

What is an 80% student?

[Thrawn]

The font is crap.  The site should be written in Latin and use a Gothic font.  Say five pater nosters and get to it.

[Maverick]

Looked good to me. Only question I have is what was the active -x program that was trying to run?

[Mustaine]

my eyes are ****ing with me, got some kind of protien infectionn or something, so the small fonts on the left of the site are unreadable to me.

other than that decent easy to use layout

[Nash]

Looks good to me. Thars a weird minty green that shows up before the background texture covers it up. But no... it's fine.

[Sandman]

Other than the font used on the title, it's okay. Your palette choice is fine.

IMHO, the only thing worse than using FrontPage is using Word.

HTML Kit is free.

Oh... I'm using FireFox.

[Saintaw]

I'd use a lighter background (The TV effect you're using outside the main content), it'd make for a lighter/easier read.

Fonts are readable as far as I'm concerned, but that top gif is a tad heavy for what it holds.


...

^^
 please, change that! Had a look at the source code... and I can tell you it'd be at least 50% lighter if you clean that up.

[Lizard3]

Looks good to me. Not , but ncie indeed.


Question:   Do you ever get to just...not feeling well and pop by the nurses office???

[GRUNHERZ]

eskimo,

do you know what the music on this site is?

http://www.ihmcfo.org/splash.asp