Need opinion about webpage

[thomas]

Hi, I am re-designing my website about D-day (Second World War)
- This page is not the homepage but the first page of the info section.
- The website is going to contain 5 main theme's wich are displayed on the 5 buttons on the top of the page. (D-day, Stories, D-day tour, Media and Forum) As I already mentioned, this samplepage is the first page of the D-day section.
- I used a sample video to test the jwplayer.

*Could anyone give me some tips to make things look nicer or easier for visitors.

http://www.thomas-timmers.be/ddi/

[thomas]

I am personaly not really satisfied with the vertical navigation on the left. I want it to match with the rest of the page but it stil needs to look simple and classy

[Arpeggio]

You could make the categories for the vertical bar like hanging pockets of a military uniform in a dark / mid brown, khaki or other appropriate colour. Make the very top horizontal bit the same colour as well. Not so strong from the white background then. Don't think you need D-Day at top of the vertical bar, you already have it in the red bit "D-Day info". For the background I guess you could have some kind of low contrast feint military strategy map.

[Abikadabra]

Hi Thomas. I really like this site. I would not change anything. It is well laid it, the colours are balanced, and although there is a lot on the first page it is 'spacious' and restful on the eye.

[Cloud]

The only thing I would change on the site is actually the menu on the left, perhaps have a navigation bar across the top as a drop down, that is where people will expect the navigation to be. Other then that the site and the colours are very good indeed.

[thomas]

Thanks for the feedback. I think Iam going to stay with the final result as it is now. @ Sketch: I don't think I got enough space to but my navigation items horizontaly. it already contains 14 buttons and iam planning to add some more in the future. So how do you suggest on putting them all horizontally on top? By the way some of the nav buttons contain dropdown boxes, so its not possible to create a multiple lined horizontaly navigation i gues.

[Cloud]

perhaps as categories or a drop down menu, it just frees up real estate. This is a link to our new site for printing and we had to get around that problem ourselves so created a drop down menu. http://www.sketchprinting.com/x1printing/index.htm as you can see there are an awful lot of pages on there. possibly call it information or FAQs.

edit

btw the site is only about 10% done at the moment