Topic: My first site

As some of you may know, I recently shifted into shouldering the responsibility for my company's web prescence. I've been working really hard the past few months on the redesign of one of our sites. It's nothing fancy, but I did learn a lot, and kept web standards in mind the entire time.

Being that this is a commercial site, it went through reviews and approval processes already (within the company). It's going to launch in 2 weeks.
BUT I would like to get any opinions on usability, layout, etc. This is my first real site and I am learning more every day.
This will help me a great deal, especially when I start to tackle the redesign of our next site (It's WAY bigger).
I greatly appreciate your time and any input that you can give.
Thanks all.
and that url is http://www.airplusfootcare.com/2002
The site it'll be replacing is http://www.airplusfootcare.com

Edit> Oh and I know I need to add meta tags.

[This message has been edited by Jeni (edited 03-21-2002).]

Not bad for first site, much better than mine was

When viewing it at 1024x768 I get a scrollbar on the menu frame and on the main frame, when I scroll down the menu the background also scrolls making the "corner graphic" un-matching. Maybe make the background stand still and only scroll the text? You should also consider changing the colors of the scrollbars so that they fit the design better. The standard scrollbars aren't that nice...

Keep up the good work

[edit]wow, that was bad english. Hope you understood parts of it at least [/edit]


-= Veneficuz =-

"Faith: not wanting to know what is true. "- Friedrich Nietzsche

[This message has been edited by Veneficuz (edited 03-21-2002).]

Looks good Jeni! Especially for your first site!

The basic look with the rounded corners reminds me a little of this site that I've made. Great minds thinks alike, eh?

My biggest concern with this site is the scrolling. You have a fixed size for the whole site, and on a 600x800 screen you get a scrollbar out to the right. At the same time you have a scrollbar for the menu and the window in the center. So to be able to see all of a page you need to scroll first in one place, and then the other. This is not a very practical solution. There are a couple of ways you can improve this. Either you can have the whole page expand with the content, and only have the scrollbar to the very right (kinda like the page I put a link to above), or you can use frames to fix the header and footer, and have the center window expand/contract depending on the screen size. The problem with the latter could be that the window for the actual content get pretty small.
If you don't want to make any big changes like this, then I think you should at least make the start image a tad big smaller, so you don't get that scroll bar.

I like the colors, and the structure of the site seems pretty logical too.

The mouseover for the visited links in the menu is not working. Maybe you have things in the wrong order in your style sheet? The a:hover style should be stated after a:link and a:visited.

Good work!

Well since the site launches in 2 weeks I don't think that there is much of a window to comment on. Anyway, it looks a *hell* of a lot better than what they have now. I thank you for not using Flash!

So this is XML? Cool! I am in the process of learning it. Did you do the entire site by yourself, graphics and all?

I looks nice. Not too sure about the Italics on the "Menu Headers". Looks kind of strange. There are a lot of frames. I might consider a different solution in the future. All those scrollbars take away from the design. Like Veneficuz said, you may want to color the scrollbars for IE users.

Good Job! I wish I were a web page designer!

Later,
C:\


~Binary is best~

The poster has demanded we remove all his contributions, less he takes legal action.
We have done so.
Now Tyberius Prime expects him to start complaining that we removed his 'free speech' since this message will replace all of his posts, past and future.
Don't follow his example - seek real life help first.

Thanks guys.
I owe a lot of thanks to InI, mrMax, and Emperor for all their help. mrMax for his great script that I used on the map page, InI for numerous things (especially his patience), and Emps for all his help with me and my CSS frustrations.
I must admit that I hate the scroll bar that pops up with that left navigation. It doesn't do that on mac. I'm thinking the default browser text size on pc is different then that of mac. I am aware of it. I don't know what to do about it.
I do dislike all of the scroll-bars, like mentioned, they were a result of having a fixed area to work in (which seems fine on a 800x600 monitor btw). Great suggestion on taking down that home page image in size. As far as the image in the navigation frame scrolling with the rest of the content: well...I honestly don't know how to handle that. I posted here about it and we never found a solution for it. I thought I had eliminated the problem by making the content small enough to where there would be no need to scroll...I was wrong *sigh*...Any help there would be greatly appreciated. The background-attachment: fixed attribute in css makes my image disappear completely. We never did figure out that one, did we? hehe

I seem to be receiving a pretty consistent message so far. Get rid of the scrolling on the left and that fixes a couple of issues.

Cprompt- I'll reconsider using italics for the headers, I may also take them down in size to try to eliminate the need to scroll

I think I've covered everything so far there, let me know if I missed a question please. And thank you so much for the feedback
Edit> P.S. It doesn't actually count as my first site I guess cause I had a little piece of crap personal site for awhile, but there were only like 4 pages sooooooo
Zox-that dentist site is sharp...I think that the reasoning behind not having the page snap to the content was to retain the entire layout within viewing area..does that make sense? The rounded edges are taken from the packaging design (also done by yours truly ).
Cprompt- Xhmtl isn't as intimidating as one might think. I did write all the code myself, with the exception of the javascript and the php...and when are you gonna drive out to Mebane and join me for some Margaritas anyways?

[This message has been edited by Jeni (edited 03-21-2002).]

quote:

---

and when are you gonna drive out to Mebane and join me for some Margaritas anyways?

---

Hey you tell me when and my fiancee and I will be at your door in 1 hr!!!! Then you can show me some XHTML

Seriously you have my email, just let me know.

Later,
C:\


~Binary is best~

Super job Jeni... The old site doesn't come close - nice job.
www.scansped.co.uk

Jeni: As you say I've seen the site in development and have made numerous comments. I'll do a full review later (I need to put my other computer back together before bed!!) but two thoughts:

1. overflow:auto doesn't work in Opera and so it breaks and due to the way you have the page set up it breaks nastily. I should have come up with a smooth solution by now but... anyway you need to turn off the height and it should force everything to just fall into a long page. Try something like this (which is a wild stab in the dark but hopefully a JavaScript Guru should be able to spot the problem - if it doesn't work try all[DIV_NAME] instead of the getElementById bit):

if (navigator.userAgent.indexOf("Opera") != -1) {

  document.getElementById(DIV_NAME).style.height = auto;

}

Sorry that isn't a polished solution but it should get you some part of the way there.

2. You are right about the problems of cross-platform font sizes - I like this page for that problem:
http://style.cleverchimp.com/font_size/scale/

Agitprop:
http://style.cleverchimp.com/

has a number of useful articles on this tricky area (and others).

Anyway I can't believe this is your first site as there just aren't enough tacky secondhand animated gifs!!!

Emps

it does look great .. my only problem is the frame .. I don't like frames .. that's a personal preference of mine .. but again your the designer .. the frame has a background to it .. and when I scroll down in IE .. the graphics are screwed .. you might want to look into it

other then the frame .. I really like it! .. great work for a first time!

Jeni, great job. One other thing, for those people whole live in the New England states it is kinda hard to clicky them..If you could make it so you could click on the abbriviation for the state that would be great. (Well with two weeks to go, maybe you could do that in an update)

-Wil

looks good...only one comment.
Please add 'padding-left:4px;'
to the main content area on your stylesheet.
'Available in Unisex' is just a little too close to the menu...

mobrul

Lots of great feedback here. I totally agree about the "teenie" states. I will definitely make that change as soon as I can.
Emps- The Opera thing we can try to tackle. Just not at this moment. I think my best solution is going to be making the overflow go away (as previously noted ).
And Mobrul thanks for catching that. Consider it done.