Topic: Site Review Please

This is my first experimentation with liquid CSS design. I have done the layout in CSS rather than tables. The design also conforms to XHTML Transitional Standards. As you must be aware that XHTML does not work in older browsers (IE 4 and NS 4)

The URL is http://www.comp-act.ws

Please review the site and let me have your comments


Ranjan
www.comp-act.ws
ranjan@comp-act.ws

ranjan: It looks like you may have an interesting review offer on your hands:
www.ozoneasylum.com/Forum6/HTML/000888.html

and I think we'd all be interested to see what comes of that. I'll drop in a full review later (it is simple and clean but I'm not sure why you need the drop down menu which is the same as the links) but I am curious as to why you've said this:

quote:

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The design also conforms to XHTML Transitional Standards. As you must be aware that XHTML does not work in older browsers (IE 4 and NS 4)

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I could be wrong but as far as I can tell (unless your serving up different versions for different browsers) your site isn't XHTML (your meta, img and link tags aren't closed for example), XHTML can be made backwards compatible and your page looks fine in NS4 (apart from the drop down menu) also your layout isn't done without tables (I counted 4).

Just technical points I know but I suspect I'm missing something!!

Emps

Firstly i am a newbie. This has been my first hand coded site. I used dreamweaver prior to this. The over all layout is 2 col css. with in the 2 cols i have used tables. my aim was to achieve a liquid design funtionally with css and i used the tables just because i am still in the table thing rut i guess (its simpler till you completely unlearn it). i guess i should have said html 4.01 transitional instead of xhtml. xhtml would be stricter. the jump menu was put only to fill up the empty space where it exists(lack of content, ideas).

Ranjan
www.comp-act.ws
ranjan@comp-act.ws

this was my previous site and how it was reviwed by you.
http://www.ozoneasylum.com/Forum6/HTML/000804.html

the old site has been taken off the server

Ranjan
www.comp-act.ws
ranjan@comp-act.ws

ranjan: Thanks for the reminder - this site is a considerable improvement on the previous one. Its much simpler and easier to navigate - there is room for improvement - killing the link underlining, spicing the menu up a bit but I suspect it is still early days (if the DDM is a space filler) so you are definetely working along the right lines. Thanks for clarifying things on the XHTML/CSS front I was wondering if you had done something which meant I was seeing a different version in NS4.x - now I'm in a better position to do a review.

On the XHTML front you don't need many changes to get it moving in the right direction - change your meta, img and link tags so they are closed like:

<meta stuff />

<img stuff />

<link stuff />

and then pop over to the GN and dig out the excellent XHTML tutorial.

On the CSS front you can't go far wrong with:
http://glish.com/css

Have a look around there and check out the 2 column layout - turning this into CSS-only would be fairly straightforward.

Anyway nice changes - you are getting somewhere with the design. Check out those resources and see what you can do there.

Emps

I tend to be picky about content. From your home page:

"Some people know us for our world-class managed ecommerce solutions, yet others acknowledge our design skills. While there are some who swear by our expertise in Web multimedia." --"While there are some" ... is a sentence fragment. I know you are trying to get it to flow with the previous sentence, but it doesn't work. Restructure the whole deal by sticking a period after "solutions," a comma after "skills," and splicing your sentence fragment on the end there. It will flow much better.

"We understand todays need for economical, ..." --"todays" needs to be "today's"

"Your e-business strategy" -- Since you use the dash in e-business, I would recommend you use the dash in ecommerce in your first paragraph.

" ... the glamorous gizmos and the slick animations but is that what you really need, to achieve your objective on the Net?" --Slap a comma after "but," and yank out the comma after "need."

From the Site Redesign section:

"Comp-Act makes sure to reach customers with all major browsers. Netscape, Internet Explorer or Opera. Our cross browser designs ensure that all your customers see your web site." --ummmmmm, didn't you say that your site does not work in older browsers?

From the Small Business section:
In your price chart make sure to change "anual" to "annual."

And throughout the site you spell Quick Quote differently. Sometimes you have it as one word and sometimes two.

I told you I was picky about content ...

The design is decent. Not really a reach out and grab you kinda deal, but it serves nicely. I'm not too crazy about the city skyline being tiled like it is. It is just too obvious that it is the same small chunk over and over. No big deal, though; just something that bugged me.

The drop shadow under "Let us create your web presence" makes the text hard to read.

Can you enlarge "Comp-Act" or maybe make it a different color? It just blends in with the background blue too much.

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404 without a server...

Nice clean page...:0

Like Emps, I cannot see the need for identical nav links.

Changing this to a fluid all css layout would be very simple. Asides from Eric Costello (Glish), try Owen Briggs Here be Dragons another excellent css resource.

Phil

www.scansped.co.uk



[This message has been edited by Phil (edited 04-04-2002).]

Um Im kinda lazy, I didnt read any of the replies (I only skimmed through your post)
so I might be repeating other people .. but heres what I think:

- The buildings look real good (though you should make the sky all one color, you can tell where it tiles too easy)
- But I dont think the colors work too well, Im not sure why maybe gray the background blue a little, just experiment, maybe a nice subtle left to right gradient.
- The text links are a waste of space when you have the drop down links (I think these should be move inside the 'box' maybe on the opposite side of the logo)
- The logo doesnt suit, well really the drop shadow, on the text underneath.

other than the above its nice, despite some technicallities.

Didn't see the original design, so I can't compare.

This is a decent straightforward design, but there are definately some issues -

1) As far the tables go - I don't see anywhere in the design where the tables add anything to the "liquid" aspect. All they seem to be doing is containing things.

It looks to me that in each case where you have a table, all you need to do is take out the table code and add a <br /> after each element that was inside a <td>.


2) Visually, you're header is very lacking. You have relatively vibrant colors on the page, and then a dull muted head image.

Throw a curves adjustment on that cityscape image to up the contrast.

Then I would suggest changing the color of your logo, or adding a more apparent border to it. *Something* to draw a little attention to it. As it stands, it's alomst as if you don't want it to be seen (even looking directly at it, it confuses the eye....). While you're there I would lose the shadow on the caption and make the text white.

3) On the "client gallery" page, the links turn invisible on hover. Not sure if that's intentional, but it doesn't seem like a positive effect. Since the lonks on the dark blue turn light blue on hover, how about making the links on the light blue turn dark blue?

4) Just a personal preference, but I would set the widths of the form fields on your quick quote page a bit wider. They seem very constricted, and if I were a potential client, I would dislike that a great deal.

That's about it for now

thanks guys thats a lot of input to work on.

Ranjan
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