Topic: Robo-site review

Hi all, im new here saw these forums and they seem great and full of interesting people.
This is a site ive worked on actually for a final year project that im doing in engineering, so its not really for any great purpose.
http://jt-design.net/Robo-web/Robot.htm

i love criticism so feel free to bag it.

One thing ive noticed is not many people here like frames, unfortunately i have grown accustomed to them, im wondering what the other options are and if you could explain a little about them, i've heard div layers etc but havnt done much with them, anyhow thanks ill check back later to see if anyones been by

Howdy and Welcome to the house that Doc built. <bg>

I like robots. They're kinda pet-like things aren't they.

Anyway the first thing that distracts me is the non-stop animation. Let it cycle through maybe a couple of times and then stop it? Continuous is no good.

Could everything be centered as opposed to left aligned? All that space on the right... gives me the urge to make notes or something....and I'm left handed and that would be frustrating.

"Click on th image to enlarge." Perhaps consider a colour other than blue.... or make that 'clickable' as blue is most commonly associated with a 'click.' Just a bit of a distraction and perhaps a bit picky.

Good 'Content' which as we know is the most important thing of all, so you're well on your way I'd say...
The 'heavies' will have more to say I'm sure. <bg>

Again, Welcome... enjoy your stay.

Hehe yeh they kinda are, although this one is bigger then 1m^2 and weighs about 80kg, so i dont know how pet like it is :P.

Thanks for the notes, your absolutely right, the content needs to be centred or something, im not sure why i did it like that, i think i was just trying to make it fit into a 640x480 or 800x600, even then i should have made it spread out automatically.

And yeh the blue isnt right is it.

Funny you should say that about the flash i changed it recently, i wasnt happy with it playing only once, i didnt try but if you set loop=3 or something does that work? or is it a true/false only?

Anyhow looking forward for the rest to come in so they can tear the site to shreds :P I appreciate it =)

Anyone else got a review? :P

Not many ppl are into frames around here are they, is there anyway you can use css like frames and have a box that doesnt reload when you goto a different link? I suppose css would be pretty quick anyhow for a simple layout.

Black Times New Roman on a gray background reminds me of 1995; I'd style the content up a bit. The table borders could be fine, but in combination with the black-Times-on-gray, they just reinforce the WWW-a-la-NCSA-Mosaic look. The content impinges too closely on the border graphics of its frame; and I'm not a big fan of the centered text, either. Paragraphs are only readable if they're ragged right or entirely justified, and true justification isn't too practical on the web.

The red text on the gray background just makes my eyes hurt.

The link rollovers look pretty good to me, the neon effect fits well with the site's theme.

The top banner does nothing for me, it could as easily be <h1>-level text, and structurally maybe it should be.

The animated section does indeed get on my nerves; I'd recommend moving it to an animated Flash intro, but then I'd have to shoot myself and you.

Check for typos. On the front page, I saw "the design link to you're left." These kinds of errors come in flocks. Do a copyedit.

The movie links aren't even clickable for me in Opera 6, but even if they worked, I'm very likely to be surfing with all pop-up windows blocked, or with JavaScript disabled entirely. Unless I'm viewing the Doc's latest masterpiece, I leave JavaScript totally disabled. It's used for evil more than it's used for good. Just give people direct links to the movie files and let them do it their own way.

Anything I haven't mentioned is just fine!

Yeh thanks for that, i agree with most of what you are saying :P i guess because it was originally going to be a temp site i didnt put alot of thought into some parts. I might redo it with css shouldnt take too long.

Umm, yeh i threw the movies up quick also, and embeded them in a way which i know ONLY works in IE..

I put the popup in because as a general rule of thumb its good to let the user click to play the movie rather than just playing it, especially where dial up people are concerned. Unfortunately with my host i can put the movies so they can just be downloaded
- any sugestions around this? Ideally i would like to embed all the movies on that page, but so that they dont start downloading until someone clicks play, im not sure if this can be done tho, from what ive see it automatically buffers them.

Any suggestions on this would be great, i guess quicktime is pretty well supported, but even then ive talked to people that dont use quicktime and hate that format. - very hard to please everyone ;(

Thanks for your review

You'd do best to ask that question over in the Multimedia and Animation forum. I wish I could help, but streaming video is one thing I know nothing about at all. Good luck.

Hmm thunder i just installed Opera 6, without javascript to try best get a feel of where your coming from...

I noticed rollovers still work, and for my movies a window popped up (provided you dont have popups blocked) the movie even half played (sound only not images) but thats due the embedding that i used...

anyhow i thought rollovers used Js to work? or do they do it in a different way?

unfortunately for my 3D-view its purely java based so you need it turned on, but nothing i can do about that... If you can, check it out its really worth it, and it loads in the window so no popups.




[This message has been edited by H][RO (edited 10-26-2002).]