Topic: Site Review plz

Hiya's all, just updated a site i've done trying for a bit more up to date look. Its not all finished, but you should get the idea, the product database is only half done but you can still take a look at whats there.

http://jt-design.net/aae/aae-web.htm

Please take a look and let me know what you think, thanks heaps. Flaming, and any criticism is most welcome.

=)

ok, this will be brief.

1 - frames are bad, m'kay? don't do frames. especially if it gives the 'resolutionally challenged" folk a scrollbar on the left menu. not not not good.

2 - your elements are disjointed. your title bar and menu follow a particular theme, which isn't too bad - some very clean curves in there. (except the top bar really doesn't need that extra decoration - it should be as plain as the left menu, IMHO.) the page content is entirely different, very plain, different colours, not much in the way of images, let alone curves. You should be aiming for more consistency, and integration of the elements.

3 - there is some distinct wasted space there, between the title bar and the page content. my advice is the slice off that little tail as a separate image:


...and put in a stylesheet in your 'page content' frame (if you must persist with frames):

<style>

body {

	background: url("http://your url.com/tail.gif");

	background-repeat: no-repeat;

	background-attachment: fixed;

}

</style>

..and shift that body page up a bit. intelligent use of screen real estate is essential. try it sometime.


ok, that will do for now.



[This message has been edited by reitsma (edited 01-10-2003).]

The more I look at this the more I feel that you are overlaying 2D and 3D objects in an incorrect fashion. Even putting 3D objects on 3D objects without the correct perspectives.

There is no real binding element to the page, you have a lot going on. I would expect something along the lines of a logo in the corner and then the name on the top. You throw a whole bunch of objects at me and I am not really sure what to do with them all. The background image behind the navigation is confusing to me, since the navigation does not seem to be connected in any way.

I also do not understand theose wierd 3D braces around your pictures in your content area. They again just do not make logical sence where you have them.

I think you need to try again here. There seems to be just too much going on, when I would think something a bit cleaner and streamlined would suit your needs. Your site is automation and engineering, both of which imply technology, simplicity, efficiency. Those are the areas I would want to see embodied in this work.

The only thing I have to add to what has been said already is that, for such minimal appearing content, that page took a *long* time to load.

There is no need for the weight of the graphics on that page, and the header image in particular.

I would suggest cutting down the actual graphics used, and optimizing the images that remain a great deal more.

Hey thanks all, appreciate it and aggree pretty much completely, one of the reasons for the 2d/3d problem is havnt finished with all of the graphics, and i agree completely with moving the page up and i will probably take most of that top graphic out. I see your point with those things around the images too war, i myself was unsure wether to keep them or not, that in itself should have made me take them off, which i will be doing.

DL, i think you will find the loading times pretty quick in the end, i forgot about the images i temporarily put them up and they were full quality i guess i should have done that first - having set that i will be removing alot of the graphics it is far to cluttered i agree..

Reit: im still unsure of my position on frames, alot of people say frames are bad, but really why? imo having a menu that doesnt dissapear when you scroll is a major advantage. Im still not sure why some people dislike frames so much, i really think it looks alot better then reloading a page every time u change a link. Ill see how i go i might give it a go. Some of the product sections are quite long so its nice just having a menu u can click somewhere else with.

But i do agree about the wasted space and disjointed theme, i kind of changed completely but left some old stuff in so will have to fix that.

Thanks again all, ill fix it up and repost it over the next week, anything u can pick on please do. Can you check out the product section and let me know what you think, its a database driven php that i made so i hope its all ok.

Frames are bad because they are not very accessible. Try using a text only browser to look at your page.

When I use lynx, I have to choose which area I want to look at, either the head, the menu, or the content. And I have to browse back and forth to do this. It is really not that usable. There are lots of reasons for not liking frames. You might want to check out some ADA (American's With Disabilities) policies, or the W3 WAI (Web Accessability Initiative), there is some good information there towards making your page much more usable, to a wider audience.

I would also look at validating your code. When I look at it, there is no doctype declairation, which should be there. You should really go to http://www.w3.org and look at validating your markup with the HTML validator and then working on validating your CSS with the CSS validator.

Good luck,

Ahh thanks heaps warmage, i did not know about the text only problem, if it does effect accessibility then yes frames would be bad, your the first person to actually point it out without just saying that they are bad so thanks for that.


In regards to validating code, im just curious exactly what to you gain from validated code? is there a specific reason to do it? The only thing i can think of is so that it meets standards so that if anyone else ever had to modify it they would be able too understand whats going on, is there more too it than that?

Well, for one it's just good habit.

Valid code is well formed code.

That means that there is less chance of the code not working in a browser that doesn't forgive careless errors the way IE does.

It means that the information will be closer to being portable to other formats. It will help ensure that devices other than a regular computer with a regualr browser may be able to access your site, where as now they might not (think PDA, Cell Phones, etc...).

It means that in the future, as standards evolve, your site stands a far greater chance of not being obsolete.

For starters....

{edit - here are some links that may help clear up some issues too:
http://www.searchengineworld.com/misc/html.htm
http://www.htmlvalidator.com/htmlval/whyvalidate.html
http://www.hut.fi/~samzait/HTML-Validator/faq.html
http://www.library.ucsb.edu/dolphin/classes/newpages/012.html

And please, when you validate, use the W3C's Validators!

}






[This message has been edited by DL-44 (edited 01-11-2003).]

Yeh, fair enough. Thanks for that DL ill have a read

One very good reason not to use frames is for linking purposes.

Say I want to tell a friend about the new Doohickey 2000 that's on your site. Instead of being able to send a link straight to the page, it'll link to the framed page and unnecessary clicking in order to get to the item in question.

Yeh that is a good point, i did have it so if that was case it reloaded the page in the frames version, i dont think it went to the same page tho. You could probably write a php script or something to deal with that problem quite easily i suspect, but i have taken all of your advice and gone with a non frame layout. Like they say old habbits die hard :P...

I still do think its a major advantage having your menu always there not having to scroll for it, which is probably a major advantage i would consider with frames. You can get the same effect with javascript quite easily i guess, but the ones i've seen dont seem to be very smooth and are quite distracting. And not everyone has JS.. the good thing with frames also is it works in every browser as far as i can tell. But oh well, i honestly didnt expect people to be as anti frames as i've seen =)

Except from what has allready been said you should remember to always specify a background-color. I have my background color set to a light blue and when I view your page this color is used behind your menu. Under the menu you have a little text saying 'testing'. Why is that?

Another reason not to use frames on this site is that I get scrollbars (both vertical and horisontal) in the menu frame. It is possible to have the menu stay on screen when you scroll using CSS, just set position: fixed and the element should stay on a fixed spot in the browser window.

_________________________
"There are 10 kinds of people; those who know binary, those who don't and those who start counting at zero"

hmm i tried that position fixed thing ven, u sure that works? i just did it with an ID layer tried a few settings didnt seem to do anything. Anyhow, yeh ive ditched the frames ill see how it goes, ill post a new version later today.

As far as I know, IE still doesn't support the position:fixed deal.

Which really susk, as it is an extremely useful attribute, and without it you ahve to use a bunch of javascript that makes things far more complicated than they should be.