Topic: flawed invisions // version i

I updated my site with a brand new layout and I have noticed one minor easily fixed error with the design but yeah, Thats bout it.. Some reviews are welcome, Please...

http://anovia.vze.com/

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So what if I am clinicly insane, Does that mean I am a danger to what is known as socieity? Wait it does...

Regards,
Thaadeous Edward Ozone

Drop the splash page. It serves no purpose and it makes me click one more time to get to the page which isn't good...

Don't use frames. You don't really use them so there is no reason for them to be there. Instead you can redirect the user to the 'real' url using javascript or php or a meta tag.

The page lacks a DOCTYPE. Tables should only be used for tabular data. So instead of using tables for the layout you should use CSS. There are a lot of other things that should be done using CSS (e.g you should never use the font tag) as well, but if you read, and learn, CSS you'll figure it out yourself. Another good thing about using CSS is that it makes the code alot easier to read...

In Opera7 there is a slight (about 3px) white area between logo.jpg and design_quote.jpg at the top of the page.

The 'designed for 800x600 or bigger' text doesn't really need to be there. If you decide to keep it, remove it for those who have a resolution bigger than that. When the browser window is more than 600px wide I get a white area on the right hand side. You should make the design more fluid so the top and bottom bar extends to fill this space, and the background color should match the background color of the main area. The whole design should acctually be more fluid/liquid, since the only resolution that the page acctually works on now is 800x600...

You should have some kind of roll-over effect for the menu to show the user that he is hovering over a link. You should aslo make it so that the link to the page you are currently on differs from the other links and you should not be able to click it.

The email-adress at the bottom of the page should be a mailto: link so that the user can press it and send a mail to you. Since it is an image now the user has to write it down somewhere and then open the email-program to write it there...

The text in the middle should not be centered. Centered (and right justified) text is harder to read than left justified text and should therefore be avoided most of the time. The text might also be easier to read if you increased the line space a little bit.

The page relies very heavily on graphics. This is ok, but it will take people on a slow connection very long to load the page so they might leave before they get there.People who browse with images off will not be able to use the site either. To keep some of these people interested in the page you should change it so that the menu at least is text and images. That way the page will still be usable for those with windows disabled. Those one a slow connection will see the menu earlier than if it were images and therefore know more what they are waiting for.

_________________________
"Hope is the greatest of evils, it prolongs the torments of men"


[This message has been edited by Veneficuz (edited 04-30-2003).]

V's got the goods for the most part. Unless otherwise stated, I agree with what he has said.

1) I'd like to complement you on your proper encoding. Most sites that gets dropped into this forum lacks encoding, and it is very easy for me to see because my default encoding is Korean. It is very refreshing to look at a site and not see any broken characters and not have to change the encoding by hand.

2) There seems to be a little gray line just to the right of the semi-circular navigation area. It looks to me like a simple flaw in the background image, and something probably easily fixed.

3) Not only do I think you should get rid of the "designed for 800 x 600" text, but even if you decide that you really want to keep it, move it to somewhere a little more inconspicuous. At the very top of the page, it is one of the first things the user will see (possibly the first, since the "flawed illusions" text in the top left blends in with the background, whereas the "designed for" text really stands out).

4) Too much text-as-graphics. That being said, I understand why you may have made your e-mail a graphic and not a mailto: link. If you want to avoid spam, though, there are other ways of accomplishing this that are much easier on your users. You could, for example, make a PHP contact form--this is what I use on my site, and it is very convenient (if you'd like to see what it looks like... here it is). It passes a hidden form variable for your e-mail using PHP, so your e-mail address never reaches the client. My contact form is a modified version of the one that kuckus puts together in his contact form tutorial over at the Guru's Network. You might want to check that out.

If PHP is not your cup of tea, you can just use one of the many e-mail encoders out there to encrypt your e-mail address. Hivelogic's Enkoder comes highly recommended.

5) Like I said, I pretty much agree with V's comments above, but I would particularly like to stress: use CSS over font tags, etc.; rollovers and making sure you can't click on the page you are currently on (one of my pet peeves); no centered text, please.

That's about it, I guess. Visually speaking, I find it very easy to look it, for the most part. I'll be interested to see where you go with this site. Good luck, and happy coding!






www.liminality.org

<has read all comments>

Thank you for the imput, I didn't really think about a lot of that... Im just a novice website designer so Im doing this as a way of me learning you know what Im sayin'? PHP and .CSS is not my cup of tea, Most of my work is done in DreamWeaver although I do know some basic HTML by mind... I will take all of your replies into mind as I continue to work upon this design... Thanks again...

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So what if I am clinicly insane, Does that mean I am a danger to what is known as socieity? Wait it does...

Regards,
Thaadeous Edward Ozone

I'm nothing more than a novice web-designer myself, but you learn a lot from roaming these halls and listening to what the others say

If want to continue with web design you should first of all learn html and once you're comfortable with that learn CSS. None of those two are very that hard to learn and once you know them designing will become a lot easier.

If you made the page to learn new things etc it would seem like a good place to learn and try out CSS as well

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

[This message has been edited by Veneficuz (edited 04-30-2003).]

quote:

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PHP and .CSS is not my cup of tea

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PHP not your cup of tea? OK, I can buy that. I've only recently taken up PHP myself, and you can still build a perfectly functional website without it. CSS not your cup of tea? Well, I'm afraid I have to take issue with that.

Imagine that you have hired an architect to design your house. He tells you he has some great ideas, so you ask to see some blueprints. "Oh, sorry," he says. "Drafting really isn't my cup of tea."

Or you bring your poodle to the veterinarian because he's hacking up this nasty looking orange stuff. But when you get into his office with Fido in tow, he takes one look at the poodle and says, "Dogs just aren't my cup of tea."

Or your whip out your trusty-dusty, solar-powered (and thus environmentally-friendly) calculator and start to pound the buttons. The final step in your calculations is to divide 93294.4 by 396.2, but instead of the answer your calculator spits out an error: "Division is not my cup of tea."

OK, maybe that was a bit overboard, and I'm not trying to suggest that CSS is like a blueprint, poodle, or mathematical operator, so don't try to read too far into those analogies. What I am trying to say is that CSS is a vital part of any web designer's toolset, and you really don't have the luxury of giving it a by, not in this day and age.

I remember when CSS first came out. I was pretty psyched about the implications, but after seeing the poor support it had in the major browsers, I went back to my tables and spacer .GIFs. I dreamed of the far-off day when CSS would be fairly well supported and widely used. That day, my friend, is today.

I'm not saying that CSS support is perfect, and the deeper you get into it the more cracks you'll find. But most of the basics are supported by most browsers out there. We have the power to do today what we dreamed of yesterday. This means leaving behind our beloved tables, but once you turn to CSS you'll never go back. It's like crack--or at least I guess it's like crack, since I've never actually tried crack (nor would I recommend it). OK, um, it's like color TV. Yeah, that's it. Can you imagine going back to black and white after experiencing color?

There are uses for tables, of course, and I'm not suggesting that we all meet in the village square and burn our tables in a huge, roaring bonfire whose flames lick the midnight sky. No, we still need tables to present tabular data. We just do not need them for layout.

And, of course, before you really get into CSS, you need a solid handle on HTML (a web designer who doesn't know HTML would be like an architect who doesn't know how to build, or a vet who doesn't know how to treat animals, or a calculator that can't even add, subtract or multiply, let alone divide). Fortunately, that's not too hard, and (as you hinted at) you don't have to have it all memorized, since there are plenty of good resources out there. The FAQs that V posted are good places to start.

Now, I must admit that I've never used a WYSIWYG editor--I do all my stuff by hand. So I might not be too sensitive to the details of your case. Even if you continue to use a WYSIWYG editor, though, you should at least know enough to be able to tweak the code yourself, and you should work with something that can do CSS (although I would have no idea if there is anything like that out there... I'm sure there must be).

OK, I guess that's it for this time. I would really encourage you to learn more HTML and CSS. If you have any questions about either, you can always post them in the appropriate forums here.

[This message has been brought to you by V's echo.]

I think dreamweaver can do CSS (also known as stylesheets sometimes). Just look around help.


home

Yea, stylesheets are pretty easy to learn. It took me a total of about 3 hrs to figure out how it works. It's pretty simple.


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