Topic: Company page

Hi, i am making a new page for the company i am working on... I made the previous page with frames, but I dont know if its a good idea nowadays...

the previous page is http://www.wssoftware.se
and the beginning of my new design is on http://www.winserv.se/test.gif

This time I would like to to it smarter somehow

Any tips/suggestions? All menus, pages and information are variables in an access-database so I can easily get them from any page.

How do u think I should build the page for best result? Tables, frames, Dhtml?

Thanks in advance /Smash

Nice clean design ::: I can't read what the information at the bottom of the page is however. I think it's a fax number? Anyway, I can only partily see the lettering. I'm not sure about the frames though. I try to stay away from them if at all possible. Ohhhhhhhhh ::: Ok, I see the bottom part now. very nice. I don't like the scrolling partners ad's, just a personal preferance. Over all I like it ::: I really like the menu. Compact.

Thanks m8!

Which design is best according to you?

The old: http://www.wssoftware.se
or...
The new: http://www.winserv.se/test.gif

/Smash

This definitely needs to go in Site Reviews... is there a mad sci around who would like to move it?

Yep.

___________________
Emps

FAQs: Emperor

I thought web pages tended to end in .html not .gif... Can we not see a working version of the page, it would be a lot easier to analyze then, as the visitor/preopective client will see it.

I like the non gif version better.

I started this post to get tips on how to make the page in a good/smart way. It would be strange to make the page before i ask, and very stupid, that's why i have made it only as a GIF until now.

quote:

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I thought web pages tended to end in .html not .gif... Can we not see a working version of the page, it would be a lot easier to analyze then, as the visitor/preopective client will see it.

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/Smash

Fair enough, I can see your design and graphics. Half the stuff I would look at isn't stuff I can see now though, like how you code it, what happens when I resize my browser, hover over and click on links etc. What's more it looked to me like that was a screenshot of an actual page, and not a photoshop rendering, which was why I thought you might have a working page already built. As for this comment:

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It would be strange to make the page before i ask

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I would tend to disagree. Just because you make a page doesn't mean it's then finished, especially if you're asking for reviews of it. If you found a typo in it, you would correct it, just like if someone pointed out something in your design you might well correct that too.

Anyways. I think I would like the newer version more, largely because it doesn't use frames, visually, it probably isn't as appealing. It's all a little monochromatic for my liking, it needs another colour, like a nice blood red to bring some focus to an important part of the page. At the moment I am most being drawn towards the graphic on the right. This doesn't seem like a sensible place to draw someone's eye, but the big bold font and black border lead you straight there. The same might well happen if you put a banner ad in the box at the top there. Other than those points it looks quite nice I'd say.

If you wanted to code it then it would be easy to do without tables, maybe see BlueRobot for some layout tips if you haven't done anything like it before. Hope that's of some help.

Thanks for the tips quisja. I have made the top of the page but I have not uploaded it. I tend to never create a page before I fully have made the design because sometimes if i just quickly make a graphics and then make the page from that original graphics I never have the time and energy to make it cooler. So I have started to work more with the graphics before I even create the page.

You also said that it looks like a screenshot of a page. That´s probably because I know how I can code and that´s why I only make the sketches like that.

If you look at the sketch of http://www.wssoftware and how it came out you will not see a difference in IE4+ NS4+ from the PSD/GIF.

I dont know if I dare to use CSS only to format the page, what if someone dont have css-compatible browser?


P.S I am very tired now and I am going to bed so some of my sentences maybe don't make any sence D.S

/Smash

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I dont know if I dare to use CSS only to format the page, what if someone dont have css-compatible browser?

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Well the first point is, it will still generally display, most people will still be able to read/access the content, even if it doesn't quite look the same.

Second point is, the people you are talking about make up a very small minority. According to this interview with some guy from ESPN's webdesign team:

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For the month before our redesign, we calculated that 97.44% of our users were using standards-compliant browsers (IE 5+, Netscape 6+, Mozilla, Opera 6+, Safari, Chimera, and Konqueror),

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This is what I have came up to so far:
http://www.winserv.se/wsnew/default.html

Is it a good idea to only have one document (default.asp) for all pages, and then just switch data depending on what menu u clicked?

/Smash

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Is it a good idea to only have one document (default.asp) for all pages, and then just switch data depending on what menu u clicked?

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No. Search engines will only index that one page if you do things that way.

Oh and for all your table hacking, it still breaks in NN4.7... so why not use standards and CSS, it'd be much easier...

What is it that makes my homepage to not work in nn4.7?
What tablehacking?

/Thanks in advance
Smash

The way that your tables are nested so deep that the code almost falls off the right hand side of my screen? Other than that, I'm not liking your input boxes, I'd keep the same sized border all the way round. It seems to be encroaching on other elements otherwise. Minor thing I know.

[edit] This is one of the best pieces of writing I've come across which explains why tablehacking and the like are yesterday's news. [/edit]

[This message has been edited by quisja (edited 06-20-2003).]

Hmm, ok thx for the tips... but I want the page to look exactly as it does now.. can i do that with css instead of tables?

As for the input boxes i only use:
input {border:solid 1pt #2A5089;font-size:7pt;font-family:verdana;}

Why ain't there same size on the borders on all sides?
To me it is in IE at least :/

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I want the page to look exactly as it does now..

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This is just my opinion, of course, but if you want your design to look exactly like something, you should be in print design, not web design. Trying to get your designs to look exactly the same in every browser out there is not only impossible, it's approaching the problem from the wrong direction. The web is fluid, and web design should "go with the flow."

Like I said, that's just an opinion.

Oh, and as for whether or not you can do it with css, my answer would be: you can do anything with CSS that you can do with tables, and more often than not do it better. If you need CSS help you can always drop by the CSS forum.




www.liminality.org

Hehe... ok exact was maybe a little too much to ask for. But I want it to look the same in IE at least.

Because that is the browser most ppl is using.

/Smash

Ah, well, in that case, yes, you can get it to look like that in IE using CSS. Like I said above, you can do anything with CSS that you can do with tables. You will, however, have to change your way of thinking about design--when you have relied on tables for so long, it can be hard to switch over to a CSS way of thinking.

The FAQ has a bunch of good info on CSS. Unfortunately, it seems to be scattered all over the place, but this should be a good place to start. Good luck with the project.