T4D Studio — OZONE Asylum, home of the Mad Scientists

T4D Studio

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Your Text: Insert Slimies » Insert UBB Code » Close Last Tag \| All Tags UBB Help	I see it hasn't taken you long to find your way around the place. Allow me to welcome you to Site Reviews, where we take pleasure in tearing web sites apart--well, if they deserve it, at least. I have to say, though, that you've got a very nice-looking website there. I really like the monochromatic color scheme and the photographs--it gives the site a very classy look, I think. I would like to offer a few suggestions, though, which may help make the site even better. I understand the need for the front page--allowing users to choose between English and Swedish. I do not understand, though, why you have the "best viewed in..." text there. When I see this sort of text message, the first thing I think is, "Ah, this designer is too lazy to make the site work in every browser." Users also don't like to be told that they should use a certain browser or resolution. The irony here, though, is that the message is completely unnecessary. I checked the page out in Netscape and Opera and had no problems with it. In addition, not only does it work fine (no horizontal scrollbars) at 800x600, but it even works in 640x480! Why give your clients the impression that you are designing for a specific browser/resolution set when the site can, in fact, be viewed in a number of browsers and resolutions? That text message should be the first thing to go. (While you're at it, I would also take out the "Last updated" line--if it has been updated, users who care will know, and if it hasn't been updated in a while, it will make you look lazy.) So, with the unnecessary text gone, you've got a page with two buttons and a footer. What's missing? The site title, for one. How about replacing the text that is there with the site title and a suitable catchphrase--maybe "A Whole New Dimension" or "Envisioning the Future"? OK, now for the site itself. The only recommendation I would have here would be to implement a "You are Here" style navigation. As it is, all of the links in your menu are active no matter where in the site you may be, and this may be disorienting for some visitors--you shouldn't really be able to click on the "home" link if you're on the home page. Instead of simply disabling the link, though, make the button appear in the rollover state, giving the user an indication of where they are in your site--and killing two birds with one stone. I took a look at your source as well, and the first thing I noticed was the three separate style sections at the top of the page. You would be much better off removing those styles to an external style sheet. The reason for this is that these styles are the same for every page, right? Well, if you link to an external style sheet, those styles get loaded once and then are cached for future use. If you include them inline, though, they become part of the load for each page--in other words, they must be reloaded each time. The same thing goes for the JavaScript you are using. Two quick links to an external style sheet and an external JavaScript file would save an extra Kb or so for each page that your users visit (after the first one, of course, when the styles and JavaScript would be loaded and cached). It may not seem like much, but it can add up over time, and every little bit helps, right? Going further down in the code, I see that the page is a series of nested tables. I understand that this is the way things have been done for a long time, but we now have pretty good CSS support in most major browsers. Redoing this page in CSS would cut down [b]greatly[/b] on file size. I understand, though, that that would require a recoding of the entire site, and that is something you might not want to do right now. You've made a good start by removing some font tags (but not all--the address at the bottom of the page still uses font tags), but you may want to consider a more CSS-based approach in future redesigns. Well, I hope that you find these comments helpful. Overall, a nice site, and with the few changes I mentioned above, I think it could be even better. [img]http://liminality.org/asylum/sigs/[/img] [url=http://www.liminality.org]www.liminality.org[/url] Loading...
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