Topic: the root has grown

It's been a while since the start of my page and I think it's evolved a lot in a positive way through involving CSS, flash and php. So I thought I'd be good to ask for a new review before I continue running like crazy and in the end it's been the wrong way(already had enough of that stuff )

Temporarily there's only the 'light' version online since I rewrote everything to php code(another two are coming up soon)
a lot of design and code changes are still on queue - e.g. CSS & nonCSS, flash/noflash, color-balancing...

If anyone has 0,2 for me... I'll appreciate every comment!

thekazroot.com

[This message has been edited by kazroot (edited 03-28-2004).]

got a link?

sorry... didn't mention that the sig was the link

[This message has been edited by kazroot (edited 03-28-2004).]

Looks very good.

Since I don't have Flash I can only review the non-flash version.

First thing that I think you should change is the gradient bars that you use for various title backgrounds. They don't really fit in with the rest of the design which is mostly flat. I would probably go with a solid background color and border instead. The color choice that you have now (gray) looks good, so a gray background (a bit darker than the one in the news items) with a black border might work.

The menu looks good, nice and simple. I would maybe add a little bit of more padding on the left hand side of the menu. Feels like it is sitting a bit to close to the browser edge at the moment. I'm also a fan of having the menu element that links to the current page displayed differently than the other menu elements. Reason for that is that the user will then have an easier time seeing where he is on the page.

In Firefox on Linux the -= coming soon =- heading is a couple of pixels too low. In that area you've used <dl> to style the content, which I don't think is the right approach. I think would be better sematicly and easier to style it using <h..> and <ul>+<li> tags instead...

The right hand side of the 'Links' section looks kind of strange. The content there doesn't seem to have any purpose and didn't make much sense to me.

In your 'Friends' section the left column is to wide. It would be easier to link the real names with the nick names if they were closer together. Same for goes the information showed when you follow one of the "nick-links".

Code wise there are a couple of things that could be improved.
- The menu should be an <ul> list. Take a look at listamatic for more information about that.
- The different headings on the page should also be styles using the <hn> tags, not <div> tags. The visual appearance might be the same, but the sematic meanings are not. A page using the <h..> tags are also more likely to get a good ranking in Google, since the bots will have an easier time figuring out what information on your page is important.
- There are a lot of unclosed tags on your page. Remember that all tags should be closed, so either provide a closing tag or end the tag with /> eg. <br /> and <dd>...</dd>
- You are also using the <br> tag way to much. It is a tag that should rarely be used. Most often the correct tags are <ul>s and <li>s.
- Converting to XHTML1.0 wouldn't be abad idea either, but that might just be me...

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


[This message has been edited by Veneficuz (edited 03-28-2004).]

The flash is pointless. Not to mention how much it hogs the CPU ticks give there's no actual animation once you get past that completly uselsss logo you try to pass off as an intro... Q: What are you trying to introduce with that anyways?

This makes the splash page where you choose the "version" pointless.

If you have a good reason to use flash, by all means use it, but right now it does bugger all. I realise you may want to show off your flash skills, but there are better ways to do this.

The HTML version still has flash elements in them, and they're just a pointless as the flash verison. What is with that spinning 3D thing? Never mind that, what's it doing there? Does it actually serve any point appart from trying to show how

Cameron - First of all thank you for being honest - that's far away from harsh; just realistic
I was also confronted with the flash problem yesterday, when Veneficuz told me he doesn't even have flash installed... that's where I found out it'd be better to concentrate on a plain html version first.

the idea of the flash version is just to flash the title - animate it and make the links more attractive with topic-related images.... and I've to admit I just carried it to an extreme.
The only flash-movies that can be taken as useful are the gallery and the map(too hard to find that yet) and the title when it's finished... thewhole 3D thing seemed to be nice idea - but it only causes laming the whole page... that's why I just removed it and probably will add it to the gallery

I made the intro before I thought about those things and I'm not even satisfied with the animations - kicked it for now

Well, concerning the idea, the message or just the damn sence of my page: you're RIGHT - it's only for the sake of learning how to do what, where the fact that everything looks mixed up is inevitable

Generally it should be a personal homepage with a representation of the things I produce and create at the moment - including the page itself. And I really like your advice to overthink the main concept and idea of my page because breaking up my concept stands on my all-day-to-do list right on the top

Including the whole flash/nonflash concept had the only purpose of testing out what I can reach with php. I shouldn't have sent it online yet

I'll think bout what you both have said - thanks for now!

Please notice that the reason of my post wasn't to get a review caus it's finished - it's far away from that!

That's cool. There's nothing wrong with building a website for the sake of learning how to do it. You won't learn if you don't try. But it helps to know what your working towards or you'll never have a finishing point and the site will always kinda feel unfinished. -- I'm speaking form experience on this one. =)

As for the flash vs HTML thing, there is a way you can provide both in the one page, you just have to structure you mark-up correctly and the flash will display for users with flash or alternative HTML will display if there is no flash support. Nip over to www.alistapart.com and flip through their flash section looking for the "Flash Satay" article. It explains an XHTML validating way of embedding flash which also provided a means of graceful degradation to alternative HTML content you put inside the <object? tag you use to insert the flash movie. I'm doing a similar thing on my personal website and it works perfectly all the way back to Netscape 1.0

Example (cut-n-paste from my offline site that's still in the works):
<BLOCKQUOTE><FONT face="Verdana, Arial">code:</font><HR><pre>
<object id="thecoffeeboy_header_main" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="thecoffeeboy_header_main.swf" width="738" height="142">
<param name="movie" value="thecoffeeboy_header_main.swf" />
<param name="menu" value="false" />
<param name="quality" value="high" />
<param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF" />
<param name="scale" value="noscale" />
<div id="header_no_flash">
<p>[Home Link]</p>
<p>[Coffee Image]</p>
<div id="menu">
<span id="menu_links"><a rel="nofollow" href="/weblog/">weblog</a>

thanks, Cameron for your helpful code and advice! I only have time to give a short answer...

Until I remake my intro(I dropped the choose-version option) I'll use my current, very simple splash page. But this code will come in handy for my active movies and for the intro, too when it's finished, thanks!
The flash-title is using a lot of resources because there's still a 3D animation running... I forgot to remove it



[This message has been edited by kazroot (edited 04-01-2004).]