I run http://www.80four.co.uk it?s an Adobe Photoshop and Webmaster resource site. Its been running for about 3 years and has lots of free content.
I've just updated the site to a cleaner version. Last time I'm going to do it all with notepad! I wanted the design to be very easy to navigate, so people find the content. The site is also very image light, to avoid high bandwidth (shame but the site gobbles a few gigs), but hopefully still look stylish.
Please let me know what you think, if you find a dead link plese let me know.
Wow, I didn't knew there was still some people coding 1997 style markup in notepad. I your target audience includes the Webmaster, you'd be better lead the way and use the good practice ( XHTML + CSS ) instead of deprecated/bloadted methods ( HTML4 + table based layout ) if you want to have an ounce of credibility.
The site is more focused towards Photoshop than HTMl tutorials, as you may tell be the weighted content.
I am currently using css and tables, and am not too bothered about moving over to a tableless design. I haven't currently got the time to juggle a degree and learn another coding format (which wouldn't bring much benefit). The site works for me and no doupt others so I am happy, so maybe I don't care about having "an ounce of credibility".
As you spam, I've spent several days working on the site, so asking for a little feedback isn't too much to ask is it?!! And this is the REVIEW forum!
From: Rochester, New York, USA Insane since: May 2000
posted 02-11-2005 17:46
If you spend time working on something do it right.
If you don't care about credibility then don't ask for a review.
I am sure that you don't actually mean that, because you wouldn't have put the origional time.
So. In order of importance.
1) Fix your code. XHTML+CSS without using deprecated/bloated methods.
2) Fix your navigation, you have too many elements in both.
3) Fix your color scheme or spend some time working to make the important elements look important. My eye is not directed anywhere, I am just looking at a sea of text on your page. You need to show the viewer what is important.
4) Overall design, you are not doing anything exceptional with your design, a bunch of elements that I have seen other places, if you are going to be making a PS site use PS and make it look good, throw in some rotating title images (keep it fresh) some cool images as a part of the content, give the site a theme, an awsome looking navigation. All that jaz. If you are going to use old and crappy coding practices at least use them to do some of the old cool graphical stuff that made using those methods interesting.
The use of many links in your post and you recent registration made it really look like spam. Sorry if your review request is sincere.
Now for the review.
Design wise : Well it's plain but it works except for the green wave that is cut for no apparent reason. Alas for a Photoshop and/or Webmaster oriented web site it certainly needs something more polished.
Anyway you should test/design your site in a standards compliant browser then gracefully degrade it for the less/not standards compliant ones. There's an undesired underline in the top navigation. See a screenshot in FireFox ( but it looks the same in Opera, and certainly also in Safari ).
Technically wise : Your use of CSS is really limited. You mix the presentation and content layer which is a NO-NO, especially if you want to maintain your site and update it on a regular basis.
You should defintely look at XHTML+CSS. The benefits are much bigger than you think. First, the file size of your page will drop drastically. Next, the maintenance will be easier. When you'll be bored with the current skin you'll only have to change the CSS file and some images. Since you publish some tutorials and articles, your visitors may want to print them. XHTML+CSS provide an easy mean to stylize the pages specifically for various medias ( screen, handheld, printer, ... ) with no need to have several version of your pages. Provide a clean printer stylesheet requires little effort and is highly appreciated. Two other benefits of the web standards are the accessibility ( try you site in Lynx or Jaws, then try a site made with web standards in them ) and the SEO. I'm sure you care about that sort of things. And these standards are not hard to learn.
For the record, the "content / file size" ratio of a page made with XHTML+CSS is around 30% and exceed the 70% some times. The ratio on your homepage is around 17%. This a thing to consider if you want to save some bandwidth ( and the fees induced ) and disk space.
I think poi and WarMage bascially covered the design flaws. XHTML and CSS are easy and fast to learn. I went from using tables to everything to only using them when I was stumped with CSS. And as poi had said about bandwidth, when I switched over I have saved 1+ gigs a month.
As for the content, I seem to get the impression all of the tutorials are geared towards the beginners. If that's the case, then your HTML area needs to have a tutorial that introduces the users to using the CSS you have there. If I was a new to using CSS, I wouldn't have a clue on how to use your CSS tutorials. You should atleast have one tutorial instuctiing how to impliment the CSS. Even if you are mostly targeting PS users, you still need to consider theusers looking at HTML tuts, or just not have them.
And if you are going to ask for a review, you need to learn to accept some critisim, and finally, if you don't care about having an "ounce of creditiblity", then change site formats to a blog or something. Because if you are going to have an informative site, then creditablity should be at the top of your list...
Heyyyyyyyy I remember this site. I used to visit it alot about a year ago... forgot all about it! Frankly speaking I liked your last layout better sleak yet simple. As for this one not impressed in way possible!! I can't believe you used tables for this layout... at first glance you straight up fooled me into thinking that was CSS!
Next your nav stinks! The last one was much better. Work harder on your CSS and XHTML like Ensellitis says it's very easy to learn you are looking at a person who around 3/4's of a year ago would use nothing other than tables and embedded styles! Well so much for those days!!
PS: I see you've updated your PS tutorials... hmmm I will see them!!
Ok cheers for the feedback guys. Maybe it is time I took the leap, guess I was just stuck in my ways!
Theres a really annoying problem with this forum, when you try and reply to a post and forget to fill in a field it sends you to a page with:
"Oops. Something went wrong
You did not fill out all required fields.
Please go back and fix your input. "
But the back button is a javascript link, and for many attempts I couldn't get back into the post to reply, so in reply to Kimson, yes, yes I am.
Poi im not posting in a forum for hits, I'm getting 5000 page views a day, im after your opinions, which it turns out aren't as positive as I had hoped, but are still extremely useful. As for being a baby....I wouldn't let anything you say bring a tear to my eye, but your face, well thats a different story
That's better. The image in the header, and the background brings some life to the site.
Alas the main areas does not really benefit of it.
What I said about the wave in the header holds true ( fot the upper part now ).
The undesired underline on the navigation is still there. And the navigation is still too plain for a PhotoShop stuffs site.
One detail that puzzles me is the favicon. Your domain name is 80four, and the favicon shows the number 84. That's certainly due to the fact that English is not my mother language, but I'd rather see the favicon showing: 80 4. It could look like that :
Thanks for the favicon, they were never my skill. Do you mind if use that one?
I will work on the wave image, maybe go for a more subtle approach.
Yeah the navigation is simple but it has improved the number of page impressions per visitor, so I think i'll keep it how it is for now.
The heading tracking has been reduced so that the main titles stand out more. I might change the colours, but unfortunately a major re-firb is out of the question! - I havent got that much time to kilL!!
No problem as long as credits are given, and ultimately a link to my site
quote:Yeah the navigation is simple but it has improved the number of page impressions per visitor, so I think i'll keep it how it is for now.
At the risk of repeating myself, with CSS you could zap the navigation on the printer media, and only keep the bread comb navigation. If you use an Image Replacement technique for the logo, you could even provide a pretty logo for the screen media and a printer friendly version for the printer media ... and a handheld friendly version .... and of course you could get rid of the print.php script.
I swear, all this require little time to learn. As the layout of your site is not complex, and most of the markup of your content doesn't seem too dirty, you should be able to rework it in full XHTML+CSS in a week end.
For the wave image, you could make a huge one and simply put it in the background of the header or logo. And Bam! For testing purpose I've extended the image to 1600x91 ( by pasting some parts of the slope on the right ), reduced it to 16 colors and the file is 400bytes smaller than the current image.
One last note : the textarea of the "Send a page to a Friend" form is too small. The text by default is already too big for it, therefore it's painfull to add some text.
posted 02-11-2005 13:18
that's not nice 
