Topic: website concept

Well I have learned a lot about layout and design from working this project. I also learn how much i love the blue color used for the background of this forum.

I coded all of it by hand and tried to keep it as simple as possible to make the load times as quick as possible. I would also like to stay away from using scripts on the page but if you guys feel the need for some mouse overs or what not let me know so that I can consider it.

I would also like some feedback on whether or not you like the font types and maybe some suggestions for better ones.

So Im now posting the site up for kind of constructive feed back and I am very excited to hear from all of you so post away!

http://www.seymoursworld.com

Hey Seymour, unfortunatly I'm pretty busy at this time of the century... so please forgive me that I don't even take a look at your site, but move this to the Site Reviews forum straight away.

that is fine sorry about the miss posting

Hmm... I gotta be straight up with you here, Seymour: the site confuses me.

Most of the confusion stems from the content and the way the site is set up. For starters, the text on your "home" page doesn't say anything about the site. The fact that the links are operational should be a minor note (although, to be honest, I wonder if it really needs mentioning at all). This page is the first page users see, and it should tell us right away what to expect. Instead, I get the confusing title "The Ultimate Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy* Concepts." When I first saw the title, I thought, "Ah, he's going to talk about concepts addressed in THGTTG, like Infinite Improbability Drive and designing intricate coastlines with fjords. This should be fun." Then I clicked on the "essays" link and was greeted with an essay on something called "The Kissimmee Lakefront playground"--something that has absolutely nothing to do with THGTTG. The next link led to an essay on the Rainforest Cafe. A quick perusal of the remainder of the links ("Future Essay," by the way, is 404) showed that they are not essays, they are reviews. At this point I still have no idea why they are here or what they have to do with THGTTG.

Then I clicked on the "concepts" link and finally got an idea of what the title of the web site means. Honestly, those are some really interesting ideas. I think the Restaurant at the End of the Universe could be a really nifty theme restaurant if done right. At this point, I'm thinking, "OK, so these are the concepts, but what are those essays for? And why did he name the site after the content of one single section (out of two)?" Then I read the concept essays through and it started to click. I looked over at the concept menu on the left, then started clicking back and forth between the essays and the concepts--lo and behold, for every "essay" there is a corresponding "concept." Then it hit me: the essays are on-site reviews you did as preparation/research for your THGTTG concepts.

That right there is the lynchpin that holds everything together, but it wasn't until I began writing that last paragraph that everything fell into place. All told, I would say it took me ten to fifteen minutes to figure it out. Now, I've been known to be a bit on the slow side, but the bottom line is that the visitor shouldn't have to guess or try to figure out what a site is about, especially if you are trying to present your ideas to the world. My analysis: interesting ideas with a lot of potential coupled with awful presentation. You may know what you're doing, but no one else does.

How do you remedy this? Fortunately, that will not be too hard to do. For starters, I would think hard about the website title. "Concepts" is, in itself, a very abstract word. Try to think of something that will clue readers in quicker (and be more useful in search engines, etc.--remember, your site title is not just a pretty face). More importantly, though, you need a brief explanation on the home page telling people what you're doing here. Explain your overall goal and how you went about doing these reviews and coming up with the concepts. In a word, it needs to be better organized.

Leave the "Concepts" section heading if you like, because that more or less describes what's in the section, but "Essays" needs work. You may want to try "Reviews" (as I mentioned above). Also, while brevity is always nice, there's no law that says each section title has to be one word only. If you need more than one word to describe what's there, so be it. And while an explanation on the home page will go a long way to clueing people in, I also think it's important that you tie the reviews and concepts together. Discuss what you're looking for when you do your reviews, then talk about what you learned and how you can apply it to your concept. In fact, here's an idea: since the reviews and concepts should really go hand in hand, why not scrap the separate sections and put them together? The review could go at the top of the page and then you can go right into what you learned from it, how you're going to apply that to your concept, and how your concept will be different. I think it would be nice to have them together so it's easier to make the connection.

There are other, minor things that I could mention. For example, the order of the navigation links: I would put Home on top and switch the order of Essays and Concepts (after all, the concepts are the important part). I'm not sure why you need your resume, and I wonder if you might not be able to change that to something a little less formal, like an "About me" page. You can still have resume-type information if you want.

Nitpicks: the starfield background is repetitive (ie, it's very easy to see the tiling), but this is a problem with backgrounds like this. You might want to play around with it a little to see if you can make it less obvious, though. Also, the way the page sticks to the top and bottom of the browser bugs me slightly, but more so on the home page--probably because it's this tiny box right now that's stuck to the top of the window. Maybe this won't be such an issue when you get more content in there.

Like I said, though, those are nitpicks and minor issues. The main thing here is your information architecture. What you say is important, but how you say it is equally important. Ideas are only as good as their presentation. Don't be discouraged, though: you have some interesting ideas, now you just need to make the presentation clearer.

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* The DA geek in me must point out that Mr. Adams never wrote anything called "the Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." This is merely the title of a collection of his Hitchhiker works.

[Edit: Forgot to mention this is my minor quibbles... the table for the header links makes me cringe.]
___________________________
Suho: www.liminality.org | Cell 270 | Sig Rotator | the Fellowship of Sup | "Hooray for linguistic idiots and yak milk!"

(Edited by Suho1004 on 04-15-2005 04:46)

Everything what Suho said and more!

The links in the front page are hard to read with that planetary background. changing the color might help there but still I can't catch much of a drift of what the site is actually for...

Like Suho said the bg is too obvious Im guessing you either took one of the preset PS patterns or just took it off someone's site. Try making it from scratch that effect is darn simple just some noise and leveling and you have yourself a perfectly smooth starscape.

And is this just me of when you're on each page and you scroll down to the bottom it's like BAM! Rock Bottom! Your pages just end abruptly! One moment you're reading about Restraunts in Interstellar Space and the next it's like "Whoa major page whipe out!" add a little space at the bottom if you don't want to add a footer if not add the footer! That way people who read the site will atleast get an idea that yes the page ends here and not that hmmm perhaps this guys was in a hurry and just thought I'll stop here upload then when i get the time continue and upload again! Footers Good!!

Finally and this is really creepy... I'm looking at your syntax and I see XHTML but it's not XHTML... You've mixed HTML with XHTML I know I know there's not much of a difference but stick to one thing it's easier to understand plus if you'll be updating your tech later it won't be much of a hassle. Other than that Suho covered most of the Content and me the Design.

Cheerio!

Yeah, templar makes a good point about the page endings... that's part of what bugged me about the content area running right up to the top and bottom of the window, but I didn't articulate it as well.

___________________________
Suho: www.liminality.org | Cell 270 | Sig Rotator | the Fellowship of Sup | "Hooray for linguistic idiots and yak milk!"

'Tis why I be the templar

Thank you all for the help.

I do agree that the page is a little miss leading and that I should work on a better title for the page. But the truth is that I didn't even think that much about it.

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Most of the confusion stems from the content and the way the site is set up. For starters, the text on your "home" page doesn't say anything about the site. The fact that the links are operational should be a minor note (although, to be honest, I wonder if it really needs mentioning at all).

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I am going to remove that.. I just put that up there because on the first day I created the page last minute and nothing really worked. Most of the links were dead and my teacher was raggin on me about it. I do need to add something here that pertains to the page though.

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Like Suho said the bg is too obvious Im guessing you either took one of the preset PS patterns or just took it off someone's site. Try making it from scratch that effect is darn simple just some noise and leveling and you have yourself a perfectly smooth starscape.

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I did make a background that was more complex and prettier but it was very large and hard to tile so I just cut a smaller simple piece from the larger image and tiled it. It did make the page look a little shittier but on the flip side the image was comparatively smaller in size and had much less effect on the load time of the page. If I have time I might give it another try though.

Thanks for the idea of the just a footer. I didn't even realize that I did that when making the page.

I am also going to change the color of the font on the planet image that will be ab easy one to do and I think that it will make a big difference.


Putting all of the reviews(essays) and concepts on just two separate pages making interal links to all of them is a good idea and I was going to do that but the teacher said that he wanted them all on separate pages so that they could be printed individually for grading. I could set it up so that they are all on the same page and just make a little link by each on with a printer friendly version.

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Finally and this is really creepy... I'm looking at your syntax and I see XHTML but it's not XHTML... You've mixed HTML with XHTML I know I know there's not much of a difference but stick...

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I didn't see what you were referring to in the code but I am not one to question considering that I don't have a strong understanding of the difference between the two but if you could give me a page and maybe a snippet of the code I might be able to see what you are referring to.


Again I would like to thank all of you for the help and I would like to continue this post but I have a test in about twenty minutes.

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Seymour said:

But the truth is that I didn't even think that much about it.

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Just a quick comment: you always want to think before you design (and the title of the page is a pretty major component). Starting to design a web site without thinking it through is like getting in your car to drive someplace you've never been before without a map or any prior planning. Yeah, you may get there eventually, but it will probably be a lot more difficult than it needed to be. Then again, you may never get there and just drive around in circles until you run out of fuel. I realize that you're already well into this project, but keep it in mind for next time. An hour of planning and thinking before you start is worth ten hours (at least) of hacking away in front of the computer.

Also, I like the idea of keeping the pages together and providing links to separate pages for printing. I can understand your teacher's concerns, but surely he understands that the web and print are two entirely different media.

Let us know if you make any progress.

___________________________
Suho: www.liminality.org | Cell 270 | Sig Rotator | the Fellowship of Sup | "Hooray for linguistic idiots and yak milk!"

Ok I have gone back and redone a lot of the site. I took the advice of suho and put all the concepts on one page and all the essays on another. I am still working on giving all the images an alt name and cleaning up the layout of the pictures. Thanks guys your advice was very helpful.

P.S. Who could ask for a better team.

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Finally and this is really creepy... I'm looking at your syntax and I see XHTML but it's not XHTML... You've mixed HTML with XHTML

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That one will need some explaining - I haven't seen anything yet in the code that is specifically XHTML.

Only other thing I have to add - make sure you don't just keep your browser maximized at a high screen res while testing your site. This is what it looks like on my computer (I *never* maximze my browser window...) -

http://in-dented.com/temp/seymour.gif

(for the record, browser window apr. 900px wide on average)

OK, you've got the introductory text on the front page, which is a good thing (although you might want to change "Arthor" to "Arthur" ).

I see that you grouped all the essays and all the concepts together. That might work, but what I was actually talking about in my original post was having essay/concept pairings. In other words, you would have the essay and concept that relate to each other on the same page, like so:

Playground = Kissimmee Lake Front Playground Essay + The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Playground
Restaurant = Rainforest Cafe + The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.
etc.

This would, of course, eliminate the need for separate essays and concepts sections. The advantage to this is that it would tie the essays together with the appropriate concepts.

How you put the site together is up to you, of course. I just wanted to clarify the point I made in my original post. I think, in terms of information architecture, that essay/concept pairings would be a good idea.

Also, the concepts page is a little quirky. I don't know why, but it seems to flip out and start spewing out what I can only assume is Vogon poetry in the original language. This occurs a few paragraphs into "The Hitchhikers Academy Concept" section. It doesn't happen all the time, and continuous refreshing seems to cycle between normal and messed up.

___________________________
Suho: www.liminality.org | Cell 270 | Sig Rotator | the Fellowship of Sup | "Hooray for linguistic idiots and yak milk!"

Galaxy needs to be capitalized =)

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Also, the concepts page is a little quirky. I don't know why, but it seems to flip out and start spewing out what I can only assume is Vogon poetry in the original language. This occurs a few paragraphs into "The Hitchhikers Academy Concept" section. It doesn't happen all the time, and continuous refreshing seems to cycle between normal and messed up.

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Wow you ain't just a shitin', that is messed. I have no clue as to how I would go about fixing something like that. So if anyone has a suggestion please post.

DL-44

I am going back through and making a lot of changes and trying to get it layed out a little better for lower resolution display. Hopefully I will be able to easily go back and absolute position the three main divs so that resizing wont be such an issue. Hopefully I will have that done by this weekend.

I would also add that I would avoid absolute positiong atlogether.

It is very rare that a case warrants using it, and it tends to cause more problems than it solves.
I would, in fact, avoid specifying any position at all.

Ok I am for the most part done with the site and was hoping someone could give me a final opinion on the look and feel of the site before I turn it in on may 2.

btw I was going to change all of the html over to xhtml over the next couple of days. I just finished with the great tutorial on the gurusnetwork that cleared up a lot of issues for me. The oulined div at the bottom is where the validation for the css and xhtml will go.