Hi!
Unfortunately, I have to pre-empt this request with an apology to those who may decide to take on this task.
I work for a City Government, and the site that I am going to link you to is one that is created in Front Page. This is not negotiable for me, so I have to make it work.
We don't have an official WebMaster, and therefore, it has fallen upon one person in each Department to create thier Department or Division's web pages. The City has supplied us all with Front Page, and very minimal training to get the majority of the "Web Designers" up to a level where they can meet the "standards" supplied by the City.
My portion of the City site is the Parks & Recreation Department.
Can you take a look at the site and give me any kind of suggestions on how to make it any better (while still keeping it in Front Page, and allowing for the cohesive look of the site)?
I also created the main front page for the City in Photoshop, and then integrated it into the Front Page requirements. This is not something that I plan to do for the rest of the site though, since I am not responsible for any other Department except Parks & Rec, and occasional updates to the main front page of the site.
Thanks in advance!
Here's the link: http://www.ci.loveland.co.us
Laur
From: The Land of one Headlight on. Insane since: May 2001
posted 09-10-2005 06:56
Ouch! he said as gently as possible. =)
First I don't like the picture button navigation. It is, I think, a bit 'trendy' for what imo should be a straight-forward almost 'formal' site but at the same time be 'friendly.' Don't get cutesy with navigation on a site like this.
For example when you look at the images on the buttons only 3 images come close to matching up.. search, contact us and links. And I'm not so sure about links. Not only that the drop downs don't drop down anywhere near close to the button and where they do drop down they run off the page. You shouldn't have to scroll to see a *menu*... at least I don't think you should. Regardless... I say you ditch'em all. =)
There are of course tons of sites and books available on the yays & nays of website design and development and the book I'd recommend is
quote:"Don't make me think" 'A common sense approach to Web usability.' by Steve Krug
. (google it) There's virtually no mention of coding or this program v that program ..it's all about usability and common sense.
For example:
quote:My portion of the City site is the Parks & Recreation Department.
Ok.. and you say it twice in the post so I gotta believe ya. But guess what... it ain't there. No parks and recreation department to be found. All sorts of things that *come close* but *close* counts only in horseshoes, handgrenades and farts. I only found your department after 'scrolling' the menu. The 2nd time I went looking for your dept. Not good.
From chapter 2 of:
quote:"Don't make me think" When we're designing pages, we tend to assume that users will scan the page, consider all of the available options, and choose the best one.
In reality, though, most of the time we don't choose the best option - we choose the first reasonable option, a strategy know as *satisficing.* As soon as we find a link that seems like it might led to what we're looking for, there's a very good chance that we'll click it.
*satisficing* Economist Herbert Simon coined the term (a cross between satisfying and suffcing) in Models of Man: Social and Rational (Wiley, 1957)
Now while that little snippet may not be enough to send you out to buy the book, I'm betting Chapter 7 will do it.
quote:"THE FIRST STEP IN RECOVERY IS ADMITTING THAT THE HOME PAGE IS BEYOND YOUR CONTROL (designing the home page)
Anyway... probably not much help... but I do like reading this book. =)
From: Sin City (Can you guess where?) Insane since: Sep 2004
posted 09-10-2005 08:30
When I loaded that page, I almost slit my wrists. It's... horrible. It ranks with the top 3 worst website designs I have ever seen! Sorry to say that to you but it is true in my opinion. I used to live in Colorado and what I find utterly pathetic is LoveLand is a bigger area than where I lived (Penrose, Colorado) and their website still looked a lot better. The Penrose Chamber of Commerce has a much nicer website and that town has about 8000 people in it, give it take a few. Now, isn't this really sad?
I find I have to agree with NoJive on a few points. I cannot bare the picture button navigation. I find it unfriendly and rather annoying. For a city's website, it doesn't speak well. I cannot find a 'Parks & Recreation Department' but then again, I would be surprised if I could find anything on that website! Oh yeah, don't get me started about the code itself. It's... really disturbing.
Tell you what. If your city will pay me $1000.00USD, I'll design them a new & better website. Hell, I can code better than that with notepad and with my eyes closed.
From: The Land of one Headlight on. Insane since: May 2001
posted 09-10-2005 10:16
Black87:
I just noticed that you're 'newly admitted'. Don't know why I thought you'd been here for a while but then I saw the hat of black posting and all of a sudden I understood my confusion...and if you understood any of that ... yer way ahead of me. =)
Anyway.... if you've never even 'lurked' in this particular forum before you can take or leave any criticism but don't take it personally. Personally I know sweet tweet about coding... only that I can either get around a site easily or I can't...and at that level I think my observations are valid... so every now and then I chime in.
But the technical/design expertise available here is quite simply mind boggling. So as your site gets shredded don't get too upset. =)
one thing you _don't_ see is bevel .. i'm not saying that you should never use bevel ... rather that is has to be used very carefully otherwise it will just look either ugly or lame ... or CHEAP! ... use vectors! with gradients! ... in your case it's a formal website ... don't fill too much of it with graphics ... keep it plain ... and informative
don't use white background with heavy structures! (as in the HUGE blue blob on your page) if possible don't use white background at all ... light grey ... some kind of gradient ... or a very light background tile ... there are lots of alternatives
fixed height ... never do that with informative front pages! (you can use it on non-informative front pages... lots of companies have those) keep in mind that news don't have a fixed lenght nor amount ... and news change! the news page has to my dynamic
if you're going to use fixed width then make sure that all the pages and parts of pages use the same width ... you don't want to have the header 1/2 shorter than the rest of the page
err ...then left alignment ... for me half of the screen is white... not pretty
missing images ... you don't want to leave that impression...
photoshop filters ... they can do miracles when used correctly ... but DON'T use them on big objects! i mean ...the blue blob again ... it looks CHEAP ... same with glows etc ... use them wisely .. and only when necessary
alternatives? check this page www.jci.ee ... i think it's kinda under construction or smth tho ...
Wow!
I appreciate all of your responses!
I am very aware that the site structure has some very serious issues. That is why I asked for your reviews, and I am so glad that you all said the things you did. It will help me at this end to point out the things that need changing to the "Web Committee" here.
As I am sure you guys will all understand, I am "stuck" in the government process here. Everything has to be discussed, and re-discussed before ANYTHING can be okayed or integrated at all.
There are about ten people who have their fingers in the pot here, and there are usually just three of us that have some level of understanding of the issues at hand in trying to fix it. The others are the strong proponents for the gaudy and the cheap things that are being implemented. UGH! Lately, it is all that I can do to keep those people from putting out web banners and pop-ups on the site! It's really frustrating.
The main front page that I linked you to in the first posting, was a design suggestion made by the Assistant City Manager to look like the previous site at this address: http://www.iedconline.org I guess the Management Team really like it... but now they have changed their site to look like it currently does instead.
So, I made our background graphics basically like an example at their request. Then, that was put into Front Page where another of my colleagues created the code for the drop-down menus (which I agree are very bad!) I guess he had some issues with things conflicting between the drop down code and the Front Page/Photoshop code. I don't know.
I can honestly say that the majority of what was pointed out was not my decision to do, so I don't take it personally at all. Don't worry.
Thanks again for all of your suggestions. I will take them to our next meeting to discuss what we can do to make it better.
Also, here is a link to the City Government site that has won numerous awards for their site lately (and they are just a matter of a few miles north of us!): http://www.ci.fort-collins.co.us I think our Web Committee is also looking at their site for ideas, since they are supposed to be so great.
Oh, man...maybe I need to get a non-governmental job? LOL
Do you guys think it is any better after you get off of the main front page, and into the lower pages, such as the Parks & Rec Department stuff? http://www.ci.loveland.co.us/parksrec/prmain.htm
I reallize it is still bad, but is it any better at all?
From: The Land of one Headlight on. Insane since: May 2001
posted 09-14-2005 00:44
Ahhh... the good ol' "Committee" ! Why don't you just sit there in the next meeting and repeatedly blurt out "Camel camel camel! On the very slight off-chance you don't know that one; A Camel is a *horse* designed by committee.
This just may be one of the few times where you can put your foot down and firmly so without, getting fired.
Hit'em right between the eyes with things like.
'Anybody here into brain surgery or rocket science in their spare time?'
'Anybody here know anything about 'server-side' stuff?' 'How about cross-browser compatibility?' "And what about Web Standards?" Anybody??? We're not trying to put together a cutesy little mom & pop home page here... There's way more to a web site than what you see on the screen and unless there's someone here who really knows what they're doing, which I submit there isn't.... we're only going to spend more TAX DOLLARS to get it done properly...after we've botched the job.
From: A graveyard of dreams Insane since: Mar 2001
posted 09-14-2005 01:21
Some quick comments, written late at night...
First thing that struck me when I entered the Parks & Rec page was that it was way too wide. The header is only n pixel's wide, so it looks wierd when the content streches the whole browser width. I'm all for the layout adjusting to the browser size, but then the whole layout should adjust. With only parts of it adjusting like it is now, it just looks wierd. But this isn't that big an issue...
What I feel that this page needs most of all (like the front page) is better organization. When I got to the page it looked confusing, with no clear message anywhere what the point of this page was. The first step to getting this fixed is putting the 'Welcome to City of Loveland...' text at the top of the page and removing the image you have there now. The image doesn't really add anything to the page, while the text acctually says something about the page we're looking at. You don't really need the links at the bottom of the text either, they are allready on the left hand side and the page isn't long enough to scroll that menu out of the screen.
I would also think about what really needs to be shown on the right hand side. Seems like there is abit too much information of various types pressed in there now, as if you placed it there in lack of better places. Why not place the contact information and Mission Statement bellow the text in the middle of the page, where you are explaing who you are? Seems like a more natural place to put it. The adobe link would probably look better if placed in the Q&A area, most people probably now that allready or have Adobe installed so they don't care. The web award thing doesn't really look that good either, there are way to many web awards floating around to be taken seriously... Now the right hand side is looking rather empty so maybe you could place the "what's new" info there?
The menu on the left hand side also need to be re-arranged. At the moment it is way too many links with the same style, at the same place. A good thing to remeber when you're creating a menu (or anything else for that matter) is that the human eye can only notice 5-7 things at once without requiring further thought. So a menu should at max have 7 elements, since that is what the user will be able to regonize at first glance. Since will probably be impossible to only have 7 links on the left hand side here you should instead go with rearranging the links into groups with their own separate heading, and not get more that 7 groups. That way the user will have an easier time seeing where in the list of links the one he is looking for is.
When you go to a sub-page of the Park & Rec page you should make the link leading back to the main page bigger. It dissappears into the other links now, which is kind of confusing - especially since there is no other easy way to get back to that page.
The colors chosen on this page doesn't really work with the colors of the heading either. Since you seem stuck with the blue colors, I would stick with them and drop the green tones. The combinatino of the two doesn't really work.
_________________________
"There are 10 kinds of people; those who know binary, those who don't and those who start counting at zero"
- the Golden Ratio - Vim Tutorial -
posted 09-09-2005 23:42
