Topic: Your Comments Please.

Please review, don't hold back now, just looking for honesty and free opinions.

my work: [http://www.roofwa.com]

*cries*
The HOROR!

Fact: Tables are just as big and as ugly as Jabba the Hutt.

Despite what Zavaboy said, I thought site was rather well done. There wasn't a huge amount of clutter to get in the way, I could tell immediately what the purpose of the site was, and I didn't feel like I had to hunt around for the navigation.

Could it have been done using CSS and HTML only? Probably, but to be honest, it works as it is now (at least in FF on a DSL connection).

One thing that I didn't care for was the yellow color used for the navigation hover color. It stuck out. You might want to think about something different to use. You are already using red as a accent color, you might want to think about using that instead of the yellow, or even just going with white. The lined background does some funky things when you are scrolling, so you might want to take that into consideration as well.

The top and bottom horizontal nav bars are slightly different. The top one has a thin blue line around it while the bottom doesn't. Personally, the bottom nav looks better to me.

Looking at the code (not my strong suit, tbh) - you have a link to an external style sheet, yet you also have a LOT of inline styles declared as well. Pick one or the other, but using both is very messy. You're best bet is to stick to the external style sheet only, since updating the site is a lot easier to do later on. Especially get rid of the font tags.

_____________________

coeur de feu :: Grimwell Online
Qui sème le vent récolte la tempête!

As sites like this go, for a business of this nature, this is a fairly well done site.
The overall look and feel is solid and clear - a very big plus.

The code, however, needs serious attention. In this day and age there really is no excuse for table based layouts, align="center", and things like that. And - HTML 3.2

A couple of layout issues to nitpick -

1) The area of your main content (the text) should have the lightest background color, generally speaking. I would highly recommend switching that grey background to the left area where the photos are, and making the main content area background white.

2) I really don't like the mix of serifed and non-serifed fonts in the body. I would stick to the non personally.

3) As rhyssa mentioned, the blue border at the top looks rather out of place once it stops. I would either extend the border for the whole page, or remove it form the top.

And to touch on a point from rhyssa -

quote:

---

you have a link to an external style sheet, yet you also have a LOT of inline styles declared as well. Pick one or the other, but using both is very messy.

---

Now, the question I want to ask - are you someone doing web design, and this is a client, or are you - as your name would imply - someone making this site for your own business?
If the latter, then there isn't much to say about the code at the moment. It is worthwhile, if you plan to continue working on your own website, to learn proper HTML and CSS, but obviously your priorities will lie elsewhere. Don't let that be your excuse for ignoring proper coding though! The code is an important part of a web page, even if the user will never see it.

If the former, then I have to reiterate that there is no excuse for coding this way at this point in time. =)

If you are looking for tips on how to improve your code, you are in the right place - feel free to ask!



(Edited by DL-44 on 04-17-2006 14:42)

Hi there Matt the roofer

Yes, tables = old school

However, that asides, take the advice of removing fonttags, size attributes, inline styles and replacing this with classes & id's in the external stylesheet. That will help immensly as soon as you want to start modifying fonts, colors etc.

The site then.
My first impression was "This seems like a pretty large and professional company"
If you manage to get that impression out of a person with a house and who doesn't know shingles from singles it's pretty good I'd say

It's a good structure, I like the context links to the right, sort of a mini FAQ I didn't know I needed until I clicked it
It feels a wee bit odd that you lose the left & right cols as you step into the site.
The yellow highlight on the links I agree with rhyssa on, just make sure all your links are easy to recognise, then just add the underline on hover. that's enough and ppl recognise it right off the bat.

Another nice start is your work with search terms, what you do need in order to make those work better is to start using <h1> <h2> etc, <p> and so on is also important. Match the terms in the keywords with words that are used within the texts, make sure that the important things in the keywords also exists in the texts, use the correct headings for headings and style them. Use title/alt for all your textual images.
As I said, a good start but a littel more work will really help your SEO

Overall I like it. A good material to work on.
/D

{cell 260} {Blog}
-{"Theories without facts are just religions...?}-

Well goood morning to all. First i would like thank each and every one who has offered their thought. I will need time to study and absorb all you have described. But first, it's off to work I go. Yes, I am a roofer ( now a Project Manager) and over 10 years with WA. I have also been deignated the webmaster dude. I picked up books and surfed the net to learn.

Any ways, I must say thank you again to all.

Sincerely,

Matt

Just a quick note - I seem to have deleted part of my post during an edit oops.

After quoting Rhyssa regarding inline style declarations, there was a part that stated something similar to: don't use inline styles (style="") at all if it can be avoided. On this site, it can and should be completely avoided - put all of that style info into the style sheet.

If you are interested in learning more about proper coding techniques, and eliminating tables and other improperly used code, just say the word and plenty of tips and suggestions should be forthcoming.

There's 2 things I've noticed that need to be said about this site that haven't been yet so here you go:

#1. the front page
This is a jumble. I assume since it's different from every other page, 3 columns, multiple "rows" if you will, that you're trying to jam a good overview into the front page. Maybe you've done so, I dunno, because of the jumble I feel compelled to click through to a different page that's not so overwhelming, one that doesn't take as much effort. You can rememdy that in my opinion by a more balanced use of white space, boxes and headlines that create a flow for the eye to follow.

#2. content, document search engine friendliness
the pages http://www.roofwa.com/roofing_systems.htm and http://www.roofwa.com/waterproofing.htm could stand to be broken down into seperate pages like:
http://www.roofwa.com/waterproofing/Deck_Coating_Systems.htm
http://www.roofwa.com/waterproofing/Urethane_and_Epoxy_Coatings.htm
http://www.roofwa.com/roofing_systems/Asphalt_Shingles.htm
etc etc
This would give you the good URL with all the keywords, which you have now to a certain degree with all the anchors in place, but breaking each out to it's own page would allow you to reiterate the importance of some keyword phrases in it's own document/page using the title tag and headlines to drive home the importance of those subjects to machines, and people.

Speaking of headlines get rid of:

<p ALIGN="left"><font SIZE="2"><b><a name="Cold-Process_Roofing">Cold-Process Roofing</a></b></font> </p>

in favor of:

<h1>Cold-Process Roofing</h1>

It adds the correct semantic weight to the phrase instead of just visually formatting it. Search engines like this, people like this, to be able to find relevant things they're looking for. You need to focus on emphasizing your message and meaning instead of strictly visual style.

A meaningful example:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
<title>Built-Up Roofing - Roofing Systems - Waterproofing Associates</title>
</head>
<body>
	<h1>Built-Up Roofing</h1>
	<p>Built-up roofing, sometimes referred to as ("tar and gravel") was
	introduced during the 1840s and built-up roofing remains the predominant
	system installed on low-slope ("flat") roofs.</p>
	<p>A built-up roof system consists of multiple plies of reinforcing material
	(organic felts, fiberglass mats or polyester), inter-ply layers of bitumen
	(asphalt or coal tar) and a finish surfacing, such as gravel or decorative
	rock, mineral surface cap sheets, or coatings. Owing to energy concerns,
	many built-up systems today incorporate a rigid board insulation as well.</p>
	<p>The repetitiveness of a built-up roofing system -- its layer upon layer
	nature -- provides both flexibility and durability. The number of plies and
	the materials used for surfacing can be varied to adapt the system to
	virtually any environmental or aesthetic concerns. For the same reason, a
	built-up roof is more forgiving of abuse after application than are many
	other roofing systems.</p>
</body>
</html>

There you have a page that machines will understand to be about built up roofing systems without a doubt. Name the file/page "built-up-roofing.htm" and so much the better. The term is used I think 8 times on the page, in very good positions, page name, the title, the first headline on the page, the first paragraph of text on the page etc etc. This leaves no doubt what the page is about so search engines know to serve this page when someone searches for "built up roofing". They don't look like fools if they do, it's obvious. It may not be served on this first page because of competition and link tos etc, but it's the start every web site needs.

(Edited by JKMabry on 04-17-2006 18:55)