Another "critique my site" thread

[Uncle Psychosis]

Hi guys

I've been working on this:

http://www.ph.ed.ac.uk/~s0091155/korfball/index.html

Constructive criticisms welcome

I should point out that the navigation on the LHS will be "expandable" to show the navigation within the main sections---at the moment there's a large amount of redundancy within the navigation. The LHS will also have smaller, less important sections added to it as and when necessary, whereas the navigation at the top holds all the "essential" info.

Sam

[Clunk]

Ok, I know nothing about web design, so I can only tell you what happens on my screen. (1920x1200).

[Uncle Psychosis]

Hmm. That shouldnt happen...what browser/OS are you using?

Cheers

Sam

[Uncle Psychosis]

Hmm. And on IE7 on Vista the image on the RHS doesn't load properly...Great

[winstainforth]

same problem when viewed 1920x1200, look fine when I minimise.

[Uncle Psychosis]

same problem when viewed 1920x1200, look fine when I minimise.

Boogar. Must be a problem with the css...

Does anyone know if IE7 requires the "height" attribue to be specified on an img??

Sam

[Clunk]

Its firefox on mine.

If I load it in explorer 6, it looks very similar, only the main picture is a small white rectangle with a coloured line in it.

[Uncle Psychosis]

Ok. I should have fixed those problems now. It seems that IE doesnt like if you dont specify the "height" attribute and I needed to specify "fixed" on the background image.

Cheers for the help guys

Sam

[Clunk]

The text is lined up now, but everything is left aligned, and the background carries on til about 3/4 accross the page, and then its solid white for the last 1/4.

[Uncle Psychosis]

The text is lined up now, but everything is left aligned, and the background carries on til about 3/4 accross the page, and then its solid white for the last 1/4.

Thats kind of what its meant to do...The "site" is fixed at 800px wide, but the background continues to 1280px so that not too much of the screen is just whitespace. The main user of the site will probably be on a Uni computer; so either 800x600 for the old **** ones or 1280x1024 for the newer ones. Hadn't counted on you folks with stupidly big screens!

Sam

PS does the image load ok in IE now?

[Clunk]

OK, it just looks a bit odd with the white there, thats all.

One other thing I noticed, the "Latest News" bit has got a scroll bar along the bottom of it, and when you load it up, it defaults to the right so that some of the text is obscured. Maybe a smaller font might get rid of that?

[ACiD303]

The "site" is fixed at 800px wide, but the background continues to 1280px so that not too much of the screen is just whitespace. The main user of the site will probably be on a Uni computer; so either 800x600 for the old **** ones or 1280x1024 for the newer ones.

You know who your primary target audience is and the screen resolutions used, so in terms of usability it's fine. I use 2048x1536, but I sometimes use 2 browser windows sitting side by side for comparison (1024px wide each) to minimise the effect of having a high resolution.

This is just a personal preference, completely subjective opinion, but when writing a 600px wide body, I like to center it (as opposed to having it left aligned) and have the whitespace, background colour, or gradient graphic on either side.

[Uncle Psychosis]

This is just a personal preference, completely subjective opinion, but when writing a 600px wide body, I like to center it (as opposed to having it left aligned) and have the whitespace, background colour, or gradient graphic on either side.

Yeah, thats what I'd done originally but I thought it didn't look quite right! I'm still unsure on that one, so I'll maybe have a play with it!

Clunk---you're right, the "latest" box needs a bit of work. I haven't really decided how that box will be used yet; I need to work out if the actual news will go in it or whether it'll just be a link to the latest news

Sam

[Craig321]

Hi guys

I've been working on this:

http://www.ph.ed.ac.uk/~s0091155/korfball/index.html

Constructive criticisms welcome

I should point out that the navigation on the LHS will be "expandable" to show the navigation within the main sections---at the moment there's a large amount of redundancy within the navigation. The LHS will also have smaller, less important sections added to it as and when necessary, whereas the navigation at the top holds all the "essential" info.

Sam

Looks good, but you should separate the text from the navigation a bit more. Maybe make it so the text goes straight down rather than boxing in the nav.

Craig.

[Tarffie]

Thats kind of what its meant to do...The "site" is fixed at 800px wide, but the background continues to 1280px so that not too much of the screen is just whitespace. The main user of the site will probably be on a Uni computer; so either 800x600 for the old **** ones or 1280x1024 for the newer ones. Hadn't counted on you folks with stupidly big screens!

Sam

PS does the image load ok in IE now?

Easy way to solve that, just change:

background: #ffffff url(../assets/pagebackground.gif) 0% 0% fixed repeat-y;

to

background: #404568 url(../assets/pagebackground.gif) 0% 0% fixed repeat-y;

The purple will just carry on then. Speaking of which, crop pagebackground.gif to 1px high, it'd look no different but the filesize would be ~500 bytes rather than 40kb.

I think you need to change the text/vertical navigation set up, having the text flow underneath throws the whole thing off balance a bit. It'd look better if you kept the text going straight down in one column, there's be less empty space directly underneath, too.

Limit the entries in the Latest News box so you don't get a scroll bar. It's meant to be latest news so you don't need that many anyway. Citigroup logo should be smaller than your site title, it's dominating the header. Plus it's got artifacting from saving for web.

[Uncle Psychosis]

Easy way to solve that, just change:

background: #ffffff url(../assets/pagebackground.gif) 0% 0% fixed repeat-y;

to

background: #404568 url(../assets/pagebackground.gif) 0% 0% fixed repeat-y;

K, thanks

The purple will just carry on then. Speaking of which, crop pagebackground.gif to 1px high, it'd look no different but the filesize would be ~500 bytes rather than 40kb.

K. I'd been told that having small background images like that can choke some browsers...but I can make it smaller still, I think.

I think you need to change the text/vertical navigation set up, having the text flow underneath throws the whole thing off balance a bit. It'd look better if you kept the text going straight down in one column, there's be less empty space directly underneath, too.

K, I'll fix that today.

Limit the entries in the Latest News box so you don't get a scroll bar. It's meant to be latest news so you don't need that many anyway. Citigroup logo should be smaller than your site title, it's dominating the header. Plus it's got artifacting from saving for web.

Yeah, I was beginning to think that myself.

Cheers!