Website opinions, suggestions?

[IBM]

I just developed an academic proofreading website as a favour for my father, but as I'm doing it off my own back, I haven't got many people to ask to give me feedback, and was wondering if you talented fellows wouldn't mind taking a quick peep and see if there's anything worth pointing out...

http://www.academicproofreading.com/

It's already live with the payment system, so if you're going to go through the application process, I wouldn't get as far as the Worldpay payment screens unless you fancy making a contribution to my father's retirement fund

Cheers

[Iain]

The look and feel is nice, however I would have the following suggestions

- Your layout has a lot of nested tables. Investigate the use of CSS to get rid of all the tables, make your HTML leaner and make it far easier to update your site
- The site does not resize with the window. WHilst this isn't a huge issue your site does not even fit on screen at 1024x768 resolution. Best practice is to make fixed width sites at least fit 800x600. You are excluding disabled people who like to increase the text size and so on by forcing them to scroll in two directions to see all the content

[Kezzer]

It looks very professional and is generally nice.

As Az said, CSS layouts are the way to go, it makes a website a lot simpler imho *thanks Az for the insight in the first place*

Resizing the page can be tricky busines, i managed to do it though, it's worth looking into

[Gunbuster]

I have program called Prosizer I got from a defunct Photoshop site, but still available here: http://www.tusa.or.kr/oicbbs/board/v...y&no=5&start=0
its old, but allows you to test in different sized IE windows to match the resolutions.

As for css it can be a real pain in the arse when you first start and I'm guessing this far in to a project swapping would be difficult.
For future reference pick up a copy of TopStyle Lite http://www.bradsoft.com/download/index.asp its free and allows you to check/code your CSS against the standards and the browsers interpretations of them.

[Iain]

Mozilla Firefox has an extension that allows you to resize your window to any size to get an idea of how it will look. Added to which it's a better browser then IE so there's no excuse not to change

[Gunbuster]

Az: It doesn't stop him having to test in IE as thats what most people use.

[Iain]

And why not, the window portal in both browsers is practically the same given that you're almost certainly more interested in width rather than height. Therefore testing 800x600 in Mozilla is going to give you an almost identical view to what you would get in IE.

If you really want to do it in IE there's a similar developer toolbar available that will allow dynamic window resizing

[turkster]

Nice design and it does look professional

Sometimes the bar with the thumbnails at the bottom of the site ends up about 20px wider than the rest. This specifically seems to happen with the Charges and Sign up pages. I dont know what is causing this but it is just a niggle

Also the Contact us heading is written over a very light picture which means it is not so clearly defined as the other headings.

[IBM]

Cheers guys...It's good to hear the niggles aren't too major, apart from the window size issue, which I thought I'd sorted for 1024x768. That's really going to bug me, although I hadn't gone past putting in alt tags for disabled users...800x600 is just too small for practical design (just my point of view).

Couldn't replicate the thumbnail issue, and you're right about the contact us contrast point. I'll look into it.

Yeah, the nested tables are a pain, although my layout makes editing fairly simple. Even so, I've been told enough times CSS is the way to go, so will probably look into it.

Anything else?

[Butuz]

You are excluding disabled people who like to increase the text size and so on by forcing them to scroll in two directions to see all the content

I think this is the thing to look into most urgently, having to scroll sideways at 1024x768 is unnaceptible, you shouldnt have to at 800x600 in my book.

Changing the text size to largest or smallest in IE6 has no effect on your website due to the way you have coded it (coul others test on other configuratios, i only have this one machine). This is excluding people with visual problems from using your site. Not a good thing for a commercial academic site really.

Other than that, its nice.

Butuz

[IBM]

How would I go about allowing users to change the font size using the browser. After all I've used CSS to set my text sizes...anyone know of a setting to allow the CSS to change on the fly?