Review my site please

jakenoble

02-11-2004, 10:46 AM

Hi All

I didn't want to put my site to the dogs. I was afraid people would say it needed a complete overhaul. But then i thought well what the hell, i am updating it RIGHT NOW so i may as well know what is wrong with it RIGHT NOW so i can sort it as i go along.

Its my first CSS site, don't take any notice of the portfolio sites, did those ages ago when i had no idea what CSS was. Planning on re doing them anyway, so any hints with CSS then that would be great ready for when i re-do those portfolio sites with CSS.

www.jakenoblewebs.co.uk

Regards

Jake

P.s. i already have some feedback from another forum, so I am already looking into some stuff.

super kobs

02-11-2004, 11:24 AM

Just a little too bright for me...But overall it looks ok

bcarl314

02-11-2004, 01:18 PM

Looks good, a little bright though, maybe add a light blue background to your main content area???

Also, please PLEASE PLEASE for the love of God offer a "skip intro" link on your flash splash page. Especially if it's going to take a long time to load. :D

ronaldb66

02-11-2004, 01:42 PM

First of all: what function does the splash page have, other then:
[list=1]
Scare off potential visitors;
Show off your Flash ability?
[/list=1]
As you may have guessed: I suggest losing it, or at least provide a skip button.
The layout is not an example of originality, but I like the light, airy lineage. The blue-on-white is slightly low on contrast, so see if you can darken the blue a bit, at least for the text.
I'd like to see the border over the news items run all the way across the width of the text, like it does over the content area.
You might want to add some padding around the outside to free the page from the window frame a bit; also, I'm a great fan of footers.

Code wise, add a doctype to prevent certain browsers to go into quirks mode; it also enables you to validate your pages, would you so be inclined (I definitely recommend it).
On the home page, I'm really curious about this one:
<html class="html">
since there only can be one html element on a page, I fail to see the need to class it.
Also,
<div class="h1">
must be considered semantically as "sub-optimal"; use an appropriate html element instead (er, h2?).
Same goes for all the br elements to create a paragraph feel: use p elements, and CSS margins / padding for seperation.
<span class="blue">
Again, use a heading (Erm, one... two... h3?)

Where you so admirably avoided to use a table for layout, there is one for the news items, probably because you retrieve them from a table using PHP; again, p elements can just as easy be used to style the individual news items, and maybe a header for the date. In that case, both the header and the pararaph can be bundled in a div.

Basically, just little tweaks and improvements, really.

mindlessLemming

02-11-2004, 11:01 PM

The top of your left and right columns are no where near lined up in Mozilla/Firebird/NN7/good browsers. (Although it does line up in Opera 7.23!?).
Get one, code for it, hack back for IE. It's far easier than doing it the other way around
:thumbsup:

Vladdy

02-11-2004, 11:31 PM

Intro must go.
A bit more contrast woud be helpfull.
Your layout falls apart when font size is changed - do not use pixels for height and width of text containg elements.

jakenoble

02-12-2004, 12:18 AM

Firstly THANK YOU ALL!!!!

Will get to work on this stuff soon. Then post again to see if i have actually made any improvement.

Secondly. Any comments on the design and layout, colours and fonts? I know about the contrast problem, and the text size, any more specific design flaws.

Thirdly. What does anyone think of the QUOTE and GUEST BOOK features. I think the guest book should wait till I have a better site, so people can actually post and say its good. Rather than "well its a pretty average site with poor code, and does not implement CSS very well"

VLADDY

You think i should get rid of the intro?

Should i then have a "DEMO" section or something to show that I can do Flash? And perhaps include more flash, graphics and effects.

Jake

Vladdy

02-12-2004, 01:46 AM

Yes, get rid of the intro - it looks pretty silly when there is no plug-in.
Plus:

<table> for news items is wrong - should be list.
Get a cure from spanitis and divitis:
- <span class="toptext"> should be <h1>
- navigation links should be in a list not spans with  
- <span class="ntitletext"> should be <h2>
- <div class="h1"> :rolleyes: - you gotta be kidding

HTML Flow:
Content first!!!!
Navigation last!!!

Make use of link elements such as rel="prev" rel="next"

jakenoble

02-12-2004, 11:37 AM

Thanks again VLADDY.

I am still confused, sorry for all this, but it will prove a great help.

If i use <h1> TITLE</h1>

Then it does not diplay the TITLE as h1 should be displayed, as set in my CSS file. I have to put <p class="h1"> TITLE </p>. Not always P of course though, SPAN or DIV.

This defeats the object of having CSS doesn't it, as its supposed to redine heading tags, along with other tags!

What am I doing wrong. It is becasue i am linking to an external style sheet, would i be better putting my stle sheet at the top of the page.

Thank you

Jake

Vladdy

02-12-2004, 01:57 PM

Originally posted by jakenoble

If i use <h1> TITLE</h1>

Then it does not diplay the TITLE as h1 should be displayed, as set in my CSS file.
Sure it does.... if you got your selectors right...

ronaldb66

02-12-2004, 02:59 PM

Jake,

.h1 {...}
(notice the dot in front of h1) would style any element with class "h1", which is confusing at best;
h1 {...}
would style all h1 elements.

If you want to read up on CSS selectors, I'd like to recommend the Selectutorial (http://css.maxdesign.com.au/selectutorial/index.htm) on CSS Maxdesign (http://css.maxdesign.com.au/index.htm) (warning: more goodies in there!), or do a search on the forum; Liorean posted a valuable explanation of selectors in one of the recent threads as well.