Jiffy — Thu, 19 Jul 2001 09:03:18 +0000

Wow! You guys are a great help! Sorry I haven't got back to you sooner but I've been busy applying much of the advice you've kindly given.

citron
I think you're right about the logo text. I'll work on it some more.
I did as you said and made the three pictures on the main page the same size and it does look better.

The Webmistress
You are, of course, absolutely right about the tables problem being because it is three lined up alongside each other. I had orignally done it as a table with three columns but, when a lot of content was added to the middle column, it stretched the other columns and they looked terrible. Sorry I forgot to reply to your last post. I'm going on holiday! A week in Paris and a quick drive round Belgium, Luxembourg, Holland and Germany!

Megan Jack
Thanks for the hspace advice. I've done that.
About the script font, I'm gonna have another hunt through my 300 fonts and see what I can find!

taff
I'm going to try to learn about CSS. I think I'll be able to get a better looks for the side columns using CSS. What do you think?

TheGizmoid
Thanks for telling me about the spaces in picture filenames problem. I've corrected that. I'll add more alt tags. I never knew they were that important. Thanks. I've changed the counter too. The previous one was invisible until recently.

Abhishek Reddy
I can't think of any place better to put the rollover logos but I'll keep it in mind. Your advice about the picture placement on the brand pages was spot on. I've changed them around and it does look a lot better. Thanks for that advice.

PaPa
AAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGHHHHH! I spent hours working that out! If only I'd waited another day before working on it, I woulda saved hours! I've got the new layout up but it's still useless for 640x480. I'll check your one out. Thank you very much for your help.

Thanks everyone for the encouragment and critiquing. I'm racing to get as much of the site up as I can before I go on holiday. I'm also gonna put some prices up as well.

Once again, thanks everybody!

PaPa — Fri, 13 Jul 2001 08:29:18 +0000

OK Jiffy, here's a fix for your table problem...

Nest those three tables inside one large table consisting of one row and three cells, where each of your tables goes into one of the new cells. You'll need to change some of the attributes on the 3 old tables--remove the align attributes and make the width attributes = 100%.

The new outer table table would look like...

<?php
<center>
<TABLE width=\"100%\" border=\"0\" cellPadding=\"0\" cellSpacing=\"0\">
  <TR>

    <td align=\"center\" valign=\"top\">
    TABLE ONE
    </td>

    <td align=\"center\" valign=\"top\">
    TABLE TWO
    </td>

    <td align=\"center\" valign=\"top\">
    TABLE THREE
    </td>

  </TR>
</TABLE>
</center>
?>

This will eliminate the overlap problem and also create a liquid design that "shrinks" in a 640x480 view, although it will be rather cramped, with a little bit of horizontal scrolling. I already modified your index file and it works fine. I'll email it to you if you like. With some tinkering of the 1st & 3rd cells' width attribute on the outer table, you may be able to gain some more "white space" between the columns. This would give the 640x480 view some breathing room.

--Papa

great

Abhishek Reddy — Thu, 12 Jul 2001 04:26:52 +0000

hi jiffy,

i realy really like the new design! great job! i really can't find anything seriously wrong in the pages...newvertheless, i have 2 suggestions

[=1]

when i rollover one of the brands, say, "aurora", the brand logo appears way down the bottom, thats the last place the eye looks at. i dont know how you could do this, but maybe you could move the rollover area nearer to the links...use layers?. either way, it still works.

[*]in your brand pages, the image of each model of pen is placed below the description. the eye has a tendency the look at images first, words later. i suggest you place the images above the description.
[/=1]

thats about it. and fix the overlapping tables too .

once again, GREAT WORK!:)[/]

TheGizmoid — Wed, 11 Jul 2001 21:28:21 +0000

Looking better!!

I also like what you did with the rollovers for the logos, it's much less cluttered looking. An elegant solution I hadn't even thought of.

"SHOP PHOTOS penplusmag 2 Jim and Janet.jpg" is a broken image in NS. NS doesn't like spaces in file names. Sometimes it fills the spaces in with %20s like it did with your logo:

eps%20logo%20mark%20xi.gif

Sometimes it will work, sometimes not. Best to avoid spaces in file names altogether. Underscore or hyphen are acceptable, no odd characters please.

And do use "alt" tags for your images. For one thing, spiders and bots can't read the text in a graphic, so the name in your logo will not be indexed. Alts are also a good way to reinforce keywords, so instead of "alt=logo.jpg" for example, you can have "alt=logo of the Edinburgh Pen Shop, your source for (keywords here)". It won't display on the page, but will get indexed. Also, alt tags are crucial for navigation when a site is accessed by the visually-impaired using a text reader.

I'd consider getting an invisible counter/stats program, as I don't think it's good for a commercial site to advertise how few hits it's gotten.

Obviously you still need to fill in the gaps for missing pages, but it's coming right along.

I never thought about "foreigners" having to think like Americans to code HTML. You mean a "centre" tag won't work? LOL!

taff — Wed, 11 Jul 2001 15:55:30 +0000

I'm always preaching white backgrounds but in this case, it doesn't seem to work for me. Perhaps it is a lack of contrast with the yellow? Have you experimented here at all?
Perhaps coloured sidebars?

I still think that default link colours have an "unfinished" look to them.

Megan: I've always used "center" in that context. the community centre or city centre is another matter

Megan — Wed, 11 Jul 2001 15:17:44 +0000

Much better! Looks good! Just a couple of things:

Make all the photos the same size as the biggest one. Also add a little hspace to the one on the left so the text doesn't but right up against it.
Align the list of brands to the left instead of center (OMG - too much HTML has got me spelling like an American!)
I still think that the script font you have is a little hard to read. You could either make the lower case letters a little bigger, or choose a different font (still script though - that's very effective given the topic of the site).

I really like the pen nibs you've used in the logo - those look great!

The Webmistress — Wed, 11 Jul 2001 15:05:59 +0000

I think that the problems that you are having with the overlapping is because you are using three tables lined up along side each other, I would be inclined to have one table with three columns that way you can ensure that everything is going to line up ok.

citron — Wed, 11 Jul 2001 15:01:56 +0000

Jiffy,

As you may remember, I liked the logos on the old site, and so I was disappointed at first to see them gone. However, you have in fact done an excellent job of displaying them on rollover, which is an improvement.

The nibs at the top are great, but the logo lettering still does nothing for me (or you).

The 3 photos are a good idea. Can they all be the same size as the shop front? I can hardly see the smaller two.

Good idea to link to the old site for us, but the link did not work for me

Good luck

Stephen