cordedpoodle — Wed, 19 Mar 2003 20:30:47 +0000

Usability:

1) Center justified text should only be used for headings. Your eye has been trained to read from left to right starting at a fixed point on the left. Center justified makes it harder for your clients to quickly scan the page. After each line the eye must search for the starting point. You may think this is a small thing, it's not.

2) It takes too long to figure out what this page is for. " We specialise in Train models " should be front and center. Better yet do you sell, trade, supply info? What the heck do you do?

3) If ever their was a site that could benefit from some images... Those little trains are alluring, you need a really nice pix or two.

4) Whether you use tables or layers there should be some room around the text so it doesn't bump up against the edges of the layer or table. Here's an example of the code:

table width="400" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5"

5) Get rid of extraneous text that means nothing:

"Site Navigation
What you are currently looking at now is your lifeline. This is how you get around my site and onto all the different pages. Please take the time to look around the site."

The Navigation you've put below this useless text is self evident. The text just obscures it's purpose.

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for some good advice take a look at:

http://useit.com/alertbox/

http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/

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Aesthetics

I like the red and yellow. Old trains imply a certain dated look, trains were frequently painted black and red. I'd try to find a color scheme that was popular in the late 19th century or early 20th. Red and yellow and black might work possibly some grey. Some orange and red gradients within fields of colors. Probably a stroked serif type or even a stroked script type on a stylized sign board or cloth with curled edges.

Usually it's nice to limit the palette overall. Then when you have something different like a picture of a train that has a color outside the limited palette it will stand out.

fedele — Wed, 19 Mar 2003 14:57:46 +0000

I would add more images and pictures of the models to the main page to make it more attractive! The layout seems perfect to me.

Ooops!

Karen Cardinal — Wed, 19 Mar 2003 05:08:22 +0000

Sorry, I need to ammend my last message. (It is very late here)

I looked at your code again and I don't know what I was seeing before, but your styles are fine.

You do need to remove your z-indexs (or at least renumber them) though.

I also forgot, as Renegade already pointed out, you need to put a doctype and charset in your head tags.
Try this:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
        "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1">
     

Sorry again 'bout the goof.

Unneeded elements causing problems

Karen Cardinal — Wed, 19 Mar 2003 04:42:04 +0000

I had a quick look at your site and wasn't seeing anything except your main table with your "welcome" message in it.

After looking at your code, I think I found a couple errors that may be the problem.

First you have two seperate styles that refer to the same divisions with completely different colors.
Take out the first style code where you have the div colors set at white and leave the second one where you have your light blue.

Second, you have most of your z-index set at -1. This might not be a problem for a lot of browsers, but on my Mac, it didn't work in any of my browsers.
Since none of your layers are overlapping, you really don't need the z-index... go ahead and take them all out.

Once you change those 2 bits, things should show up the way you want them to.

Have fun with it!

I agree the blues don't blend well

canada_dry — Sun, 16 Mar 2003 16:50:57 +0000

I agree with the others, the blues just don’t seem to blend together well. I find the white text contrast on the blue a bit hard on the eyes as well, maybe darken the shades of blue on key the text areas. Other than that it looks fine, great job!

By the way I just uploaded my new web site for reviews! It’s a Blue Site Too! Check it out: http://www.lifelineaquarium.com

The Webmistress — Sun, 16 Mar 2003 09:08:01 +0000

I agree with Busy, use tables - there is nothing wrong with using them and you'll get more cross compatability and flexibility. IMO the site is too blue and the blues you have used don't go together, neither do the red & yellow, and the site looks very ameteurish with the use of colour and lack of design.

Busy — Sun, 16 Mar 2003 02:57:08 +0000

Quote: Originally posted by Timewell
How do you suggest that I change it so that it works in all browsers?

Use tables

take out the z-index, apart from the fact you have 3 of them the same (-1) z-index is for layers, your not using layers.

here is a handy tutorial for you

http://www.thenoodleincident.com/tutorials/box_lesson/boxes.html

Renegade — Sun, 16 Mar 2003 00:35:26 +0000

You should put a doctype on your page before the <html> tag and a charset in your <head> tags because some browsers may not output your page properly...

The colours on your page don't seem to "blend" in with anything else, does "Bell Models Ltd" have any particular colours? Maybe if you put in a logo and used the colours from the logo it would look better

Timewell — Sat, 15 Mar 2003 22:16:06 +0000

How do you suggest that I change it so that it works in all browsers?

Busy — Sat, 15 Mar 2003 22:06:17 +0000

I hate to burst your bubble but it doesn't work in Mozilla and has problems in Opera6 (as opera) and half works in NS4.7,

In Mozilla, the top table and center section is the only things displaying

In Opera the home page section is about 2 pixels high with 'home page' under it, same as the copyright section. the links don't work (aren't clickable) as they appear to be blue text. the sections also slightly overlap the top table

In NS4.7 the 'contact us' panel has become part of the center panel (listed under the main info) and bottom section is missing also, sections also slightly overlap top table

IE5 all is ok