site critique
cruiserweight
feedback. I am a web designer, and the site is basically just an
online portfolio for perspective clients to view.
The new site is at http://www.k4media.com/.
The old site, if you interested, is at http://www.k4media.com/index-old.php.
Any and all thoughts are most appreciated.
Chris F.A. Johnson
> I am redesigning my web site and would like to get this group's
> feedback. I am a web designer, and the site is basically just an
> online portfolio for perspective clients to view.
>
> The new site is at http://www.k4media.com/.
Why do none of your (or your clients') pages contain valid XHTML?
Why are you bothering with XHTML?
> The old site, if you interested, is at http://www.k4media.com/index-old.php.
>
> Any and all thoughts are most appreciated.
--
Chris F.A. Johnson <http://cfajohnson.com>
Author: =======================
Pro Bash Programming: Scripting the GNU/Linux Shell (2009, Apress)
Shell Scripting Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach (2005, Apress)
cruiserweight
> On 2009-12-13, cruiserweight wrote:
> > I am redesigning my web site and would like to get this group's
> > feedback. I am a web designer, and the site is basically just an
> > online portfolio for perspective clients to view.
>
>
> Why do none of your (or your clients') pages contain valid XHTML?
>
> Why are you bothering with XHTML?
>
>
> > Any and all thoughts are most appreciated.
>
> --
> Chris F.A. Johnson <http://cfajohnson.com>
> Author: =======================
> Pro Bash Programming: Scripting the GNU/Linux Shell (2009, Apress)
> Shell Scripting Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach (2005, Apress)
Why do I bother with xhtml? I did not know there was another option.
Chris Beall
Artistically, I like it. Lots of white space. Clean look. Good font
size. Most of the color comes from the screenshots of other sites (and
you've shown those in 9:16 format, which conveys that you are aware of
current hardware).
Things I notice from the outside (Viewed at 1024 x 768 on a CRT monitor
with Firefox):
- The background image extends about 40% of the way down my window.
It looks good behind the header and navigation, but if I scroll body
text into this area it becomes hard to read because of the low contrast
and the patterned background. To compensate, I tended to read that text
only in the bottom 60% of the window. On a netbook, the clear
background would be a very small percentage of window height. Allowing
the background image to scroll would eliminate this.
- A horizontal scroll bar appears just below 800px width. There's
nothing in the content that requires that. Below that point, I can't
read the text in both the left and right columns without scrolling left
and right.
- I didn't understand the cryptic notations in the Contact block on
the Home page. I decoded the first two, but have no idea what the S:,
F:, and T: stand for.
- Footer. Why are you proud of being powered by WordPress? Would a
client care? Might a client decide to skip your services and get this
WordPress thingy for themselves?
- Blog. I've seen two kinds of blogs: those that are targeted at the
ego of the writer and those that are targeted to an audience of readers.
In the case of a business site, I would expect to see posts only in
the latter category. Will potential clients be interested in your
travails with Cform, especially when they reveal that you were fighting
your own error (I speak as one who has done this often, but generally
keeps quiet about it...).
- On the Capabilities page, I first noticed the green/yellow heading
color and felt it had low contrast, i.e. was too light. My eye was
instead drawn to the right-hand column, with its darker headings. I now
see that the lighter color is used on other pages as well, the
difference being that elsewhere it appears in the right-hand column.
- The fields on the Contact form are so pale that I had to strain to
detect them. They become more obvious if I mouse-over, but not if I Tab
to them. It says "valid email required". Will you know if I enter an
invalid one? Do you at least do some rudimentary syntax checking?
- You give public credit to delicious:days for Cforms. Is that a
contractual requirement? If not, will your clients care that you used
someone else's tool rather than writing your own form processor?
- I tried to navigate just using the Tab bar, but had trouble seeing
where the current focus was, especially within the navigation bar.
- When I decreased font size by 2 increments, everything still looked
fine. When I increased the font size:
- 1 increment. Still OK.
- 2 increments. 'Us' disappears from 'Contact Us' on the navigation
bar. The bottom of the words "Phnom Penh, Cambodia" melts into the
navigation bar background.
- 3 increments. 'About K4' and 'Contact Us' have vanished completely.
No, wait, tabbing reveals that they are still there, below the rest of
the navigation bar, but now against a white background and hence
invisible. "Phnom Penh, Cambodia" sinks further into the navigation bar
background. On the 'Our work' page it becomes hard to tell where one
client's name ends and another begins, as there's nothing to separate
one from the next.
- 4 increments. The symptoms above are more pronounced. Long
unbroken lines in the left column (such as URLs) intrude on the right
column.
Looking under the covers:
- Spot check on validation. Looks good.
- You have used XHTML instead of HTML. Did you have a reason to do
this?
- There are lots of <link entries. I don't recognize many of them.
That's OK, but do YOU know why each one is there?
- In addition to an external stylesheet, you have a significant sized
<style> section on each page. They look similar. Why is that style not
in the external sheet? (Perhaps just 'cause you are still working on
the site...)
- There's a block of code that brings in another stylesheet and some
JavaScript related to Cforms. It seems to appear on every page, even
though the only form I see is on the Contact Us page.
- I found a commented-out link to a how-much page, but trying to go
there got me a 404 error, which displayed a site map. That's good! On
that site map I saw two links I hadn't followed:
- 'About me', which the sitemap indicates is hung off of the 'About
K4' page, but I couldn't find any such link there.
- 'Web Design Cambodia', which I eventually found linked from the
'Our Work' page. ('Eventually' is not good in this context.)
- This is weird. On the Blog page, look at the source. Under the
entry about domain name values, look for the link marked "Post comment",
followed by a paragraph closing tag. A View Source on my system shows
the / and the p characters in this tag one atop the other. Is there a
backspace character in there somewhere? The validator doesn't see any
problem.
- I didn't test, but what doesn't work if JavaScript is turned off?
Chris Beall
dorayme
<30308ab7-fa64-49dd...@z4g2000prh.googlegroups.com>,
cruiserweight <bay...@yahoo.com> wrote:
I notice you are using Wordpress and it is probably a bit harder to
control everything (to ensure semantic code etc) compared to a simple
static site, I won't comment on various things to do with validation
except to say if you are going to use XHTML, generally better to use
Strict rather than Transitional.
The pages are easy on the eye, simple to read, very well done because it
seems that very few people can achieve such simplicity!
In general it also does well under the pressure of *some* different user
text size settings, but there is a little problem on this score in the
text above the menu strip. When that text gets bigger and wraps, it
fouls the menu strip (hides partly behind it or gets cut off - in
appearance). The text in the menu strip can also lose a word or two into
the cold void outside the nice blue strip (The "us" from "Contact us").
True, this is likely to affect very few people, how fussy does an
earthling need to be?
--
dorayme
Chris F.A. Johnson
> On Dec 13, 2:57?pm, "Chris F.A. Johnson" <cfajohn...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 2009-12-13, cruiserweight wrote:
>> > I am redesigning my web site and would like to get this group's
>> > feedback. I am a web designer, and the site is basically just an
>> > online portfolio for perspective clients to view.
>>
>> > The new site is athttp://www.k4media.com/.
>>
>>
>> ? ?Why are you bothering with XHTML?
>>
>> > The old site, if you interested, is athttp://www.k4media.com/index-old.php.
>>
>> > Any and all thoughts are most appreciated.
>
Use HTML. (Internet Explorer doesn't understand XHTML).
dorayme
"Chris F.A. Johnson" <cfajo...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2009-12-13, cruiserweight wrote:
> > Why do I bother with xhtml? I did not know there was another option.
>
> Use HTML. (Internet Explorer doesn't understand XHTML).
This may be easier said than done with OP's Wordpress... IE can be fine
with XHTML if done well...
--
dorayme
cruiserweight
> cruiserweight wrote:
> > I am redesigning my web site and would like to get this group's
> > feedback. I am a web designer, and the site is basically just an
> > online portfolio for perspective clients to view.
>
>
> > The old site, if you interested, is athttp://www.k4media.com/index-old.php.
thank you, sir. Awesome feedback!
dorayme
<b5b56940-a52f-4a49...@m7g2000prd.googlegroups.com>,
cruiserweight <bay...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Dec 14, 4:14 am, Chris Beall <Chris_Be...@prodigy.net> wrote:
> > cruiserweight wrote:
> > > I am redesigning my web site and would like to get this group's
> > > feedback. I am a web designer, and the site is basically just an
> > > online portfolio for perspective clients to view.
> >
> > > The new site is athttp://www.k4media.com/.
> >
> > > The old site, if you interested, is
> > > athttp://www.k4media.com/index-old.php.
> >
> > > Any and all thoughts are most appreciated.
> >
[snip admirable, "John Hosking's" type job]
> >
> > Chris Beall
>
> thank you, sir. Awesome feedback!
I wonder if full quoting in this case indicates what JK says it
indicates and whether it is exacerbated by so short a reply to such a
magnificent effort.
--
dorayme
cruiserweight
I generally write everything in XHTML strict. It works for me. I get
predictable results from all the major browsers, no problem. Once you
start using other people's code -- google search, language, wordpress
plugins, etc -- getting things to validate can be an impossible task.
But even in the absence of validation, I still get predictable
results. the validator may choke on an unencoded ampersand or missed
backslash, but the browsers seem to manage ok.
I suppose I could write html 4.0 transitional code to the same effect,
but at this point it would just mean extra work and study for no
benefit. unless there is some benefit i am failing to overlook. i
would be happy to be enlightened on the subject.
cruiserweight
> In article
> <30308ab7-fa64-49dd-80db-06657ec74...@z4g2000prh.googlegroups.com>,
>
> cruiserweight <bayo...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > I am redesigning my web site and would like to get this group's
> > feedback. I am a web designer, and the site is basically just an
> > online portfolio for perspective clients to view.
>
>
> > The old site, if you interested, is athttp://www.k4media.com/index-old.php.
>
> > Any and all thoughts are most appreciated.
>
> I notice you are using Wordpress and it is probably a bit harder to
> control everything (to ensure semantic code etc) compared to a simple
> static site, I won't comment on various things to do with validation
> except to say if you are going to use XHTML, generally better to use
> Strict rather than Transitional.
>
> The pages are easy on the eye, simple to read, very well done because it
> seems that very few people can achieve such simplicity!
>
> In general it also does well under the pressure of *some* different user
> text size settings, but there is a little problem on this score in the
> text above the menu strip. When that text gets bigger and wraps, it
> fouls the menu strip (hides partly behind it or gets cut off - in
> appearance). The text in the menu strip can also lose a word or two into
> the cold void outside the nice blue strip (The "us" from "Contact us").
> True, this is likely to affect very few people, how fussy does an
> earthling need to be?
>
> --
> dorayme
Thanks. I am curious how you and Chris are increasing font size. When
I do it on my machine, either with control+/- or ctrl-mousewheel, the
whole blue bar increases in size, which keeps the links visible, not
as you describe. in your case, though, presumably I could define
bluebar width in em to fix this little bit of unhappiness.
dorayme
<e3ee58e8-e3de-487f...@z10g2000prh.googlegroups.com>,
cruiserweight <bay...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Thanks. I am curious how you and Chris are increasing font size. When
> I do it on my machine, either with control+/- or ctrl-mousewheel, the
> whole blue bar increases in size, which keeps the links visible, not
> as you describe. in your case, though, presumably I could define
> bluebar width in em to fix this little bit of unhappiness.
Look in your options or preferences, many browsers give the old
fashioned but better option to increase *just text* rather than to zoom
all (thus degrading images).
--
dorayme
rf
"cruiserweight" <bay...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:e3ee58e8-e3de-487f...@z10g2000prh.googlegroups.com...
Let me guess. IE 7 or 8. Ctrl mousewheel does a zoom of the entire page, not
a text size change.
Install Firefox and set zoom > zoom text only in the view menu.