Peer Review

[Magiaus]

I need some people who know what my site content is to check it out and tell me if they understand it, and if evrything seems good. I've had people look at it, but generally they don't know what most of it is or understand it.

Tell me what you guys think of the look and feel also.

http://netnsite.com/

Thanks to everyone who gives me some feed back on this.

[iPrank]

This site requires Internet Explorer 5.5+ and Flash Player 8+.

[ComputerJy]

I tried it on FireFox and it worked, it looks good and works good

But I don't recommend using dark colors for background, the page doesn't look professional, it looks like a some band's homepage. You might want to enlarge the font a little bit for people with bad eyes

But all the work on the Flash is beautiful.
I think it's great

[Arrow_Raider]

these french fries are hard and stale

[mendhak]

I don't like having to catch the 'enter' button.

[Magiaus]

Yeah FireFox is fully supported I just haven't listed it yet... I put the menu at the bottom of the first page because people didn't even know those buttons in the flash were buttons.... they are just supposed to look cool I guess...

I haven't viewed it in netscae or opera so I dunno if they work yet... going to have to install em I guess....

Thanks for the input guys and any one else who has a chance give it a look and let me know what you think and give me any suggestions you have

[conipto]

Seems to work fine in opera too.

Bill

[Magiaus]

I don't know how to take the band homepage deal.. I want it to be cool but I'm also going to be showing this as part of my resume and all.... the whole point is I need a job and maybe having this will help some...

yeah, so if you were looking for a programmer and this landed in your inbox or on your desk would you think this person would be a good web developer or back-end programmer? Would you think this person would be a good canidate? Would he be to busy playing guitar to write you over obfusicated 5 tier data struct?

be brutal lol

[iPrank]

Yeah FireFox is fully supported I just haven't listed it yet... I put the menu at the bottom of the first page because people didn't even know those buttons in the flash were buttons.... they are just supposed to look cool I guess...

The flash isn't linked to the homepage. Visitors, who expect it to be a button, will be disappointed.

[thegreatone]

Try getting the spelling correct

"Work Experiance"

[penagate]

be brutal lol

- The animations are nice but a bit pointless.
- The "enter" page is definitely pointless, and confusing.
- The black and white is too harsh. Too much contrast, hard to read.
- You need more "life" below the title. It's just text and lines.
- Need better borders between posts on the home page. Hard to tell which post the date/time belongs to.
- Font size on the resume page is a bit small.
- Source code is shocking.
- You've used tables for layout. BIG red cross there

Looks good as a mockup so far. Keep working at it and get rid of all those tables

[vbcode1980]

The flash animations make it slow to load, even at T1.

[Magiaus]

ok

what is bad about tables?
why is the code shocking?

That news page is going to get a redesign I'm not happy with it...

SO is everyone thinking there is too much flash at the top and it need to be more contemerary? I like the flash but it is a bit... flashy...

[penagate]

Web Page Layouts Shouldn't Use Tables

Tableless layout HOWTO

[mendhak]

Oh yeah... absolute positioning. Why don't I use "On Error Gotos" in my VB code as well?

[penagate]

You realise now you must explain why you think absolute positioning is bad.

[mendhak]

Honestly, I don't want to explain myself. But I'll attach an image here, which you must refrain from taking as the only reason.

I'll grant you this much: A major factor in using tables, for me at least, is because it's so flexible for me, contrary to what the article says. Then again, you can't expect the article to be unbiased.

Image captured from:
http://www.positioniseverything.net/piefecta-rigid.html

[Magiaus]

Ok, on the tables are bad issue... I'll take that under advisement and I kinda knew the reason... but there are conflicting sides to that

1)tables provide the most robust layout device
2)not all browsers support the same css
3)div's don't support align and valign (not sure if that can be worked out with css)
4) table-layout: fixed; resize the browser to see how it makes the layout stop shhrinking
5) it's hard to do it with out tables lol

On the absolute positioning, I avoid it unless I need a menu system, but I thought what the heck let's make something cool

sigh, no tables man...

[Wally Pipp]

Badly thought-through flash intro pages are definately a no-no. Why, other than 'it looks cool', does everyone bother with flash intro pages? It doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

Much as I love the gothic lifestyle and look, at least try to have a bit of colour in it. It breaks up the sharpness.

The whole look and feel says to me "Boo hoo hoo, I'm depressed" or "Look how cool this dark gothic thing I have here is." Neither of which will help you in finding a new job.

[penagate]

2)not all browsers support the same css

The browsers you should support, at a bare minimum, are the latest versions of IE, Firefox, Opera, and Safari. CSS layouts will work absolutely fine in these browsers, and also to several versions prior (as long as you keep the code simple, for older browsers). IE 5 (PC) is about as early as you need to support, there's not really an excuse to be using an older version than that.

3)div's don't support align and valign (not sure if that can be worked out with css)

It depends what you want to do. Horizontal alignment is very easy to achieve, you can float elements to left or right and align text using the text-align property. Vertical alignment is a little more tricky and requires a different approach.

4) table-layout: fixed; resize the browser to see how it makes the layout stop shhrinking

Precisely a reason why you should not be using tables in the first place. You need the layout to shrink gracefully, to handle lower screen resolutions. You can set minimum sizes, so that things don't get messy if the viewport is shrunk too far.

[Magiaus]

ok, so that's one for Flash intro pages are pointless...

I've already made up my mind to lose the black backrouhd color and silver text, I've just got to pick colors to use. I'm not using black and white.... I think a blue backcolor with black text maybe

so why is the source code shocking lol

[Wally Pipp]

google for do's and don'ts of webdesign.

[Magiaus]

that's exactly what the table-layout: fixed does, well depending on browser... in fire fox it lets text content expand but not collapse past 600px and in IE every thing just stays 600px

I've got to be honest I don't care if some rigid sob says tables are for text only and only for rows and columns

The only issues I have with using the tables are that they do interfere with spiders and possible the increased page weight

But really why go to all the trouble of having to come up with css hacks when you can just use a table? I mean if all browsers had expressions like IE sure I could do great things with layers but they don't so what use the refresh hack? Not me...

http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/...tml#edef-TABLE

The HTML table model allows authors to arrange data -- text, preformatted text, images, links, forms, form fields, other tables, etc. -- into rows and columns of cells.

then at the end thay add

Tables should not be used purely as a means to layout document content as this may present problems when rendering to non-visual media. Additionally, when used with graphics, these tables may force users to scroll horizontally to view a table designed on a system with a larger display.

but my skills are beyond that issue I know how to prevent the issue of resolution v.s. width... it's an easy issue to handle

so if I have the w3c primary issue under wraps and I'm using my table to containt html, images text and so on.....

I mea if you notice my site doesn't scroll horizontal until the browser is less than 700 pixels wide.. now if you using 640x480 buy a new screen

[Magiaus]

omg - I know the do's and don't of web design lol

1) never use a black background
2) make it easy to find everything
3) if they can't find it in 3 clicks they are gone
4) don't use flash intro pages and other tech. that could be confusing to the user (don't use flash)
5) only use server tech. when absolutely needed
6) be prepared to change all this at the drop of a hat cause we say so
7) what was good yesterday is bad tomorrow
8) never use frames
9) everything should be easily indexed by a search engine
10) make pages load as quickly as possible
11) provide as many cross links for navigation as possible

and on and on

[Magiaus]

Well, I've made up my mind to change the bacground behind the flash, text, and everything. After I've made some coffee, fixed my sons laptop, and ironed out the nitty gritty of how the look and feel is going to change for the site I'll be implementing it.

You guys let me have any more ideas, suggestions, that sucks you have and I'll take that into account with what I change. Probably going to take till tomorrow for me to post the changed look so I'll post when I've got it changed

I'm thinking about how bad tables really are... google hasn't indexed the changes yet so I dunno how much effect they are having on search engines... I do know I don't care how well it looks in dos...

Edit
---------------------------------------------------
This is going to take some thought. All the flash, and
graphics I have now look like crap if you take out the
black. That is actualy why I have it black now.

So if I want to change the back color I might as well
do an entire new photoshop layout and all that...

---------------------------------------------------

[Magiaus]

Yeah I'm still think about this new look... I'm going to keep the old one live too but I am going to make a more corperate look and have it display by default let user change it with a ddl

[Magiaus]

please check out the new topic thread http://vbforums.com/showthread.php?p...20#post2428420