Massive help...starting point needed (Full Version)

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dzirkelb1 -> Massive help...starting point needed (2/14/2005 13:46:21)

I have all my functionality working that I need at this point; however, it is the ugliest looking piece of work I have ever seen. Nothing is uniform, nothing lines up, nothing makes sense (well, it does to me of course), but to no one else it won't.

http://www.msultd.com/breaktime/clients/search.asp

Basically, it has 2 forms on the search page which allows a user to quickly compare two pieces of searched data however they choose.

For each form, there is two drop downs or "between" functionality..meaning, first drop down is greater than or equal to, and second drop down is less than or equal to.

Please help me think of a way to make this look good, or at least, somewhat good (the client isn't ours yet...this is just a test phase for them :)

Thanks!



Nicole -> RE: Massive help...starting point needed (2/14/2005 16:23:25)

Hi Dzirkelb1 (nice name!)

Without knowing what your site is really for, and it may help us critique if we did, i think it's actually quite neat and very easy to read and navigate. I think the text would look better in verdana or arial though.

Again not sure what this site is for, or where it fits within the grand sceme of things on a larger site, you might get some ideas from Real Estate sites where they often ask a lot of questions like location, price range etc.

It actually looks like a food area health inspector questionnaire, am i right?

Nicole



dzirkelb1 -> RE: Massive help...starting point needed (2/14/2005 17:31:29)

Yup, its a mystery shop for a potential client...basically, we go and shop their products and grade them. Then, we give them the results.

I think the data is being displayed ok, not much you can do with displaying large amounts of data I suppose, but I am trying to make the search form more understandable / a little neater. I try to incorporate the colors of the company...which, in this case, are the blue and red; however, like I said, I am no good with colors, displaying them, and where to show what.

I added a button to output to excel format or web page format; however, it is time for me to go so I'll move it to a good place tomrrow :)

I guess what i'm looking for is a layout more than anything at this point in time...one that will make it easy for the user to understand while being nice to look at. By no means does it have to be artistical, it just has to be easilly readable, easy to follow, and easy to use.

Thanks for the critiques so far!



dzirkelb1 -> RE: Massive help...starting point needed (2/15/2005 14:40:01)

I have made some changes so it looks a little "prettier". Please critique to the layout of the search box and its readibility, usability, and over all comments / suggestions. Thanks!



dpf -> RE: Massive help...starting point needed (2/15/2005 14:46:26)

this is the second time i have looked at that page and frankly i am at a total loss as to what thepage is doing..i see two identical tables- perhaps other users would see it that way as well - perhaps you need to explain on there what to do. just my reaction



golfer -> RE: Massive help...starting point needed (2/15/2005 14:50:47)

Can you give me some more background info please. Having a spot of trouble with understanding the sites purpose.

Ian



dzirkelb1 -> RE: Massive help...starting point needed (2/15/2005 15:10:41)

Woops..thats my bad. The client will know what it is about, but of course you guys wouldn't!!

Its basically a mystery shop...aka, we go to their store, buy stuff, and rate their service. There are two identical tables here so they can compare their stores...aka, if they want to compare store 3006 to store 3020, they would select 3006 on the left table, and store 3020 on the right table, and then view the results. On the results page, there are 4 results regions. The first 2 are the averages for whatever criteria they specified...in this example, it would be store 3006 to store 3020. The bottom two results simply list the actual data for them to view / do whatever they wish to do with.

On the results page it contains hyperlinks to different data...clicking the eval code will display a printable report of the actual shop...clicking the store id shows the address of the store and info for it, clicking supervisor shows all of that supervisors shops, same with district manager.

Its main purpose is to filter the data for the user to display only what they want, as, there could be upwards of 1000 records. If they only want to view the month of December, then they would put in 12/01/2004 to 12/31/2004 to view...and, if they wanted to compare that month to their overall standings, then they would leave the compare to table blank. They can search by as many of the criteria listed in the form...meaning, they can search by store 3006 for the month of january, sort it by evalcode in ascending order and output it to excel if they so choose.

Does that help explain it at all? Sorry for the confusion...I made it with the assumption that the user knows what the data is. I will place some sort of explanatin on the site or tutorial explaining what it all does to help it be esaier for them.



d a v e -> RE: Massive help...starting point needed (2/15/2005 15:56:06)

i would prefer just a single 1 pixel border on the tables, and maybe some subtle shading (single background colour and possibly a little more padding on the cells but without making it too spaced out



dzirkelb1 -> RE: Massive help...starting point needed (2/15/2005 16:41:00)

The table border is currently set to 1px. I added some cellpadding, changed the background color to a soft blue (to go with their logo color) and the font to a darkish red color (again, to go with their logo). I like the current results. What do you all think?

also, I placed a soft grey for two of the drop downs to see how it would work with the blue. Does it look ok? Does the white look better? How'm I doing? :)



golfer -> RE: Massive help...starting point needed (2/15/2005 16:51:58)

Thanks dz. Think I have got it now. Wow its like a massive excel system on the web if I have got this right.

Nicole mentioned the font. Make it clearer. Have you thought about centering the words 'between' and 'and' in the main columns. Not a great fan of italics when used in large amounts but that may be just me.

The page is very bland. You could try, as Dave has said, a background colour. I think you should try a wider outer border on each table with a company colour just to give some definition.

I don't know if it is possible but can you alter the colour on the ratings boxes?

Ian



dzirkelb1 -> RE: Massive help...starting point needed (2/15/2005 17:01:14)

Looks like I changed the stuff right after your post Ian. I have changed some stuff around, mainly the colors.

I changed the font to be Verdana...I too like the change. I made the borders a little wider and added the redish color of their logo. I like the italics there as it is sort of makes it look like a comment, which was the effect. However, I extremely dislike the fact I place 'between' and 'and' every time...I am looking for a way to get rid of that so they know its between them. What exactly do you mean centering them? Centering them where?

What do you think of the color scheme so far? I didn't finish all the boxes with the grey until I hear it looks good...thats a lot of changes :)



jaybee -> RE: Massive help...starting point needed (2/15/2005 17:10:37)

There seem to be 2 different fonts. I prefer the one on the right.

I had a play around with your colours and some of the suggestions above. I applied a style sheet to your page and decided.... really push your client's colours. The white is too stark. How about this?



[image]local://upfiles/9075/9A0E31A5159D4C7F9243C30EDA804C32.gif[/image]



golfer -> RE: Massive help...starting point needed (2/15/2005 17:11:02)

That is a big improvement on previous page. There is to me a continuity flowing through the form without spoiling the simplicity.

Now one other thing I have though of. These are going to be discussed at meetings so people will, from time to time, want printed copies. Does it print out ok on black and white?

Ian



jaybee -> RE: Massive help...starting point needed (2/15/2005 17:13:49)

Nooooo, don't use the grey boxes. Most people will assume that it means they're greyed out and unavailable. Stick with the MS convention of white to complete, grey - ignore.



golfer -> RE: Massive help...starting point needed (2/15/2005 17:14:09)

Eeeeeee jaybee. You artistic rascal. To me that is it.

Wish I was as clever as you.

What do you think dz?

Ian



dzirkelb1 -> RE: Massive help...starting point needed (2/15/2005 17:22:57)

Thanks for your comments Jaybee! The font on the right was arial, and the left was verdana...I have the left currently set to verdena, right to arial unicode, and bottom to arial for comparison sakes.
I added the blue background color to take a look...I like it, but is it too blue? I also thickened the borders to make it more red.

Thanks golfer on your comments! It currently prints ok from my printer, but, that could change from user to user.

So, comes down to a couple questions now...

blue background...keep it, ditch it, make it grey?
grey drop downs...make them grey, leave them white?
fonts...arial, arial unicode, verdena?

Whichever I decide here will reflect on the data page that is displayed...I'm playing around with it now, so it looks ugly currently :)



dzirkelb1 -> RE: Massive help...starting point needed (2/15/2005 17:25:18)

the grey boxes are gone, they are now white :)

what about the submit button? what should its background color be?



jaybee -> RE: Massive help...starting point needed (2/15/2005 17:30:38)

I'd go with white or maroon with white writing.

I think the all blue is easier on the eyes than white.

Not sure about grey. Let's face it, the logo colours aren't exactly the greatest are they? The Maroon is fine but the blue makes me think 1950s. Let me stick a stylesheet on with a grey background.



jaybee -> RE: Massive help...starting point needed (2/15/2005 17:34:25)

The only one I would even contemplate using is silver #cccccc

The others make the blue and maroon look really tacky.

Why don't you show both to your client and let them choose? They have to work with it after all and what looks OK on my screen might not look good on theirs.



golfer -> RE: Massive help...starting point needed (2/16/2005 1:33:27)

Good Mornin USA.

Your page looks good to me. The only item I can now see is the white around the logo. Can you fill it with blue? Hope logo will still be defined enough. Isn't Jaybee a treasure?

Good luck Dz. I won't be around for a week or so.

Ian



Nicole -> RE: Massive help...starting point needed (2/16/2005 4:04:06)

Hi all,

Sorry I haven't continued to contribute to this thread after my initial response dz, been busy, but i like the changes others have suggested and those that you've made.

It's funny how I seem to go in and out of liking a font, i used to use verdana for everything, now you can't stop me using arial, so it's arial for me, not arial unicode, just plain old arial!

You've touched on the background, it's very easy on my eyes, moreso than white, but apart from grey i sometimes use a cream colour like #F4F0E6 or thereabouts. It might work with the maroun colour, but if sky blue is your clients business colours they may want to stick with them. Some strange colours can look good together y'now, i've started bookmarking websites i see and like that use strange colour combinations and make them look good.

Back to your page though, the image or logo at the top needs to have the same background colour as the rest of the page unless you put a thin border around that also to make it look like it's meant to have a white background.

Your two tables don't line up vertically, i suggest either you align them both at the top and don't worry about the bottom being off skew, or you add a blank line at the bottom of the left one to make it the same height as the right one.

Still on the tables, I Never use internal borders, especially "lightborder" and "darkborder" as you and so many other people seem to have them. Just looking at yout table content, it's very well aligned, it surely wouldn't confuse anyone if you removed all internal borders and just had a plain background, by doing that, you could also reduce the size of your external table borders perhaps down to 1px wide or maybe 2.

Have a play around with that maybe, and even see how your sky blue page background looks with table backgrounds of grey or silver as Jaybee suggested, or the colour i suggested trying or any other contrasting colour?

Hope that helps, it's taking shape nicely dz!

Nicole



Nicole -> RE: Massive help...starting point needed (2/16/2005 4:16:58)

...more thoughts...

Don't like the "between" and "and" being in italics, maybe you could use a smaller size font, or parhaps change their colour to #666666 so theyll still be there but less noticeable.

The other thought was the huge range of numbers in your boxes, 0 to 100? Do you really need to include every single number there or can you group them 0 - 5, 6 - 10, 11 - 15 etc?

To save you some typing, i may be off track, but if you're rating each item/service why can't it just be a score of "x" and not a range between "x" and "z"? You don't have to explain though, if both columns have to be there then you know why.

Nicole



dzirkelb1 -> RE: Massive help...starting point needed (2/16/2005 9:58:44)

Yup, the color background on the logo was my first job today...I noticed that last night but it was time to go home! :)

I will play around with the background color of the tables and see what comes about...the reason they are off line currently is because the fonts differ on each 3 tables, so once they are all the same, then they will line up.

I'll also play around with the italics...making them smaller may be too small as they are currently 10 font, but i'll play around with it. I don't want them to stick out, but, I do wish to have them knows to be a comment of some sort.

I have the between scores for the user...that way they can search for scores between 80 and 90. Also, the way its set up, they can do a simple search for scores below 70 (right drop down box) or scores above 70 (left drop down box) with out using the other box next to it. I would like to somehow show that to the user...someway to let them know it is between the two boxes, or greater / less than the boxes.

I'll also change the box to only show, say, 50 to 100 and in incriments of 5...they will never have that bad of a score...and if they do, then the client needs to take a look at whats going wrong :)

Thanks for all the input everyone!! I am liking where this is going :)



dzirkelb1 -> RE: Massive help...starting point needed (2/16/2005 10:19:25)

Ok...I have made some more change :)

font is arial, all is lined up.

Took away internal borders, made external border 1px

made background cccccc of tables / submit buttons

colored background of logo with the blue

made the scores from 100-0 with increments of 5

got rid of italics and made them the maroon color.

What is everyone's thoughts?



dzirkelb1 -> RE: Massive help...starting point needed (2/16/2005 11:32:47)

Also, please hit submit once on the submit button to take a look at the data being displayed and tell me which layout you like best / what it should look like...after that, i'm done! :)



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