2Dolphins Web Site Critique Request (Full Version)

All Forums >> [Web Design] >> Site Critiques



Message

rodaniel -> 2Dolphins Web Site Critique Request (3/6/2005 21:48:47)

Just discovered this forum and thought I'd put out a call for some constructive criticism of my www.2Dolphins.com web site. While this is just a personal site that my wife and I use to keep in touch with friends and family (rather than any kind of business or commercial venture) I'd still like to continue to refine and improve it.

In particular, I've been working on integrating my Blogger journal into the main page. I wondered if the watermark is too faint to even be noticable or if I've managed to make it noticable without being obtrusive or annoying.

Another focal point of my recent efforts has been the "Our House" page that showcases the room-by-room renovations we've been doing to our house over the past few years. You'll find that page listed under the Photos section or go there directly with this link. I worked long and hard to get that drawing to look kind accurate yet sketchy at the same time and have hotspot links to the appropriate room pages.

Lastly, I've been tinking with making the site PocketPC friendly since I recently acquired a Dell Axim with a wi-fi CF adapter. I've managed to get the site to redirect to a simplified version that works nicely in PocketIE on the Axim and I've even seen it work on an older WinCE device with odd-sized landscape-oriented screen.

My wife and I use FrontPage 2003 for most of the web site dev.

Any feedback or suggestions would really be appreciated!

Rob O.



kevin3442 -> RE: 2Dolphins Web Site Critique Request (3/8/2005 2:27:30)

Hi Rob,

The watermark seems fine on my screen. It's noticable but not too strong. It's easy to make out when there's no text over it, and doesn't detract from reading when there is text over it. Nice job IMO.

Regarding the photo tour of your house... it's late where I live, and I'm the only one in the office, so maybe I'm feeling a little paranoid... but does anyone else have an uneasy feeling about putting a photo tour of one's home on publicly accessible pages of a personal site?

Call me paranoid...

Kevin



jaybee -> RE: 2Dolphins Web Site Critique Request (3/8/2005 5:30:13)

I have to dispute the fact that Alice Cooper and Jimi Hendrix are "Punk Rock"!



rodaniel -> RE: 2Dolphins Web Site Critique Request (3/8/2005 6:05:26)


quote:

ORIGINAL: kevin3442
Regarding the photo tour of your house [...] does anyone else have an uneasy feeling about putting a photo tour of one's home on publicly accessible pages of a personal site?


Thanks for the feedback, Kevin! I was a bit apprehensive about the photos revealing a bit too specific info about our whereabouts too. So I've tried to be careful not to show anything that pinpoints our address or exact locale. Still, do you think I've shown too much?

Rob



kevin3442 -> RE: 2Dolphins Web Site Critique Request (3/9/2005 1:11:55)

Hi Rob,

It's not so much the pictures that reveal anything about location. The pictures may show stuff that you have that someone else might like to have. If someone decides to relieve you of that stuff, location information might not be too hard to glean from other sources, for someone with a little net savvy (for crooks, many of whom aren't very bright, that may just mean that someone else who is bright showed them how). This is especially true of personal sites, because of the way the domain name is registered. For example, within a few minutes of visiting your site (even without reading your post), I know your name, your wife's name (including last name), her email address, and what may be your phone number and your home address (I don't want to put it here, but maybe just a small bit to illustrate: 52nd).

I'm not trying to creep you out (although I'm creeping myself out a bit!) so please don't take it that way. I'm just offering one person's opinion. But hey... maybe it's just me being paranoid. If you decided to secure that section, you could put it behind a login, then set up accounts for your friends and family to use.

I like the floor plan image BTW. And nice job on the kitchen! Something I dread having to do one day.

Cheers,

Kevin



rodaniel -> RE: 2Dolphins Web Site Critique Request (1/10/2007 4:48:32)

Given the date on the original post, you can probably tell that 2Dolphins hadn't had a real update in quite some time. Oh sure, we've added to the content, but the look and navigation of the site had not changed significantly in almost 2 years.

So, with the New Year, we decided it was time for a new look. I'd sure appreciate some feedback on the overhaul!

Rob



mar0364 -> RE: 2Dolphins Web Site Critique Request (1/12/2007 16:24:37)

I thought it was a site about the Miami Dolphins. Darn.



jaybee -> RE: 2Dolphins Web Site Critique Request (1/12/2007 17:47:05)

Well it's nice, it's clean and it's CSS but the pages are a bit slow to load. You might be better off taking all the css out of the pages and putting it in an external stylesheet, then it only gets rendered once and all the pages use it.



Tailslide -> RE: 2Dolphins Web Site Critique Request (1/13/2007 4:02:21)

I agree with Jaybee about the CSS. It will make it much faster to fix stuff if you do that.

One thing - in Firefox, the header image is about 10px down from the top of the page. If you hunt down your header CSS rules and find this one: 
border:#ad9b53 0px solid;
make the 0px 1px and the problem goes away. I know it's strange - but it works!

Apart from that there's not a lot to say - it's nice. It's not "Wow!" but it's nice. Personally, I'd find a more colourful header image to really make it stand out more - it's such a colourful subject, there must be loads of $1 photos at places like http://www.istockphoto.com.

Oh - just noticed, the nav looks different in IE7 and FF. I think it's how it's meant to be in FF, with rounded corners - but actually it probably looks better without them....

If you're up for it then I've found this to be a real time saver for tab navigation - http://www.highdots.com/css-tab-designer/ It's free too!



rodaniel -> RE: 2Dolphins Web Site Critique Request (1/13/2007 4:04:48)

JB, I've been wondering about that, but I'm not at all sure how to go about doing so. I'd certainly appreciate some pointers on linking to an external stylesheet.

I am very keen on the idea of being able to make a single tweak to the layout code and have it apply site-wide.

(I actually thought the loading speed issue was mostly on my end - my DSL connectivity has been kind of pokey lately...)



jaybee -> RE: 2Dolphins Web Site Critique Request (1/13/2007 6:26:32)

quote:

If you're up for it then I've found this to be a real time saver for tab navigation - http://www.highdots.com/css-tab-designer/ It's free too!
I've had that for ages and do you know I've never used it. Must take another look sometime.



Tailslide -> RE: 2Dolphins Web Site Critique Request (1/13/2007 6:37:09)

I've used it twice this week!!

I tend not to use it exactly as is - but I'll take the images into PS and change their colour etc and then use them. It's very useful because I'm just too lazy to implement the whole "shifting the image up and down" thing by myself.



jaybee -> RE: 2Dolphins Web Site Critique Request (1/13/2007 6:37:42)

quote:

I've been wondering about that, but I'm not at all sure how to go about doing so. I'd certainly appreciate some pointers on linking to an external stylesheet.

In theory it's straight forward but I've just noticed that you are using Blogger.com and I have no idea how much flexibility you have with that. I know we tried it with someone else before and couldn't get it to work.

How do you set up and load pages to blogger?
Can you set up new files and folders on there?



womble -> RE: 2Dolphins Web Site Critique Request (1/13/2007 9:53:27)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Tailslide

If you're up for it then I've found this to be a real time saver for tab navigation - http://www.highdots.com/css-tab-designer/ It's free too!

That looks pretty good. I spotted it the other day while Stumble-uponing, but never got round to investigating. I've used the e-lusion menus before, and they're pretty easy to use, but that looks really nice!



rodaniel -> RE: 2Dolphins Web Site Critique Request (1/13/2007 10:03:11)

JB, there's a "Template" text box where you paste the page code on Blogger. The HTML code is the same as I've used on the other pages except for a <Blogger> chunk within the Body that defines how to present the incoming blog post data.

I have a fair bit (or at least the sense thereof) of control over the environment that Blogger uses...

I'd be happy to email you the code if need be...

Rob



rodaniel -> RE: 2Dolphins Web Site Critique Request (1/13/2007 13:17:35)

Okay, well, I've been toying around with the external CSS stuff this morning and I'm kinda wrapping my teensy brain around the concept...

So far, what I've tried works, but some of the positioning is getting hammered in the process. Take a peek at this page to see what I'm getting:

External CSS Test Page

Not arguing that there are certainly other merits to this (significantly cleans up the code!), but I can't tell that moving the CSS to an external file really boosts the page load speed...

Rob



jaybee -> RE: 2Dolphins Web Site Critique Request (1/13/2007 13:29:54)

OK, the css file isn't being picked up or rather it seems to be empty.

You also have a doctype of 
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"

"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
and your code isn't xhtml strict so it'll render wrong anyway.

The original pages have different header code and have @includes for 2 blogger.com css files, not sure if that's also part of the problem.



rodaniel -> RE: 2Dolphins Web Site Critique Request (1/14/2007 12:23:32)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Tailslide

Apart from that there's not a lot to say - it's nice. It's not "Wow!" but it's nice. Personally, I'd find a more colourful header image to really make it stand out more.


Good advice, Tailslide, I came up with a far better, much less cartoonish, header graphic. Brings the look up a notch, IMO.



Page: [1]

Valid CSS!




Forum Software © ASPPlayground.NET Advanced Edition 2.4.5 ANSI
0.078125