All comments appreciated (Full Version)

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



Message

womble -> All comments appreciated (4/9/2005 9:29:27)

Well here it is – my first attempt at web design – www.ddeaf.org.uk – well actually it’s version 1 mk 2 because after seeing the standard of the 1st sites on here, my very first version died of embarrassment and wiped itself off my hard drive before I uploaded it to the sever. [:D]

After banging on about accessibility elsewhere, I know it’s not fully accessible, but that’s in part due to lack of knowledge and the fact I had to get something up there rather quickly. I’m very new to web design, and currently reading up on XHTML and CSS. In version 2 I’m hoping to put that right.

I know there are a couple of major problems. The first being that I’ve used layout tables for positioning, not good for screen-readers, I know, but at the time I was struggling to get everything to stay where I wanted it to as the piccies in particular kept wandering around the page, no matter whether I used absolute or relative positioning.

The second problem is the size of the index page. According to FP it’ll take over a minute to load on a 56kbps dial-up connection. I did try it on my back-up dial-up connection and found it loaded practically as fast as on broadband…then I realised my browser was caching it and cleared the cache to find it did load rather slowly, but I’m sure it didn’t take as long as FP predicted. I’d be interested to hear if others are finding it takes an unacceptably long time to load on a dial-up connection, and any ideas on how I can reduce the file size.

Any comments appreciated.

Thanks.



jaybee -> RE: All comments appreciated (4/9/2005 10:17:50)

The site is really good especially as it's a first attempt.

I would add a doctype to your pages so that the browsers know what they're dealing with rather than having to figure it out. Minor speed improvement there.

Major improvements if you do something about the size of your images. The Welcome with signing on the main page is 64.89kb by itself. Adding up all the graphics on that page comes to well over 150kb. As the optimum page size for dial-ups is around 30-50kb in total that might give you an idea of why it's so slow.



Donkey -> RE: All comments appreciated (4/9/2005 10:30:14)

Nice site.
Don't like the marquee though.
Only other comment is that the Deaf awareness week logo looks a bit "3rd generation", I would resample it from a high resoution original if possible, or if not rebuild it using the orange fern but adding a new dot and new text.
<edit>
I think the problem is that the logo is 185 x 128 px and your html changes it to 136 x 97. If you proportionately resample, the logo will be 140 x 97 px and it looks fine. Then you need to change the 136 to 140 in your html.
</edit>

When I first saw it I thought that ddeaf must mean people who are deaf and also stutter. How do you pronounce it "de deaf" or "duh deaf" or is the first d silent?

Also I would make it a priority to get the site as accessible as you can particularly in view of the subject matter.



jaybee -> RE: All comments appreciated (4/9/2005 10:33:16)

quote:

Also I would make it a priority to get the site as accessible as you can particularly in view of the subject matter.


[:D] He's come over from the dark side.

[sm=kiss.gif][sm=kiss.gif][sm=kiss.gif][sm=kiss.gif]



Donkey -> RE: All comments appreciated (4/9/2005 10:45:24)

quote:


He's come over from the dark side
I've joined you lot on the dark side you mean[:D].

(Must go now, my phone alarm has gone off so I have just enugh time to get home and watch the Grand National- I love to see my money go down the drain at the first fence - it's traditional)



dpf -> RE: All comments appreciated (4/9/2005 10:52:04)

quote:

When I first saw it I thought that ddeaf must mean people who are deaf and also stutter
now that is funny



womble -> RE: All comments appreciated (4/9/2005 11:31:48)

Thanks for the advice guys. I'm hoping to do a little tidying up tomorrow, just as soon as I've finished what I should be doing today. Today's job should be to finish off the user guide for the discussion forum that's soon to be attached to the site as many of our members aren't too IT illerate, but I've managed to spend most of the day potting around here so far! [sm=icon_redface.gif]

quote:

Don't like the marquee though.


I agree totally. I only put it there because we wanted something up front about our training courses, but I don't think it looks very good, though the rest of the committee love it. I think I may have to quietly remove it while they're not looking...

quote:

Only other comment is that the Deaf awareness week logo looks a bit "3rd generation", I would resample it from a high resoution original if possible, or if not rebuild it using the orange fern but adding a new dot and new text.


Thanks for that. It's actaully a logo we got from the organisation that's organised the awareness week so I'll see if they have a higher resolution version. It looks okay to me, but that may well be because my vision's not too good. I'll see what I can do with it

quote:

When I first saw it I thought that ddeaf must mean people who are deaf and also stutter. How do you pronounce it "de deaf" or "duh deaf" or is the first d silent?


The first d's silent. We spell it with a 'dd' to because we use capital ‘D’ to describe the Deaf community (profoundly deaf sign language users) and a small ‘d’ deaf to describe other deaf people. We know why we use it but it confuses everyone else and we regularly get told there's a typo in our literature, and if it was left to me I'd just spell it like everyone else does and save all the hassle. From now on though I'll tell people it's just I've got a computer that stutters! [:D]

quote:

Also I would make it a priority to get the site as accessible as you can particularly in view of the subject matter.


I have lots of improvements planned, including an interactive map of services for deaf people and some other stuff the rest of the committee though would be a good idea, but they have been told they'll have to wait until I've sorted out the accessibility which they seem happy with for now because they're just so pleased I've moved us into the 21st centurt and we're online (they're easily pleased [;)])



kevin3442 -> RE: All comments appreciated (4/13/2005 4:31:38)

Hi Womble,

Certainly way better than my first go, back when the web was young and so was I. I like the overall layout and I'm a fan of clean sites such as yours. I would agree that the marquee isn't the best thing. I can't speak from personal experience, but wouldn't folks with some sort of visual difficulties find such a marquee hard to read? I do, and I see pretty well with my glasses on. Just a thought.

I would suggest some sort of hover effect for your nav buttons.

Also, it seems that some of your pages are centered, while others are left justified. In fact, as you click the buttons from top to bottom in your nav bar, there's a point ("Meetings" to "Ddeaf Facts") when it alternates, left to center, from page to page. It's a little disconcerting. I'd stick with one or the other. Personally, I prefer left... but that's just my own preference. I wonder if there's any info on whether left justified or centered sites are easier for people who have some sort of visual difficulty. I guess one way to look at it (oops... a pun!) is that with centered sites, both left and right sides move (with respect to the screen) as you resize the browser. But with a left-justified site, if any side moves at all, it's only the right side. Less "moving" to track with left justified sites.

On some of your left justified pages (e.g., Events), the nav buttons look to be centered in their table cell. Since the cell resizes with the page (must be a percentage), once the page gets wide enough (roughly 1380px), the buttons start to form two columns within the cell. Kind of blows the nav bar look apart. On other left justified pages (e.g., Membership), the buttons look to be left justified within their table cell, so resizing the window does not blow the nav bar apart. This isn't a concern on your centered pages, because it looks like the table cell containing the buttons does not resize.

Nice job overall. I'm sure it'll be great when you're finished.

Cheers,

Kevin



womble -> RE: All comments appreciated (4/13/2005 10:00:42)

Hi Kevin,

Thanks for your comments. I’ve just done a bit of an update today based on earlier comments. I’ve added a doctype, taken out the marquee and redone the ‘welcome’ graphic (realised I’d put the text as well as the symbols in as a gif – doh!). I’ve also redone the Deaf Awareness Week logo. Can someone tell me if it’s any better please? (I get everything in soft focus so I can’t tell). I know I’ve still got a problem with the overall size of the graphics, but today was just a sort of quick-fix until I can find time to do it properly (getting bogged down in meetings later today – grrrrr!)

quote:

I would suggest some sort of hover effect for your nav buttons.

Originally I did have a hover effect on the nav buttons but took it out early on when I got myself in a flap about weird js that kept cropping up all over the place. Now I know more about it I may well put it back in.

quote:

Also, it seems that some of your pages are centered, while others are left justified. In fact, as you click the buttons from top to bottom in your nav bar, there's a point ("Meetings" to "Ddeaf Facts") when it alternates, left to center, from page to page. It's a little disconcerting. I'd stick with one or the other.


I did have a problem today when I uploaded my changes and everything centred, which I think (fingers crossed) I managed to correct. It’s actually all supposed to be left justified. It seemed okay to me this afternoon when I checked again, though I only checked in IE, so don’t know if it could be a browser problem. Didn’t get chance to check in the others.

quote:

On some of your left justified pages (e.g., Events), the nav buttons look to be centered in their table cell. Since the cell resizes with the page (must be a percentage), once the page gets wide enough (roughly 1380px), the buttons start to form two columns within the cell. Kind of blows the nav bar look apart.

Possibility a problem with different resolutions? I think I probably need to look at the cell size again for the nav buttons.

Anyway, thanks for your comments. Must dash now. I’m supposed to be at a meeting in half an hour!



Donkey -> RE: All comments appreciated (4/13/2005 12:24:39)

quote:

I’ve also redone the Deaf Awareness Week logo. Can someone tell me if it’s any better please?
Looks a lot better to me.



jaybee -> RE: All comments appreciated (4/13/2005 12:42:33)

Much better.



womble -> RE: All comments appreciated (4/15/2005 8:24:47)

Well I thought I'd sorted out the centred pages problem, but the events page still seems to be centred for some strange reason. I checked this morning in FP that everything was left aligned and indeed is, both in design and preview views. In the code in split view, it has align="left", but I've just tried viewing it live in IE and it's centred. In Netscape, FF and Mozilla it's ok (left aligned), but in IE and Opera it's centred on that page. Any ideas on what's happening here anyone? I know part of the problem's because the site was originally done using FP wysiwyg, and some of the text was copied and pasted over from a Word document. Version 2 of the site will be done 'properly'. Is there a quick fix though that I can use until I have chance to get v2 up and running?
Thanks.



Nicole -> RE: All comments appreciated (4/17/2005 18:36:42)

Hi Womble,

Sorry i haven't contributed much here lately, been very busy with things, but i did like your site, and as i'm one of the few people here that still uses dial-up i thought i should respond.

Your opening page loaded in 25 seconds on my 56k dial-up.

I also like your page because it's clean and tidy, not too cramped and not too sparce despite the amount of information you seem to have on the opening page.

Just one question though, you have a button link to a text-only version of your site and although i know you've included that info in the alt tag, i'm wondering if it should also be included in the links at the bottom of the page too?

Very nice site though, beats my first efforts by a mile and probably still does. Well done!

I viewed your site using IE 6 at 1024x768.

Nicole



womble -> RE: All comments appreciated (4/18/2005 4:16:30)

Thanks Nicole. It's good to have an idea of how long it takes on dial-up. I know the file size at the moment's too big, and I'm working out how I can reduce that. I'm hoping version 2 will be a lot smaller. I'd not thought about putting a link to the text version at the bottom of the page too. I'll put that in.

Since my last update I had problems with some of the pages centering, particularly in IE and Opera, even though I'd specified 'align left'. I think the problem may have been something to do with text I'd copied over from Word, so I played about with the code yesterday and took out a lot of the style information that FP seemed to have put in, and fingers crossed it's working okay now.

BTW - at the moment I'm using tables for layout (hoping to switch to CSS in version 2) - do the tables themselves create a lot of file size?



Nicole -> RE: All comments appreciated (4/18/2005 4:35:50)

Hi Womble,

Just a note on copying text from word, if you copy it and paste it into a text editor like Notepad first, then select all and copy and paste it back into your website, a lot of the code word applied it should remove itself.

Nicole

p.s. i don't think 25 seconds is long to wait for a page to load, it's when it takes well over a minute that i start to get frustrated.



womble -> RE: All comments appreciated (4/18/2005 4:58:04)

Thanks for the tip Nicole.



womble -> RE: All comments appreciated (4/19/2005 5:20:35)


quote:

despite the amount of information you seem to have on the opening page.


Do you think I've got too much information on the opening page? The reason I'm asking is because I've just started work on version 2 of the site (being brave and hand coding in xhtml and css - eek!), so I want to try and get an idea of whether the layout works before I get too far into it. I'm considering moving the nav buttons and having them horizontal because I feel as though I'm losing a lot of space by having them where they are. Actually I'm not sure what I'm doing at the moment - I keep changing my mind. I suppose I ought to concntrate on getting the content in first and then start thinking about css and the layout. Anyhow, any thoughts would be appreciated though.



Tink -> RE: All comments appreciated (4/19/2005 18:33:04)

I think yes there is too much info on the index page. Otherwise it's a wonderful site!
Comic Relief is doing well here in London.
I like the news button fader you

cheers!

Tink [:)]



Page: [1]

Valid CSS!




Forum Software © ASPPlayground.NET Advanced Edition 2.4.5 ANSI
0.09375