Please don't laugh. (Full Version)

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snreu -> Please don't laugh. (2/22/2007 18:11:15)

Well folks, this is my first foray into the web building world. I am self taught (probably pretty evident), no experience other that practice sites I've been the only one to see, and only get to play with Front Page 2003 (I know, I know, I know.)
I work for a small business that I had to talk the owner into letting me do him a website. He wanted nothing to do with it at first. I take a camera with me to all jobs, and take loads of pictures. I work on the site on my own time, at night and on weekends. I haven't been paid for any of it except reimbursed for the hosting fees. It took my wife several days to talk me into even posting this here. Take a look and see what you think. Be gentle.
I have access to Adobe Go Live CS2 now and I want to redo everything. New menus, different graphics and so on.
I have just joined this forum, and have spent lots of time here. Pretty wet here in Indiana and not much dirt work going on.
I will get a new box of tissues, and eagerly await getting beat up.
Oh yea, www.spikerexcavating.com.
Thanks.



snreu -> RE: Please don't laugh. (2/22/2007 18:52:12)

I guess I didn't need that last . after my url.
www.spikerexcavating.com
Sorry.



womble -> RE: Please don't laugh. (2/22/2007 19:09:34)

Nah, we wait until you've got at least 5 posts under your belt before we start beating folks up (we don't want to scare folks away too quickly) [:D]

Okay, now to get serious....do you want the good bits or the bad bits first?

Okay, you get the good bits first. [;)]

You've got loads of really good pics there. I especially like the hover over the pics to see the finished thing on the 'Concrete' page. That's a really good use of a hover effect. One thing you do need to be aware of though is that the FP galleries you've used on some pages only work in Internet Explorer (on the whole the fancy bits and pieces in FP are designed by Microsoft to work with Microsoft products).

You've also got a fairly logical navigation structure with the different bits of the site clearly separated, which is good - it's surprising how many people just throw a site together with little thought as to how it all fits together. One thing I would do though is have a heading on each page rather than just the company name so people know exactly where they are on the site.

And now to the bits that need some work....

Teeny things - ditch the marquees (scrolling text) and little animated pic - they're very "90s".

Navigation - really your navigation needs to be consistent on all the pages. On the home page you've got all the pages - on the others just a link to the home page and contact. They are the important ones really, but what you're making visitors do is go all the way back to the home page to get to another page. Don't make visitors have to think - it makes them waste brain cells they could be using looking at your site.

You've got a mix of font styles (serif and sans serif) and sizes and colours on there. Again for the sake of consistency, chose a font style and stick to it. Sans serif fonts like Arial and Verdana often work well on screen.

The first thing that struck me though is that you've got a huge logo, a menu and some pics taking up all the visible screen space (at least on my laptop), and you have to scroll down to get any text. That's not a good idea for two reasons - firstly, when search engines are indexing sites for including in their results they tend to only read a set number of words. With all your graphics and buttons and things in the code up at the top of the page, it's likely that they won't actually get as far as indexing the bit you want indexing. The second reason is those visitors again - don't make them think! You need to catch there attention with both your graphics and text from the moment they hit your page. The not very bright ones may not realise there's anything "below the fold", and the others, you're giving them time while they're scrolling to consider going to another site.

Basically you've got nothing on there that's not fixable and nothing that's a horrendous faux pas. For a first site that's really good and you've got the makings of an excellent site there.



jaybee -> RE: Please don't laugh. (2/22/2007 20:28:08)

He's got 5 posts now so can I beat him up? [:D]



snreu -> RE: Please don't laugh. (2/22/2007 21:38:32)

womble, You made my night! When I saw I had some responses, I almost just turned off my pc and turned in for the night. It would of been a long and restless night, I'm afraid, and I would of got up in the wee hours and my wife would of caught me sneakin into the puter room to see what was said, ( then she would of made that noise she makes and rolled her eyes at me and went back to bed).

The marquee and the animated pic are the two things I used to help convince Joe he needed a website. He really likes them, but I agree, they are not my favorite. Also the logo came from scanning a business card and playing with Photo Shop(need some more time spent there too).

Good point on the navigation. I can fix that asap. Also the fonts. Should I just make things smaller on the top of the home page?

I created most of the pages using layers. I like the way you can move things around as you go. I'm not sure why you would use anything else. Didn't spend a lot of time on CSS or tables once I figured out layers, but I will if someone can convince me I should.

I tested the site with Firefox, and Opera. The only thing I found that didn't work was the Photo Gallerys. In IE, they had little scroll arrows up by the thumbnails so you could scroll back and forth (they only show 5 thumbs) In the other browsers, all the thumbnails were shown, but you could still click the thumb and see a large pic.

One other thing that bugs me is how some pages are just a bit wider than others and have horizontal scroll bars. That's just me being sloppy, I'm sure. I need to work on that too.

Thanks for the comments, womble. I, and my wife, will sleep better now.

Let me have it jaybee!




jaybee -> RE: Please don't laugh. (2/23/2007 5:54:16)

quote:

Let me have it jaybee!

What she said. [8|]

[:D]



womble -> RE: Please don't laugh. (2/23/2007 6:07:48)

quote:

Let me have it jaybee!

Dangerous words! Jaybee's lethal with bananas and can inflict serious injuries with them...admittedly they're usually injuries to herself, but you never know, she might have got better with them recently! [:D]

I'm really not too sure about the benefits of layers, having never used them (my first site I did in FP, and then 3 weeks after it went on the server, I decided on a total redesign after deciding I needed to learn HTML and stuff, much to the astonishment of the organisation I'd done the site for, and since then I've done most stuff by hand), so I'll leave layers to FP users.

The beauty with CSS though is that (if you use an external stylesheet) say Joe decides he'd like all the headings in blue rather than red, or he wants the background colours of the pages changing or something...with CSS with a couple of changes to the code, you can change the colours throughout the site, without having to make changes to each page.

On the galleries, on Firefox, as you've discovered, you don't get the scroll arrows, just the pics all in a long line and scrollbars on the page. While IE does have the largest market share at the moment, other browsers such as Firefox and Opera are increasing in popularity, and on a commercial site you need to make sure you're as cross browser compatible as possible. On a site I've recently taken over that's nothing to do with web design, and isn't linked to from here or anywhere else "webbie", so it's users are just your average surfers, according to my server stats, IE visits are running at around 64% at the moment.

There are loads of great galleries out there, including some very nice ones at Dynamic Drive - most of them are simply a case of copying and pasting the code in the appropriate place and giving it the filenames of the pictures to display.

On the page widths, you've got your page widths specified in pixels (px) and you've got slightly different widths on various pages. If you specify your page width in percentages then the page will expand and contract to fit the screen it's viewed on. Though many people are using monitors at 1000px + widths these days, some may use other resolutions or have older monitors. If you're using pixels for widths it's advisable not to use fixed widths of any more than around 770px, otherwise you risk getting horizontal scrollbars on low resolutions. Personally (and this is just a personal preference) I'd either centre the page or have it the whole screen width.



jaybee -> RE: Please don't laugh. (2/23/2007 6:43:58)

One other trick, I never use 100% widths as IE can get it a bit wrong. I use 99% instead.



Minix -> RE: Please don't laugh. (2/23/2007 13:14:21)

I think it just needs a bit of organizing and more consistency in the navigation and over all message of the site.

Initially I thought it was about the Excavating business, but there is a lot more to Joe Spiker. I'd have a general opening page and with links to the different businesses.

Decent first effort. The basic mistakes that all of us made on our first attempts.



snreu -> RE: Please don't laugh. (2/24/2007 16:21:32)

I certainly appreciate all the comments. It is certainly reassuring to me to hear that I didn't commit any major sins.
One thing I might ask, for some reason I have a mental block concerning how I might create a banner or "fancy" header for the home page. To me the home page just looks completly amaturish. I know the logo needs lots of work, but creatively, I just don't know how or in what direction to procede.
Joe really likes the little animated excavator digging out our motto so I would like to leave that in.
Once again, thanks to everyone for taking the time to leave a comment.



jaybee -> RE: Please don't laugh. (2/24/2007 16:25:47)

The way I do it is go have a hunt round the web for looks that I like. Make a note of the sites then try and come up with something along those lines maybe incorporating a couple of ideas. Do not do an exact copy or you'll get done for copyright.



Minix -> RE: Please don't laugh. (2/25/2007 1:19:21)

quote:

ORIGINAL: snreu

I certainly appreciate all the comments. It is certainly reassuring to me to hear that I didn't commit any major sins.
One thing I might ask, for some reason I have a mental block concerning how I might create a banner or "fancy" header for the home page. To me the home page just looks completly amaturish. I know the logo needs lots of work, but creatively, I just don't know how or in what direction to procede.
Joe really likes the little animated excavator digging out our motto so I would like to leave that in.
Once again, thanks to everyone for taking the time to leave a comment.


If you really, really, really have to keep that animated excavating thing, put it up in your banner.

Maybe something like this
DIG IT

Then maybe match up some link buttons to tie it together. (I did a very very basic, quick mock up here)



jaybee -> RE: Please don't laugh. (2/25/2007 5:14:40)

MUCH better!



snreu -> RE: Please don't laugh. (2/25/2007 10:41:02)

Wow Minix, your my hero! That is the kind of banner I've been trying to come up with! Now I just need someone to let me know what I can do to figure out how to do that. What books I can buy, or where I can go to learn how to do that. If this is a "very very basic, quick mock up", I am exicted to think what a little investment in time could produce! I would like to be able to create that.
Again, I am using Front Page 2003 because I have that program and have spent a lot of time learning it. I now have access to Adobe Go Live CS2, I got a copy from the hosting site (1and1) I signed up with, but I have not even loaded it too see what it was about. I would like to not have to spend a wad of money on anything different, but I would if doing so would open new possibilities to me.
Now Minix, I would ask, if I wanted to see the code behind that banner you created, so I could see the mechanics of it, and possibly tweak it myself, would that be possible? And if so, how do I go about doing that?
I am hungry for the skills to do this. I'm sorry if that sounds hokey,( that is a midwest term that means something like pathetic, I guess) and I don't want to upset the professional website builders out there that are saying,"Go to school and learn it yourself", but I am going to teach myself as much as I can about this and really appreciate the input this forum has provided. I should of done this a long time ago!
Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!



Minix -> RE: Please don't laugh. (2/25/2007 10:54:53)

For a lot of basic web images I use Real Draw Pro. It only costs $60 and has some very nice, easy to use functions for creating images. You won't be able to create good print materials like images for business cards, letterhead etc, with Real Draw. Just jpegs and gifs.

http://www.mediachance.com/realdraw/index.html

For more complex design and print materials the big guns use Adobe Iluustartor, Corel Draw and a few others. Those are three figure software packages. Steeper learning curve



Minix -> RE: Please don't laugh. (2/25/2007 11:03:46)

Creating the banner is really simple math.

1) Determine if your page layout will be placed in fixed pixel cells or in a per centage layout.

2) Determine the banner size for your layout.

For that mock up I created a table 770 pixels wide and 124 pixels in length. I did this because your animated digger images was 124 pixels in length. The 770 width should accomodate the most common screen resolutions.

Then I went into Real Pro and created a 770x124 image - the banner you see. I then set that banner as my background for that table I made above. Then I split the table into two cells - one 400 inches wide and one 370 inches wide. Then I inserted your animated gizmo and put the marquee in.

Very very basic stuff.



d a v e -> RE: Please don't laugh. (2/25/2007 13:18:45)

that's a layout minix!!!



snreu -> RE: Please don't laugh. (2/27/2007 19:30:33)

Well Minix, one of these days, I too hope to get to the point where I think that is "very very basic stuff". For now though, I get a slight twinge over my right eye, and a dull ache radiating from the back of my head as I have spent the last two days reading and re-reading all the stuff I have had time to read on Tables, CSS layouts, layers, pixels and percentages, most of which I have at least skimmed through and decided it was written for other people, but I could figure this stuff out without it, yea right! I can't thank you all enough for taking the time to explain all this, and I will study hard and try to get out of the laundry as much as I can to put it all to good practice.
Thanks!



jaybee -> RE: Please don't laugh. (2/28/2007 5:34:32)

There's a book that might help you.

Takes you step by step through building an HTML and CSS web site.



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