Please review... (Full Version)

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mkhaira143 -> Please review... (7/17/2007 19:03:09)

Hello Everyone.
I work for California State University, Stanislaus. Last year the admissions and president's office purchased this website. They are planning to change the design within 6 months or so, due to the lack of “love” for this site. I've been given the project of researching possible new designs. I have my own notes on what and why I don't like this site. But I wanted to put this in front of someone who's never seen or heard of CSU Stanislaus, someone who'd give an unbiased answer.
Is this site functional? As a visitor (prospective student, current student, friendly visitor, parent, etc.), does this site take you where you want/need to go? Or are you lost?
Anything else you can offer will be greatly appreciated. The redesign effort is to improve not only the functionality of the site, but the visual appearance as well.
www.csustan.edu



Tailslide -> RE: Please review... (7/18/2007 3:22:48)

Hi

Personally I quite like the general look of the site now! I think that there are a few things that could be changed presentation-wise such as I firmly believe that the navigation should be the same on every page - currently it's different on the home page and several inner pages.

Technically the homepage and most of the main pages (Academics, About Us etc) are reasonably good - CSS layouts, reasonably semantic and fairly accessible. The top pages (FAQs, Calendars etc) look like they were written by someone totally different as they're in a much older style of coding - much worse quality, if you see what I mean. The main CSS layout pages should be pretty easy to switch around without major effort (you shouldn't need to touch the markup itself) but the other table-based pages will be a real pain! All the CSS for these pages are actually in the document head of each page!!

In particular, for instance you mention on your accessibility page about the effort to make the site always accessible however that page itself is a table-layout (not recommended for accessibility) plus there are some very confusing things on the page for screenreaders. Also the link to the accessibility page itself is in a frame for some reason. The main navigation is also missing from that page.

Also all the navigation on the main part of the site is using an image replacement method that doesn't work with images off and which doesn't have a focus effect for people not using a mouse to navigate the page.

Personally, if I were you I'd look at the following:

1. Ensure all pages are of a reasonable coding quality to help with future maintenance (e.g. semantic markup, CSS layout). Look at using ems rather than a fixed width to make the site elastic or go with a totally fluid design instead.
2. Ensure navigation is consistent across the site and ensure it has a focus effect as well as hover
3. Ensure that image replacement techniques used are "good" ones.

For the main pages, you've got a CSS layout there so you can tweak and shift things around very easily just using the stylesheet - without ever having to change the markup on the pages themselves (which is the joy of CSS!). You'll want to try to ensure that whatever design you go with you don't lose that advantage and that you ensure the whole site is built to the same standard.



Mehdi -> RE: Please review... (8/2/2007 22:19:25)

The overall design is great however I think you should a standard banner instead of different colour schemes and banners off most of the links. e.g. use the banner here :

http://www.csustan.edu/

And change the css menus and images accordingly.



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