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blakefrance
12-10-2007, 04:49 PM
I know I know its a Web Design Services site, but could you please look over it and give me ideas about what can make it better and more appealing. Thank you for your help in advance.

Blake France
Western Kentucky Design Services (http://www.westkydesigns.com)
dtm32236
12-10-2007, 05:27 PM
your doctype is incorrect, so that's generating many errors, and is going to make the site look different in various browsers. change this:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en">

to:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

then start fixing your html errors (http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.westkydesigns.com%2F)

using XHTML doctype, all code has to be lowercase. so, <body OnLoad="rotateImage('rImage')"> is going to have to be changed to onload.

the layout is nice and simple, but i'm not sure why you have the navigation repeated three times on every page (the header, footer, and another in the middle). that's strange.

also, i think that your "web 2.0" graphic (the blue reflected one up top) is a little too much. the reflection should be much more transparent, otherwise it's somewhat confusing.
blakefrance
12-10-2007, 05:30 PM
Awesome thank you so much for checking that out. I agree about the logo, but not a graphics person. I gotta find a way to make something better with that. Thank you very much for the help. Anything else is very much appreciated.


Blake France
WestKYDesigns (http://www.westkydesigns.com)
blakefrance
12-10-2007, 06:31 PM
Thanks for the reply on the post. I do have Validation Complete now for that first page anyway. Gotta work on the others. Validation (http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.westkydesigns.com%2F&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=Inline&ss=1&group=0&verbose=1)

Now about the navigation...Do you have any ideas about how to make this a bit less confusing? I'm not sure which to remove that would be less confusing but still easy enough to navigate the site. Any help is appreciated thanks!

Blake France
WestKYDesigns (http://www.westkydesigns.com)
dtm32236
12-10-2007, 07:08 PM
I don't think that you need the 'middle' navigation, the one above site news. plus, if you remove that, you have that extra space to add anything else in the future.
aheittman
12-11-2007, 05:34 PM
A couple of small things:

* persist the scroll bar on the right, so that when you have a page that isn't long enough to scroll, it doesn't jump to the right
* when you link to a different site, have it pop a new browser window
* show your portfolios in a pop up - you are currently losing your nav, and visitors have hit back to get back to the site. use the pop up you use for the privacy policy, perhaps?
colorifer
12-11-2007, 10:53 PM
Use more qualitative and presentable pictures on the site. In photos artefacts are visible.
elvisparsley
12-12-2007, 02:21 AM
The logo makes me a bit dizzy since it looks like not focused.
The photos you are using are not relevant to me. Why do you have male photos in your website? May be you can put some your products and links. We like click pictures!! :)
dtm32236
12-12-2007, 10:06 AM
persist the scroll bar on the right, so that when you have a page that isn't long enough to scroll, it doesn't jump to the right

What does that mean? If you're telling him to make it so that the vertical scroll bar is always there (style="overflow:scroll;"), it's going to cause problems. I've tried this on my last site, and it caused many, many problems cross-browser (particularly in IE6). You're a LOT better off leaving it as is.


show your portfolios in a pop up - you are currently losing your nav, and visitors have hit back to get back to the site. use the pop up you use for the privacy policy, perhaps?

Most people HATE pop-ups. Especially web design gurus. You're better off using the portfolio images as is, but putting your layout around it. I'm not saying that right, but you know what I mean? Keep the layout of the site (your navigation, site news, etc) and use the portfolio images as the content of the page.

Sorry to bust on your input, aheittman...

And I think that the logo is fine. It's sort of a good thing that it looks a little strange or out of focus, that way it doesn't steal the attention from the rest of the site.

That's just my opinion...
aheittman
12-12-2007, 06:07 PM
If you're telling him to make it so that the vertical scroll bar is always there (style="overflow:scroll;"), it's going to cause problems. I've tried this on my last site, and it caused many, many problems cross-browser (particularly in IE6). You're a LOT better off leaving it as is.
In your style sheet if you add

HTML{
overflow-y:scroll;
}

It should cause the vertical scroll bar to be persistant and stop the content from jumping.

In our experience this has been cross browser friendly.

Most people HATE pop-ups. Especially web design gurus.
Wow, that's a pretty broad statement. I think that pop ups have their uses (and tend to be overused by some); portfolios can be one such use if the implementation is done attactively and it doesn't sacrifice usability. For example, the pop up used in the privacy policy is very spare, thereby complementing the look of the rest of the site. Users don't have to guess how to close it; there's an obvious "Close" button at the bottom. An additional "close" option would be to have it close when a visitor clicks anwhere outside it - you decide if this would confuse your visitors.

One reason why I still think that pop ups are an option for your portfolio is because you are only showing a screen shot. If you were including extra text, such as a client quote or a brief case study, then I would say no to the pop up.

If you do go this route, make sure the pop up is printable. Your current incarnation needs some work on this.

Hope this helps, and good luck with your site!
blakefrance
12-12-2007, 06:12 PM
Thanks for the feedback guys. Keep it coming. The logo is being reworked as we speak, and we are working on some different photographs that are already relevant. Thanks for the input. As far is the portfolio, we "were" using LightBox or LightBox style JS for this to popup the screen shot and the link underneath takes the user to that actual page. But that whole portfolio page is getting reworked. I'm not sure I'm understanding the Scroll Bar issue you guys are speaking of. Can someone link me somewhere for this so I can see what it is or know what to do.

Thanks again for all the feedback I love it.

Blake France
WestKYDesigns (http://www.westkydesigns.com)
aheittman
12-12-2007, 06:17 PM
Hey Blake,

As you're populating the site (congrats!), it's harder to find a page that's not long enough that I don't need to scroll down to view the whole thing. On my screen, your About Us: Meet the People is still short enough.

Click back & forth between that page & your home page, and you'll see the site jump right & left, because one page has that vertical scroll bar on the right and the other doesn't.

It's something that a lot of people probably don't care about, but I personally find it really distracting!!

- Alison
blakefrance
12-12-2007, 06:21 PM
Well, I never once noticed that before and it really annoys me on other pages. Its sad I didn't see it on my own. Awesome thanks for the help. Anyone know of why this happens, or can link me somewhere explaining this phenomenon.


Blake France
WestKYDesigns (http://www.westkydesigns.com)
aheittman
12-12-2007, 06:24 PM
Blake -

I just edited my post to explain why. Basically, because the scroll bar isn't there on the shorter page.

Cheers!

ps - glad to know there's 2 of us in the world this bugs...
kevinnelson
12-12-2007, 11:48 PM
The shifting has been fixed via css. If anyone needs this in the future it's an easy 1 liner that makes the page always be at least 1px larger than 100%, thus, always has the scrollbar.

html {min-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 1px;}

--
Kevin Nelson
WestKYDesigns (http://www.westkydesigns.com)
dtm32236
12-13-2007, 10:20 AM
Nice fix. I had my page centered with .body {margin:0 auto;} and when I did overflow:scroll; it messed up the centering. Your method is much better.