Round The Bend

[Rodders]

Hi

I've been working on my site for a few months now. I'm no professional but would appreciate a third-party opinion of the site. It's built using PHP/MySQL - written entirely by myself (except the phpBB forum) without the aid of web design software.

In particular, I want to know how it looks on other browsers and in different screen resolutions. Also, I wonder if my use of IFRAME for the main content of the site is liked or disliked. I believe frames are frowned upon due to lack of support in some browsers, should I look at alternative methods?

If anybody wants to login then you can using 'TESTUSER' for username and password (not case sensitive).

I look forward to hearing (reading!?) your thoughts.......


Richard - Peterborough, UK

[Rodders]

I'm going to change my IFRAME to a scrollable DIV tomorrow.......

Never knew you could do it, but it will make my site much more secure and, of course, more compliant.

[spufi]

Considering the large amount of CSS you are using, I would put all of it in a externally linked CSS file to help save on loadtimes, bandwidth, and site space. I'm guessing loadtimes would be your biggest issue.

Put some space in the upper area of your form because your text/input boxes are right up against the top of your form, and yet there is some space below the same items.

I like blue. I like yellow. You still REALLY need a third color to break stuff up. White would be an obvious choice here.

In your frame/div area, I get a vertical, and horizontal scroll bars in Firefox.

[Rodders]

Thanks, spufi, for those useful comments.

I think the scroll bars issue will be easy to resolve when I implement the scrollable DIV instead of the IFRAME.

I never considered the problem of having my CSS within each page. It's actually generated by PHP, but I guess it does impact on bandwidth and load times. Some of my CSS uses PHP code, any suggestions how I could achieve that with an external CSS file ?

I agree about colours. White is a good choice but doesn't sit on yellow very well. Perhaps I could use some white borders and some more blue or different shades of yellow and blue throughout.

Much appreciated

Rich

[spufi]

For the PHP/CSS issue, you will want to check out the following article for two reasons. It will talk about how it's done, and the reason they are showing it is because of the fact that they are gzipping their CSS making it even smaller. Something you would also benefit from.

The Definitive Post on Gzipping Your CSS (http://www.fiftyfoureleven.com/sandbox/weblog/2004/jun/the-definitive-css-gzip-method/)

And looking at your colors you are using and using/abusing one of my favorire color sites, here's a sample of colors that work with your blue and yellow.

Blue (http://color.twysted.net/?color=225AA5)

Yellow (http://color.twysted.net/?color=FBDE00)