Site Review

[DaveSW]

Hi all

I'd value your opinions on my latest site, particularly with regard to the coding... The first page Flash takes a while to download but thats due to be replaced soon.

PPC (http://www.emdevelopments.co.uk/PPC3/)

Thanks

Dave

[AdamGundry]

Make sure you use a valid doctype (http://www.htmlhelp.com/tools/validator/doctype.html), and specify the character set (http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/charset.html).

Then, run your pages through the W3C Validator (http://validator.w3.org).

Adam

[DaveSW]

OK I've fixed the doctype (I think) but the character set is a bit beyond me... What do I use if it's just html???

Dave:confused:

[DaveSW]

I've gone for <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />. Is this ok??

[Daria]

I noticed that on the bottom of the page the menu does not show up equally on the each page, and I can't see why.

Water Industry | Electrical Installation | Testing | Certification |
pages have a space under the menu, as if there was another <p>


Home | Hazardous Areas | Switchboards | Design and Manufacture | Contact Us |
do not have the space at all.

--------------
You may want to consider changing the color for the links on the left panel to a more dramatic color: it's blending with the background. I see that the menu is transparent, but maybe just to make it a bit darker keeping transparency?

--------------
Sorry my input wasn't much about coding.

[DaveSW]

Daria: Space under the menu? I can't get that at all. What screen res/browser are you using?
PS: don't worry about it not being much about coding - my original intention was the graphics - that being why I posted in the graphics forum lol. I just thought to mention the coding as I wrote the post.
I'll change that menu now - you do mean the text don't you??

Adam: Is the update better?? By the way, the w3c validator throws up an odd error,

Line 32, column 24: end tag for element "EMBED" which is not open

thing is, it opens on line 29.
Dave

[DaveSW]

:mad: I've just spent about half an hour on the w3c validator, and it's throwing up two errors on nearly every page. Can someone have a look and tell me what I've done wrong please!

dave

[AdamGundry]

The first error you are finding (end tag for element "EMBED" which is not open) is because the W3C Validator does not correctly parse embedded Javascript, and treats it as normal HTML. This should not be a problem, but if you want to get the validation to work you can move the JS into an external file.

The second error (element "NOEMBED" undefined) occurs because <noembed> is not valid HTML 4.01. Both <embed> and <noembed> are proprietary tags introduced outside the W3C standards, so will not validate correctly. You should use <object> instead where possible.

Adam

[DaveSW]

Looking at the page (the code is actually generated by koolmoves (a flash alternative) - I just copy and paste), it appears to have an object tag, as well as an embed tag... I don't know, I guess i'll leave it as it is. It seems to look ok on most reasonably recent browsers. Thanks anyway!

What about the graphics? excluding the transparency of the black menu text, which is due to be changed.:D

dave

[Bullschmidt]

The flash on the initial page seemed a little jerky but interesting. Also I liked the signature at the bottom but don't know if you then need to print the name too.

[havik]

Good web page, works in Opera 7 (just to let you know). Personally, I don't like the use of tables in web page layout. But it works nonetheless.

Heres a link for info on tableless layouts:
http://webdesign.about.com/library/weekly/aa102102a.htm

Havik

[DaveSW]

Bullschmidt: The flash on the first page was something the customer liked. It's 36kb or something, so I wasn't sure about including it, but I did in the end. Any other opinions on that? Is 36kb too large? should I drop a few images out to reduce it?

The signature is printed underneath, but I guess you mean the alternate text, which I have changed on my own machine (but not uploaded) to 'Signed by Ricky Jenkins' - which makes more sense LOL.

Havik: Thanks, and I do know about css positioning. If you notice, it's in a two cell table layout, to enable me to easily move it to css when the customer upgrades from IE4 - IE4 for crying out loud!! I've just aquired Opera 7.01 and think it's quite good - I like the 'emulate text browser' options - I've used that a lot while modifying the alternate text etc for the next update.

Does anyone have any inspirational ideas about alternate text? Personally i'd rather not know that there was an image there if I couldn't see it, but failing that, should it describe the contents, or just be more general - thanks for visiting or something?

[Robert Wellock]

I suppose it is fair enough if you use flash just for decoration although 36kB isn't small but it's not excessive then again I normally surf on a T-1 connection.

The file size could have been reduced by using some more external CSS, I don't think it was so wise to use Flash for the left-hand navigation menu (without an alterative navigation system) with regards to accessibility, and I do run Mozilla Firebird with Flash Disabled occasionally, although at least you have the bottom navigation should the user not have flash.

Overall the site is fairly functional and navigational which is good, it would have been extremely easy to have your site validate against the W3C Validator and for your character encoding you could have used: <META http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset="UTF-8">

[Bullschmidt]

Is 36kb [for a flash] too large?

No, I don't think so. Especially since more and more people are getting connected with broadband.

[nkaisare]

I'd probably use white colored links instead of black. White-on-green seems to be more readable.

I am not a big fan of using flash for navigation. But then, thats my personal preferance.

Again personal prejudice: a list looks more professional to me than centrally aligned text. Use an arrow gif or something as list-style, if you need to.

You can really reduce the size of your CSS drastically. You may use body{ margin: 0; padding: 0; border: none} instead of what you have. BTW, border: none is appropriate way of defining no border (and not border: 0)
Also, let elements inherit font and text properties.

All the following information is default and hence redundant:
word-spacing:normal;
letter-spacing:normal;
text-transform:none;
text-decoration:none;
border-style:none;

Since border-style is "none", border-color: black means nothing.

This last comment has got nothing to do with design:
There is no information content in the site. You may as well put it all on a single page with seven or eight lists. I mean what info does the following provide me:
---
Hazardous Areas
Experience in Hazardous Gaseous and Liquid environments
Installers of intrinsically safe equipment
In house safety trained staff
---

[DaveSW]

nkaisare... what might be termed a detailed analysis! LOL.
White text I agree with, (good idea - I couldn't think of a color to fit in the general scheme!) Black shall become white at thy command LOL.

The content is just a brief summary. The site is for a friend of my dad's, and since the friend is really busy my dad wrote the site content. It's not really informative, but hopefully the friend will come along and put it into sentences with more details - e.g. installing for 10 yrs etc. Since the text is Dad's I can't really modify it... if you see what i mean LOL!! :(

The CSS is just a sample one that came with the editor, but I'll probably modify it like you said.

There are actually two versions of the site. The flash one I posted here, and a css positioned no flash one which hasn't been uploaded yet. I'll post the address in when i've uploaded it - probably later on today.

Robert... I've changed the charset on my pc, but haven't uploaded it - thanks a lot.

Thanks guys.

[DaveSW]

Here's the link to the css noflash version.

PPC CSS (http://www.emdevelopments.co.uk/ppc4/Index.htm)

[Robert Wellock]

Yes the CSS no Flash version was instant on this T-1 via Mozilla Firebird and more accessible to a wider audience of both users and user-agents, which is commendable work, as was using a more semantic layout approach.

[DaveSW]

Thanks. Needs more work to be anything like Nikets, but that's life i guess.

[Aronya1]

Hi Dave,

A few suggestions:

First of all, 36k is nothing (referring to the flash file). On most computers, that shouldn't take more than a few seconds to download. On a broadband connection, it should be nearly instantaneous.

Second, I'd suggest arranging the oval images on the main page to correspond more closely to the order of the other navigation options. Also, I'd move the bottom navbar to the right, taking the first text links fully out of the green. Maybe use two rows of links? That way you could still center the nav links.

Third, I'd suggest using better quality images on the individual site pages. Just my opinion, but I think that if you are going to use graphics, it should be because they are important to the site. That said, if the graphics are important to the site, they should be of decent quality. Most of what you are using at the moment is fairly poor quality. I'd either take new pictures, or try editing with Photoshop or something like Irfanview to lighten things up & sharpen.

Hope this helps.