Re: Critique please! :)

by "gordon" <gordon69b(at)earthlink.net>

 Date:  Tue, 30 Jun 1998 08:03:11 -0700
 To:  <hwg-critique(at)hwg.org>,
"Alpha Witch" <alpha1(at)atel.net>
  todo: View Thread, Original
Nice look, but why would anyone who's hungry wait for Netscape to download
to view these pages?

It seems as though you are trying to control vertical whitespace with the P
element.  This should not be done.  From the W3C HTML 4.0 Recommendation,
9.3.1 Paragraphs: the P element, "We discourage authors from using empty P
elements. User agents should ignore empty P elements."  So, you see, if by
some strange occurrence a correctly written browser were to suddenly appear
on the Earth, then your whitespace would vanish!  For example, the
"Accessibility Approvals" section should be a division.  Since there is no
text included, why are there two paragraphs?  A simple <DIV ALIGN="center">
construct should replace the repeated paragraph and center elements.

Since you are using tables, nested at that (!), to format the page, you
should probably also see section 2.4.3 "Help user agents with incremental
rendering" in the above reference.  A side note: the 30/70 split seems a bit
excessive; did you try reducing the navigation column width?  A built-in
problem that is a result of using tables like this is that in a text
browser, like LYNX, the first thing that a viewer sees is a long list of
links.  The text doesn't get seen until the page is scrolled.

>From an accessibility point of view, I didn't see any ACCESSKEY or TABINDEX
attributes on any of the many links on the opening page.  These can be of
great benefit to those who have problems with mouse usage ( "I hates
meeceskes to peeceskes," cartoon quote.).  The "View of the Warehouse" image
should also have a TITLE attribute..pretend like you're describing the image
to a blind friend.  Imagine that you are blind, and your page is being read
to you by your browser; you hear, "Sign our GuestBook Green and Blue
Divider" read to you without pause.  If you'll include some punctuation,
then aural browsers will perform much better.

later,
gordon


-----Original Message-----
From: Alpha Witch <alpha1(at)atel.net>
To: <hwg-critique(at)hwg.org>
Date: Tuesday, June 30, 1998 5:22 AM
Subject: Critique please! :)


>Good morning, everyone! :)
>
>I'm part of the AGI project ... and have finally got the Foodbank site to
>where I 'think' it is acceptable. The pages have all passed Bobby and W3
>validation, so now I need 'people' feedback.
>
>Would you please critique (gently :) ...
>
> <http://foodbank.seva.net>
>
>Thank you!
>Monica and the dinosaur
>

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