Re: Critique Personal Web

Hello Gabriele,

At 10:07 AM 1/19/98 -0700, Gabriele Endress wrote:
Previewed:  URL: http://rielle.simplenet.com/church.htm
viewed with: NS4, IE4, NS3, NS2 on a T1, large res and hicolor

>Some issues I am aware of is that my design currently doesn't degrade
>very well onto older browsers (NS 2 & 3 mainly).
>
The only thing I have to say about that is "WHY?"  CSS is ignored and you
don't incorporate anything high-end that I've seen thus far ... there
should be no reason for this site to be deemed non-degradable IMO.  To
overcome the deficiencies of the past browsers, always provide the basics
first and then enhance upon them by adding the CSS if you must ...
resulting in a satisfied appearance in the past browsers and an enhanced
beautified version for present day.  One thing for sure ... if you use the
full capabilities of BODY, you'll be even more closer than you think.

NS2 and 3 were almost identical ... basically, they were identical for all
practical purposes ... same goes for the NS4 and IE4 browsers using the CSS.

>In general is my design clean, easily navigable? Does it display well on
>640X480 resolution? Is the color scheme good? Does it make sense?
>
Excellent use of lateral navigation ... simple and sweet!  One thing though
.. .how do I get back to the mother page?

My display is not at 640, I'm at a much larger res and there is a lot of
"white" space left and right ... this is a pet peeve to some, not me ... it
looks fine.  (perhaps as I get older and the specs begin to fail me, I
might complain at the fixed width and smaller font size, but not now)

Speaking of font size ... you are using the <Hx> improperly.  You should be
using either ... SMALL or FONT SIZE= for the general text and the
navigation ... <Hx> is to be used for headers/headings.

Without the use of BODY BGCOLOR="", your title graphics show up on white or
gray depending on the version of browser.  this makes it somewhat difficult
to read ... but not as much as the choice of font used to create the
graphics ... what is that? Mistral? (spelling?)  Although it is only used
for the title graphics and is somewhat readable, a suggestion would be to
include the ALT= and there is no need to enclose the title image within <Hx>.

The most notable of things that I noticed was consistency ... not every
page was exactly alike ... I know, they don't necessarily have to ... but
in this case, I think the design was meant to be, that is why I mentioned
it ... on some pages, in the past browsers, the titles were centered and
not in others (inner and outer shrines to be exact)

There is no email address visible or even linked that I could find in case
I wanted to send you a message like ... Kewl Site Dude! or a Bug Report or
any number of things.  You could easily add this to your copyright line ...
link your name to mailto: by itself would probably suffice.

Using the color for the HR was nice in IE but turned out too dark in NS ...
suggest you remove the noshade and see what effect that has.

a light shade of yellow would do nicely as the VLINK color instead of white
... the same as regular text ... (that's one bad thing IMO about surfing
without underlines is that if they are the same color, I know longer know
if they're links or not ... maybe it's just me)

If you are going to use CSS, I would suggest you use a DOCType statement
with CSS initiatives ... at this point, any DOCType  would be a good start.

Improper nesting ... <DIV><CENTER></DIV></CENTER> and so on ...

Personally, I would probably increase the width of the HR around the
navigation to at least extend to the ends of the links and I also would
extend the HR under the title graphic to the width of the graphic itself
(if even needed at all that is).

All in all ... I liked the site ... You've used one of my favorite color
schemes White on Navy (ish) and the navigation as I said is acceptable to
get around, except for the link back to home ... You've done well ...!

Closing notes:  add some form validation to keep visitors from pressing
submit and not submitting anything and add a return link to the site.
Also, I got a kick out of the statement the mail CGI returned ... "I'm
trying to keep the response time to less than a month. If you don't hear
from me by then, please email me at rielle(at)earthling.net to see what's
taking me so long!"

If I ever took that long to respond, I'd be out of business ... ;-)  Of
course, this isn't a business page ... but even so .. that's a long time
before responding IMO.

Best of Luck to Ya',
cmj

HTML: hwg-critique mailing list archives, maintained by Webmaster @ IWA