Re: Site Critique: http://www.usasportspick.com

Adam,

As you know, the page isn't real great in NN -- I'm using 4.5 and there's a 
lot of horizontal and vertical scroll. I didn't look too closely at your 
code, but I'm going to guess the cellpadding and cell widths are being 
interpreted literally by NN. Try adding borders to your tables to see where 
they're falling and adjust from there. I think I read on one of these lists 
that NN will also add the *invisible* widths of cellpadding and cellspacing 
to your table widths.

I'm also going to have to at least partially agree with your friends and 
advisors. It does not look real professional, but I don't think you have to 
run out and do it in flash. For one thing, fix that pyramid at the top. 
SportsPick is the smallest thing, but I think it's supposed to be the first 
thing people see and remember. The first thing I really saw was *A woman's 
right to choose* (that was the ad being served when I visited). Now, 
whether or not that's important is irrelevant, except you didn't do the 
site for Naral.

I think you could do a lot with the logo to spruce up the overall look of 
the site. Make it bigger, set it sideways a little, cut it into the blue 
navigation menu to really emphasize the USA part. There are image programs 
that let you build one big graphic, set stuff sideways, do some color 
cut-outs, transfers, and then slice it up into manageable pieces. I'm not 
usually big on graphics (and I'm usually not very good either), but I think 
you could do a lot there.

Shrink that yellow cell and the type size a little, valign=top for that 
first, right-hand table and try to get more SportsPick stuff at the top. 
Sponsors are good, yes, but they're not what the site is about.

Good luck,
Tamara

At 11:55 AM 10/25/00 -0700, Adam Lau wrote:
>(This is my second post as I had posted this message before I received my
>majordomo confirmation. I am assuming the first post was dropped.)
>
>Hello all! I am authoring a site for http://www.usasportspick.com. This is not
>a plug or SPAM...I would just like to obtain a critique! You may notice that I
>borrowed the color scheme and some style elements from the W3C index page.
>
>I also posted to the Opera HTML discussion newsgroup with reagrds to Opera's
>handling of the fixed table-layout algorithm. It seems as if Opera has trouble
>parsing fixed tables. USAsportspick does not display as intended in 
>Netscape: I
>am fully aware of this. Any  suggestions of comments with regards to 
>navigation
>and logical structure or design would be appreciated! I am looking for 
>'initial
>feel' comments. I attempted to gather a user group as suggested by Jakob
>Nielson, but most people seem around me seem to be partial to Flash animation,
>image rollovers, and the like. So the feedback that I have been receiving is
>that the site is not professional. What to do? Any suggestions?
>
>
>
>
>
>=====
>_______________________
>
>Adam Lau
>USAsportspick.com http://www.usasportspick.com/
>209 Clary Avenue
>San Gabriel, CA 91776
>Phone: +1.626.287.2577
>
>__________________________________________________
>Do You Yahoo!?
>Yahoo! Messenger - Talk while you surf!  It's FREE.
>http://im.yahoo.com/

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