RE: Critique on personal site

by "Michael Gerholdt" <gerholdt(at)ait.fredonia.edu>

 Date:  Fri, 6 Nov 1998 14:04:58 -0500
 To:  "John de Vries" <Firefox(at)kwik-net.nl>,
"critique" <hwg-critique(at)hwg.org>
 In-Reply-To:  net
  todo: View Thread, Original
John de Vries wrote:
>
>Please some critique on my personal site.
>http://www.kwik-net.nl/users/firefox/index.htm


First thing to do is slap a doctype on the pages and run them through a
validator. You'll find a few things to change.

The blocky big green and blue verdana in your headers just doesn't fit with
the laid back earthtone (dusty cowboy colors).

<A HREF="foo.htm" BORDER=0> is a new one on me. I think you have that border
business in the wrong corral. Maybe if you moved the BORDER=0 into the <IMG
tag, you'd get rid of the borders around the back/next arrows. And most
everyone knows that an arrow pointing _that_ way is back and an arrow
pointing _this_ way is next watering hole down the road. I think you can
safely cut the text loose.

That bright green on the 'updated' notices - again, you really need some
flyspecks and cobwebs to tone that down a bit! Try something thematic
graphically that fits the site. A small lariat with "just lassoed" or
something written in it.

WIDTH="100%" on an image? You should use the real dimensions of an image. On
the page of Country Capitals, for example, the map for Nashville is
artificially re-sized by giving phony dimensions for the image. Browsers
aren't obligated, btw, to resize like this, though most do. But to make a
big image smaller, they just crunch it - eliminate pixels. And you have no
control over which pixels. So the interstate roadsigns all look like some
mustang came along and chewed the left-hand border off of the shield.
Instead of doing this, put the image in a good graphics program and
resample/resize it to the dimensions you want. Then tell the browser the
truth and you'll get better display results.

I'll leave it at that for now. On the whole, it's a nice looking site.
Especially the guitar HR - very nice.

To sum up:
Use a validator
Bring more elements into theme
Be an honest cowboy when you're discussing measurements

That would be a start.

Any questions on this, feel free to email me privately or on the list.

HTH,
Michael

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