Re: Critique request

by "Rajnish Bhaskar" <r.bhaskar(at)compserv.gla.ac.uk>

 Date:  Fri, 10 May 2002 09:46:44 +0100
 To:  Emily Berk <emily(at)armadillosoft.com>,
hwg-critique(at)mail.hwg.org
 References: 
  todo: View Thread, Original
Hi Emily,

> Please let me know what you think:  http://www.armadillosoft.com

I'll write stuff down as I go through it...

Okay, the front page looks a bit 'texty'.  I like the contents 
circling the welcome message, but the text does look like, um, like 
the images are missing.  Oh, wait a minute, I see the link to the 
graphical site.  Hmm, it looks nicer, but now I find that I prefer 
the text version (no pleasing some people, eh? =)  ).  It's good that 
you offer the choice of both.  One thing that I might add here is 
that you should add title attributes to your images (ie <.img 
src="..." alt="..." title="..."> ).  This is the correct way to 
provide tooltips (and lets those of us using Gecko-based browsers 
(Mozilla, Netscape 6.x, Galeon, Beonix etc) see them as well).  This 
has the added benefit of legitimately bumping up the keyword count on 
your site for search engines.

I'll look at the rest of the site from the text site only (I totally 
ignored the Flash stuff since I hate Flash, but that's just me)

I find the navigation bar down the right hand side difficult to read. 
 The text is too small to make out without really squinting, and 
since they are images, resizing makes no difference at all (here's 
another place where using the title attribute would help).

On http://www.armadillosoft.com/internet.php, when I clicked on any 
of the first three links, they appeared in a tiny window with no 
chrome (ie no menu bar, no location bar etc).  I don't see the need 
for this.  Why not just open it in the same window, and if you have 
to open a new one, why not just use target="_blank"?

I liked the HMB film society page, simple to navigate and fast to 
load.

On the books page, maybe you could point out that the links on the 
books are to Amazon.

The Coastside mothers' club site is easy to navigate and simple. 

Some general comments:

* Maybe you could consider constricting the width of the text.  For 
people with large resolutions, it's quite hard work to scan a full 
line of text (maybe put it in a table to 80% width or something).

* Consider flagging a link to a PDF file (even by just putting (pdf) 
next to it)

* IMO the counter on the main page looks unprofessional

* I like the flying armadillos :o)

* Generally fast to load

My spec: Mozilla 1.0RC1+, 1600x1200 screen res (browser window is 
maybe 2/3 of this), LAN connection on Windows 2000 Pro

HTH,
Raj.
-- 
Rajnish Bhaskar
r.bhaskar(at)compserv.gla.ac.uk, http://lordofthemoon.com
IT Education Unit, University of Glasgow
http://www.iteu.gla.ac.uk/
--
Um, I tend to either agree or disagree with you
-- Kev - to Nick Abbot on Talk Radio
   22nd September 1998

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