Red and White Kop - Redesigned @ last

Posted: Sat Mar 06, 2004 6:54 pm (20 years, 1 month ago)

Just thought I'd see what people think this redesign.

www.redandwhitekop.com

People who have seen it in the past will remember how awfull it was, what do you think now.

Content is powered by forum - SMF <www.simplemachines.org>.

Site was designed by a mate of mine, www.onesparx.com so I can't take the credit for that since I am about as creative as a dead dog Smile

Team Member Joined: 06 Jan 2002 Posts: 2564

Great design Smile

(yes I do remember the previous one Laughing

).

Too many tables for my liking, but then I guess there's not much you can do about that Sad

Also there's some kind of spacing problem (at least in Firefox) between the main column and right column (it's huge), and there is no space between the menu and content (well, there is, but you need a little more!).

Not sure why you have the forum open in a new window...

Need some padding on the left of "Welcome, Guest. Please Login or Register." and on the right of "Next Match - Liverpool v Olympique Marseille (11/03/04)".

That's it for now Razz

My Musical Preferences · Posted: Sat Mar 06, 2004 11:12 pm (20 years, 1 month ago)

from a quick look, I like it Very Happy

Content great as always but the new design is great.

**Although on your about page the link to your links db is dead (http://www.redandwhitekop.net/links.php)

Posted: Sat Mar 06, 2004 11:47 pm (20 years, 1 month ago)

Daniel wrote:

Great design Smile

(yes I do remember the previous one Laughing

).

Yeah the old one was pretty bad Embarassed

Daniel wrote:

Too many tables for my liking, but then I guess there's not much you can do about that Sad

Aye, it's a trade of really I guess with trying to show so much info, don't really think there's anyway way around it.

Daniel wrote:

Also there's some kind of spacing problem (at least in Firefox) between the main column and right column (it's huge), and there is no space between the menu and content (well, there is, but you need a little more!).

Hmm tested it in ordinary mozilla and it looked fine, will download Firefox and take a look.

Daniel wrote:

Not sure why you have the forum open in a new window...

Consider it as a seperate part of the site really, and since it looses the nav then it kinda makes sence, in my mind anyway. Guess I could implement one of those fancy nav menus like you have here or something though.

Daniel wrote:

Need some padding on the left of "Welcome, Guest. Please Login or Register." and on the right of "Next Match - Liverpool v Olympique Marseille (11/03/04)".

Good point, will sort that tomorrow.

Daniel wrote:

That's it for now Razz

Thanks, appreciate it Smile

thetribe wrote:

from a quick look, I like it Content great as always but the new design is great.

Thanks, can't really take credit for the content since its "community driven" and can't really take credit for the design either since it was my mate who designed it, I'll take credit for the implementation though as I converted his static designs to do what they were meant to do.

thetribe wrote:

**Although on your about page the link to your links db is dead (http://www.redandwhitekop.net/links.php)

Hmm yeah, need to sort something with that, used to be phpnuke based so need to find a decent link management script and convert the sql data over. Something for a rainy day I think, but needs to be does, had 350+ lfc links...

Cheers

My Musical Preferences · Posted: Sun Mar 07, 2004 9:31 am (20 years, 1 month ago)

I use a links db by DB Masters Multimedia (you can see it in action here http://www.anfieldstats.co.uk/links/index.php ) which you can check out here to see if it will be of any use to you - http://scripts.dbmasters.net/index.php?n=42&id=40

Although I don't envy you trying to convert that many links to what could be a new DB format. Shocked

Posted: Sun Mar 07, 2004 6:56 pm (20 years, 1 month ago)

nice design Smile

Ben wrote:

Daniel wrote:

Too many tables for my liking, but then I guess there's not much you can do about that Sad

Aye, it's a trade of really I guess with trying to show so much info, don't really think there's anyway way around it.

not that I want to disagree, but I actually can't see any reason for having tables at all in that design. maybe I'm missing something; what exactly would stop you from laying it out with CSS?

Posted: Sun Mar 07, 2004 7:17 pm (20 years, 1 month ago)

I feel it's very over-bearing when you visit the homepage & you are greeted with so much information.

Maybe keep the index page a bit ... less.

Posted: Sun Mar 07, 2004 8:49 pm (20 years, 1 month ago)

thetribe wrote:

I use a links db by DB Masters Multimedia (you can see it in action here http://www.anfieldstats.co.uk/links/index.php ) which you can check out here to see if it will be of any use to you - http://scripts.dbmasters.net/index.php?n=42&id=40

Although I don't envy you trying to convert that many links to what could be a new DB format. Shocked

Will check that one out, the conversion shouldn't be too difficult assuming the structure is remotely similar.

adam wrote:

not that I want to disagree, but I actually can't see any reason for having tables at all in that design. maybe I'm missing something; what exactly would stop you from laying it out with CSS?

True I guess, but the tables do their job and I don't see any reason to change it?

MadCow wrote:

I feel it's very over-bearing when you visit the homepage & you are greeted with so much information.

Maybe keep the index page a bit ... less.

Perhaps, but the recent forum posts will serve a purpose, hopefully get a few more people onto the forum. Maybe there is a little bit too much, but I like it. Cool

Ta

Posted: Sun Mar 07, 2004 11:03 pm (20 years, 1 month ago)

There are a couple of reasons to consider changing it. The most obvious one is that it will reduce the amount of code which is used in each page; this makes the code more accessible in cases when complex code can't be rendered (for example, your homepage amounts to 8 screenfulls in a text-only browser at 1024x768), and it also makes the code easier to maintain for you.

The other main reason is the separation of data and formatting; the idea there is that the data is the basis of the page and the formatting can be applied in a specific way depending on the medium being used to represent it. This enhances accessibility, as applications can easily ignore the formatting which they are not able to use and concentrate on presenting the data in a usable way (this is much harder to do when formatting and layout are embeded in the HTML with the data).

For example, you might assume that everyone who visits your web site will be looking at it through a browser, but what happens when a blind person with a screen-reader visits your site? All of those complex tables and useless formatting will play havoc with the reader software.

This is the reason XHTML was introduced; XHTML lacks almost all of the formatting tags found in HTML 4, and for good reason. HTML was originally intended as markup for scientific documents, but over time has become bloated to the extent that many sites have become very inaccessible - tables are designed for presenting tabulated data, not for laying out a page, and so are not the most efficient way of doing so.

I see you are actually using XHTML 1.0, which is good. However, you still have <b> tags in the markup, use   for spacing, etc. Also, I examined your hompage in Mozilla's DOM inspector and there are many, many nested levels of content - I think most people will agree that there's no need to make things more complex than they need to be, even if the complex version does it's job.

Posted: Mon Mar 08, 2004 12:04 am (20 years, 1 month ago)

Some of the <b> tags are probably as a result of the forum, so theres little that can be done about them, the   was mainly me being lazy Confused

.

Prehaps some day though, based on your other points, I'll make a start on changing it, does make sence what you say so I guess it's worth working on when I have a bit of spare time.

Team Member Joined: 06 Jan 2002 Posts: 2564

Ben, if I'm not mistaken the forum is also hosted on your server, so what's stopping you from modifying it? Wink

Anyway, I'm less radical than adam and would only suggest you clear everything up, at least for now. Although I do tend to use <strong> instead of <b>, since b refers to presentation Smile

.

Posted: Mon Mar 08, 2004 1:26 pm (20 years, 1 month ago)

Well yeah I could change it[the forum stuff], but whats the point, it's valid :p.

Posted: Mon Mar 08, 2004 2:04 pm (20 years, 1 month ago)

It may be valid, but it is also obsolete - that's the point Wink