South Sefton Diabetes Group

Posted: Sat May 10, 2003 9:19 pm (20 years, 11 months ago)

OK, I've just tarted the code up a bit, and changed the search script, let me know what ya think. http://www.ssdg.org.uk

Posted: Sat May 10, 2003 11:55 pm (20 years, 11 months ago)

Nice banner, SfCommand Smile

hope you like lots of suggestions: Wink

I mostly looked just at your 'index' page, but most of my suggestions will carry over to others, I think.

While I don't know your target viewers that well, I'm guessing that maybe not all of them will be so web-literate to know what an 'index' page is. You might want to go with 'main,' 'top,', 'home' or something like that that's simpler and more familiar.

The main content area almost totally lacks any hierarchy or organization; ie., it's just basically one long jumbled list. The first thing your eye gets drawn to in that area are the counter, your host's hosting ad image, and the HonCode button, all of which probably should be subsidiary to your real content. I don't think you really want that.

Also, how many ads for 34SP and buttons for HonCode do you need to have? My suggestion is to use only one of each, pick the smaller ones if possible, and move them down to the bottom of your right sidebar. And stick the counter down there too.

Lots of other subsidiary stuff that's now in the main content area could and probably should go in either the right or left sidebars. That could include stuff like the bookmark link, the feedback link, the charity registration number, and the script download time.

Move the medical disclaimer to the bottom, if possible, and make some headings for your real content.

Try adding some padding to improve the layout and try rethinking your navigation bar -- eighteen links is a lot for global navigation. Maybe you could combine some of them or use submenus to cut the number of categories to less than seven or eight.

Your code's fairly clean, good work! Cool

You might want to go ahead and add a doctype and validate your page, other than the height tag you're using in the table, which could be replaced by CSS height spec in a style sheet, it wouldn't take much work to validate your home page to XHTML 1.0 (and you could even add another button for that Wink

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DISCLAIMER: Most comments above derived from viewing HTML codes and content for site's 'index' page. Mileage for other pages may vary. Very Happy

Posted: Sun May 11, 2003 12:21 am (20 years, 11 months ago)

Thanks for that verto. TBH I hadn't thought about the Index bit, I thin kI'll change that to home.
I suppose I could remove the content in the rhs pane, and put some of the other stuff from the main page into that.
Padding probably would be a good idea also, hadn't really noticed before how it was that close to the border Smile

As for the nav bar, it is quite a lot, I've just never really gotten around to shrinking it down some. I think I've got an idea how to do it, so I'll go do that next (still need to update my guestbook and make a few new banners for linkage purposes Very Happy

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LOL @ the Mileage may vary comment Very Happy

Team Member Joined: 06 Jan 2002 Posts: 2564

Yeah, TBH my eyes also get drawn to the banners first. Smile

Also, your font size needs standardising. Either use the large size everywhere, or a small everywhere, or a large size for content and a small size for menu items and sidebars.

FAQ also might be a word some people don't know - I know I didn't know it until I got into computers, but then I was quite small at the time Smile

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As verto said, padding is badly needed Wink

BTW, does the chat room get used at all? I can't see your visitors using it much, but I may be wrong... Also, nobody will understand "IRC" Smile

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Find a place for a page title, such as next to "The charity for people with diabetes". Having it in the <title> tag isn't enough (at least for me Razz

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Your links on news pages which go to the forum screw up, since they all go to the index page. Might want to take a look at that Wink

Posted: Sun May 11, 2003 11:37 am (20 years, 11 months ago)

OK, I've added some padding, hopefully sorted the excess number of banners on the index page, and slimmed the nav bar down a bit.
Daniel, the links shold now work on the news page. I've got rid of the main IRC page, now it's just a link from my forum, and FAQ is hidden away under Contact Smile

As for the page title I used to have it on all the pages, but removed it for some reason, so I'll try to find a place to put it again.
As for the fonts, Not sure what you mean about the size needs to be standardised. The only text that is of a different size, is the footer (and right nav bar) text which is smaller, and 'headings' are a bit bigger so they not confused with the content.

Team Member Joined: 06 Jan 2002 Posts: 2564

You've added padding to the content cell, however the sidebars are still quite squashed against the edges of the page and the pink borders. I noticed that your font sizes are fixed for everything other than the footer and sidebar, which is a problem. Either fix them all or fix none of them Smile

. The news links do indeed work now. You can probably do away with "All HTML code & images on this site are " since most people won't understand it, and it doesn't really serve any purpose. Lastly, you could really do with having your own logo Wink

Posted: Sun May 11, 2003 11:55 am (20 years, 11 months ago)

Hadn't thought about the side bars needing padding, what you mean the font size isn't fixed for the footer and sidebar?
Also, we're technically not allowed to have our own logo, and we have to have the Diabetes UK logo, so that's why I got the Liver bird in the same pink colour, to act as our own unofficial logo Smile

(Stupid rules)

Team Member Joined: 06 Jan 2002 Posts: 2564

Most browsers have a feature which means you can change the size of the fonts (View --> Text Size in IE). This only works on unfixed or relative font sizes. On your site, I can change the small text, but not the main text.

Posted: Sun May 11, 2003 2:25 pm (20 years, 11 months ago)

OK, I've got padding in the side bars now. Sorry, I get what you mean about fixed font now, but it works fine in mozilla. It seems that IE just refuses to increase the text size of the main text.

Posted: Sun May 11, 2003 2:54 pm (20 years, 11 months ago)

OK, I've had a play with the IE stylesheet, and hopefully, it should play nice with the Text zoom function (or whatever M$ call it). I think it's just IE being dumb (as per usual), cos there was no problem in mozilla, the text zoom function altered the size of all the text no probs Smile

Team Member Joined: 06 Jan 2002 Posts: 2564

It's nothing to do with IE being dumb: when you set a font to a fixed size, it won't let the visitor change it. That can be bad or good Smile

. Mozilla and Opera, in particular, let you change it anyway, whether the designer wants you to or not. The fonts are now all relative, which is at least consistant Very Happy

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Edit: the padding has now disappeared in the content cell Sad

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Senior WebHelper Joined: 21 Apr 2003 Posts: 153

On the right side there is space in between the scroll bar and the table, it might look better if the table filled the entire page.

Posted: Sun May 11, 2003 3:43 pm (20 years, 11 months ago)

kdawg, it should do (I assume you're using IE?). Not sure why it isn't, but I'll have a look at that.
Daniel: Not sure why the padding should've gone away, but I've re-uploaded the css file, and checked it locally (after finding IE) Very Happy

Team Member Joined: 06 Jan 2002 Posts: 2564

Padding is OK now. The margin is too, but wasn't before.

Posted: Mon May 12, 2003 3:24 am (20 years, 11 months ago)

Much improved, SfCommand, Smile

however, you still have some problems with the padding. When I first looked, I could see the 3px you'd specced for boxes, but on another viewing, it disappeared.

I could be wrong, but I think part of the problem may be how you're speccing your padding for cells containing inner tables at 0px, which makes the cells in the INSIDE table sometimes inherit 0px, and sometimes use your spec for TD (by itself). If that's the case, you may want to directly spec the inner cells by giving them their own classes.

I'd also suggest you try bumping the padding beyond 3px, which looks cramped to me, esp. compared to the spacing in your banner.