Slag Off This Site Please

4WebHelp Addict Joined: 07 Jan 2002 Posts: 1060

http://www.freedom2support.net

I want you to give me as much damn constructive criticism about the site as you possibly can, because I'm working on improving it, only things I have done so far with the beta version of the new one is to space the lines in the main body a bit more..

But I want critcism, and I want loads of it so I can change it for the better Smile

Team Member Joined: 06 Jan 2002 Posts: 2564

OK, here goes (don't complain - you asked for it):

The search button's background just doesn't fit in - it's too light
The More News button doesn't either - bg and font need changing (use one of the fonts you're already using on the site - not a new one)
Customise the Atomz search results page
http://www.freedom2support.net/contact/ --> same kind of problem - the blue background stands out and doesn't fit in
Same page: Link "Comments & Suggestions" to the forums, not to the home page
http://www.freedom2support.net/links/ --> Have links open in a new window?
Get rid of redundant <style> tags - on your home page there are two of them
Clean up your code - at least change all the ' into " since ' isn't even correct HTML - never mind XHTML
Put some content on the home page - just giving the latest news won't keep visitors on your site - the first impression is the only impression

I think that's plenty to work on... Very Happy

4WebHelp Addict Joined: 07 Jan 2002 Posts: 1060

1) Fixed In Local Copy
2) Will be done when I can find my serial code for Xara Webstyle 3
3) Atomz was only installed yesterday, removed our own script, but is on my list to do.
4) CSS Problem, Fixed in Local copy. (2.1 uses CSS for 99% of things, where current version 2.0 uses a lot of Tags)
5) Index.php is the forums if you try it, portal.php is the home page
6) Will Do
7) Version 2.1 is completely .css file driven, no style tags anywhere in sight.
Cool

Done in new version, blame FrontPage for that, as that's what generated the intial code.
9) Will see what the users think about that, but they are the ones that wanted it changed to that.

Team Member Joined: 06 Jan 2002 Posts: 2564

I'm not saying get rid of the news, but the space it's given is excessive IMO. First time visitors more than likely won't be interested in the news about the website. You may consider writing a blurb to put at the top of that page to "advertise" the website.

4WebHelp Addict Joined: 07 Jan 2002 Posts: 1060

It's not normally the news about the site though, most of the time it's F2S Service announcements to be honest....

Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2003 5:34 pm (21 years, 11 months ago)

first, off check the W3C Validator.

4WebHelp Addict Joined: 07 Jan 2002 Posts: 1060

I can't be bothered to spend months making the site valid HTML, it will take forever!

Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2003 5:43 pm (21 years, 11 months ago)

it won't take that long...trust me. anyway, if you need help doing it, you have us Very Happy

Posted: Sat Apr 12, 2003 2:43 am (21 years, 11 months ago)

Think that the bright blue header bars on the Contact Us page reading "Online Forms :," "Discussion Forums :," and "Fax :" are way too bright and blue, which undermines the more subdued color scheme of rest of the page.
Daniel wrote:
...
Clean up your code - at least change all the ' into " since ' isn't even correct HTML - never mind XHTML

...
I agree with both Adam and Daniel that it'll probably be worth your while to clean up and even to validate the code, but I think Daniel may be mistaken about using single quotes for XML, and, I think, for HTML as well. This page for ex. says otherwise: XML Attributes -- see the section "Quote Styles, "female" or 'female'?" While that page is actually for XML, XHTML follows XML syntax. Here's the W3C spec, if you can read it : XML Spec @ W3C
This one's a nit, but ... I like the subtle scroll bar, but the left edge looks a little flat to me. To change it, you could change (prob. brighten up) the 'scrollbar-highlight-color' or 'scrollbar-3dlight-color' values in your CSS.

Team Member Joined: 06 Jan 2002 Posts: 2564

Even if it is OK to use single quotes, I would recommend being consistant: either use only single quotes (which I have yet to see on a major website) or only double quotes.

One thing I would say about validating your pages, is that when fixing all the HTML problems, you end up fixing many of the bugs which visitors may notice when not using the same browser as you. IE may be forgiving, but others are less, and so by making your page standards compliant you're giving it more chances of showing up right in most browsers.

Posted: Sat Apr 12, 2003 5:13 pm (21 years, 11 months ago)

Just a couple of things:
This may just be my browser (IE 5.1 Mac) but I find the left hand menu too long and am having to scroll for the options lower down. This is because of the line spacing. (I should mention I'm viewing on 800x600 on a laptop)

Another thing I felt was that every page looks very similar - I was just wondering whether you had considered introducing some kind of imagery to break up the text a bit. They needn't be large - maybe some kind of icon for certain sections would be nice....

4WebHelp Addict Joined: 07 Jan 2002 Posts: 1060

Darren wrote:

Just a couple of things:
This may just be my browser (IE 5.1 Mac) but I find the left hand menu too long and am having to scroll for the options lower down. This is because of the line spacing. (I should mention I'm viewing on 800x600 on a laptop)

is http://beta.freedom2support.net any better?

Quote:

Another thing I felt was that every page looks very similar - I was just wondering whether you had considered introducing some kind of imagery to break up the text a bit. They needn't be large - maybe some kind of icon for certain sections would be nice....

I did think about that actually, and is something that I'll be considering probbably, Just I haven't really got time to mess around with graphics at the moment Sad

Posted: Sat Apr 12, 2003 7:08 pm (21 years, 11 months ago)

on the valid html side, you still need to add character encoding info. This will do the trick:

Code:

4WebHelp Addict Joined: 07 Jan 2002 Posts: 1060

I haven't even started validating the HTML yet....

Posted: Sun Apr 13, 2003 10:18 am (21 years, 11 months ago)

Yep the menu on beta.fredom2support.net is much better!! I also prefer the style of this border to the thick black line Very Happy

Another thing I just noticed - the line "For Freedom2Surf Users - By Freedom 2Surf Users..." is getting squashed on to 2 lines even when there is ample width in the browser window. I've a feeling its something to do with the 'strange' percentages youve set for the 2 columns. And again I think its specific to my browser but then it is handy for showing up problems Smile

- It was said to be the most standard compliant browser when it came out (not sure if that still stands though?)

Code:

<table width='100%' border='0' cellspacing='0' cellpadding='2'>
<tr>
<td class="otherrow" width='59%'>
<B><span style="font-size: 8pt">  ...For Freedom2Surf Users - By Freedom2Surf
Users... </span>
</B></td>
<td class="otherrow" width='126%' align="right">
<FORM method="get" action="http://search.atomz.com/search/">