Site CHeck!

Spunog UIE

Hey all,

Just wonderin if ya could check out my site and let me know what you think. I got some new webspace from acid.ie so i could try out a phpbb. So check that out on the site too. Oh and post some replies. It looks a tad gey with my name on nearly all of them Just freshly finished for the min this sec.

Anyhew, let me know what you like or don't like and how to improve it.

Thanks!
Alo.

Site link ---> http://gideon.acid.ie

peterd

Originally posted by Gideon
...so i could try out a phpbb. So check that out on the site too.

Where's the link for phpBB?

Spunog UIE

its the message board.

http://gideon.acid.ie/phpBB2

peterd

Originally posted by Gideon
its the message board.

http://gideon.acid.ie/phpBB2

Could have guessed the url , but there's no link to it from your site, that is, unless the correct link is on those mystical drop-down nav's that don't appear in Opera?

sisob

this is really picky but If I were you i would make the text "Skip FLASH intro and Enter Site." a gif in a nice font - the rest of the page looks great but that bit of text just sticks out.

is the BB ment to look like this?
The bit with inbox, sentbox etc.. is too wide


here it shows the text "Tallaght Karting Forum Index -> Mindless Babbel" twice - confusing


I hope you were looking for some helpful criticism

how did you integrate the bb so well with your site ? i'm trying to intigrate my bb at http://sisob.dyndns.org/phpBB/ with my site at http://sisob.dyndns.org/

sisob

overall a great site, after all that said

Spunog UIE

Ya thanks for the helpful criticism.

peterd: that menu was meant to work with opera to begin with but never has for me. I havent even tried to find out why it isn't. Not an expert in an field or web-design or scripts, so i would take me a while to figure it out, usually through trial and error. I think i'll change it to another menu that works in opera later. 80's project is always recommending that other dhtm central? site. So maybe that one works with it. I shall see. But for the moment it works with most other browsers so it will do for the min. and ya the link was on it for the message board .


sisob: thanks for the nice comments. I'm gonna change that skip intro thing to a image once i have this post done. I had images before to skip and did that intro in a rush tryin to get it to work, easily fixed.
The forum isn't suppose to look like that. I'm not too sure why it looked like that for you. I have a feeling it might be that little bit of flash thats messing it up as i had % values in its width so it would adjust to lower res's a bit better. It works on IE but thats usually more forgiving.
The mindless babbel appearing twice is cos there is only one post in the forum and one is a link for the top and the other for the bottom, when it fills up ya won't notice that.

As for intergrating it, just kept messing around with the php (don't have a clue about it so kept backups) i think you can change most of it through the index.php file in the main folder, and then the overallheader.php and overallfooter in the template folder. A text editor seems to work best with them. But i tried editing everything.

Thanks again,
Alo.

sisob

FYI i use a 1280x1024 res - I'd say that was the problem - absolute values for the width should solve that

Spunog UIE

just a thought.

is there a chance that my menu works in opera 5 and not in 6? which you using?

i dont' want to use absolute values cos it doesn't really work in lower res's. I wish windows set its default to 1024*768. dang. haven't tried to fix that yet. on a mission to get my menu script working in opera6 i'm bored okay?!

peterd

Opera 6 + don't think so, but not certain.

Nice to see someone "interested" in getting their site looking well for even minority browsers, like us. Yes, DHTML Central does have great cross-browser menus or even milonic, boards.ie menu's!

Spunog UIE

okayyyyyyyyyyyyyy,

just changed the whole menu bar, and got it look like it was but with a newer version etc. took years that. i'm tired and going to bed.

All the pages are updated too cept the news archieves.
Let me know if it works plz cos don't have opera installed.

Thx,
Alan.

The Corinthian

The Flash movie doesn’t work (aesthetically) for me. If you’re going to include one, I’d really recommend revisiting the ‘with sound version’ to try to get it down to below 100k, rather than have the ‘without sound’ (which is a waste of time) or the ‘with sound’ (which is far to fat) options. I also note that on a mouseover, when selecting one of those options, the size quoted for the ‘with sound’ option jumps from 277k to 285k.

As for the main site – there should be an alternative to the Flash based banner title. You should detect rather than assume that it’s Flash enabled.

The Top NavBar is poorly placed on my machine (IE 5.0/W2K) and overlaps on the white borderline beneath it – the area on which it sits (between the Flash title and the main body) is spaced out using only a   - I’d suggest using a spacer GIFF so that you can give it an absolute height and avoid the overlap.

The side NavBar is redundant if JavaScript is enabled, so, I’d actually put them as simple HTML links (no rollovers) beneath the Top NavBar in the event of JavaScript not being enabled.

Blobfisk

Just a couple of small things:

On the drop-down menu Committee is spelled Commette..

And there is no Home link on any of the interior pages, meaning you loose the left hand navigation and need to use the Back button once (or more) to get to it again.

HTH.

Spunog UIE

The Corinthian : Changed the text over in the flash to 285k so it doesn't change.
Are there people really that don't use java-script? Thought like nearly everyone used that. I think its a good idea tho to stick normal html under the nav for browsers that the script doesn't work for, so will prob do that.

I used to half 2 sides of the site where ppl could choose the flash version or the nonflash, but that was a pain, and i figured that nearly everyone had flash. Is there an easy way to detect flash then maybe a script that changes the banner.swf to a banner.jpg?
As for the flash size, i've really compressed it. The reason for halfing one without sound, is obivously the size, but also a lot of the people who would view the site are on a college comp which rarely have speakers and few people bring their headphones. The only things size wise to add to the sound inabled version is the sound file its self (.mp3) and the last karting image is a .gif with transparent bits rather than a jpeg. Theres a small extra bit of flash too. The only thing i can do to reduce the size more on it is to get a smaller sound file. Open to any good recomindations. I'd like something nice to run the lenth of the clip.:)

I'm not sure what you mean by the placing or where you mean it over laps. I'd just put that nav bar up and hadn't really placed it, i've tidied it up a bit but without your spacer .gif Ya mean to have a spacer gif beneath the menu bar to keep it from going over the white line at top of page below the nav?


Blob Fish: The home page is also the news page, so clicking the news or the news dated as the first in the list of the mouse over of news links you back there. all the links on the left are also the same as the top of all the menu's themselves. I had an image saying news before at the top of the main index page but it looked really crap, haven't replaced it yet.

Dang that committee, it escaped the spell checker cos in the .js and i'm very dislexic?(see what i mean):(

sisob

<rant>

IMHO it is good design practise to design your site for the lowest common denominator. Ie. a good site does not rely on flash, java, IE.

I designed my site to work at 800x600 on any css1 compatible browser. But I also coded it in such a way so that people using v. old browsers or text based browsers could use it.

check it out at http://sisob.dyndns.org/ - I don't think it has suffered as a result of not having java, javascript, java or flash. There are also v. few images - making it v. quick to load.

1 important thing - MOST users do not have flash - not do they want to watch flash movies

although that said - i think your flash is very well done - i'm just giving out about the web in general.

Anyway the main point is go by the lowest common denominator rule.

</rant>

<edit>:) just for fun i attached what your site looks like in a text based browser - not that you need to design for text-based </edit>

Spunog UIE

ya i do the same with 800*600 usually but i was just makin sure it fitted in for it, nothin much more. Didn't know about the flash not being like everywhere, thought it would be like everywhere.
I've seen your site loads, i always end up going to it for some reason. See ya got your msg-board intergrated.

Spunog UIE

excuse the likess in the above post! scarey!

anyhew thanks again for critique to all.

phaxx

Originally posted by Gideon
Are there people really that don't use java-script? Thought like nearly everyone used that.

The only javascript I use on my site is for the opening the webcam popup window, and only because there's no other way. I avoid javascript if at all possible.

Spunog UIE

i meant people with browsers that don't support it or people that just have it turned off.

The Corinthian

Originally posted by Gideon
Are there people really that don't use java-script?

8% last time I looked.