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One of those "How's my design?" type threads

Posted: Wed Dec 21, 2005 7:17 pm
by redmonkey
I'll get the disclaimer in first.. "I'm not a web designer" I do very little fornt end work generally nothing more than basic HTML, hence this thread.

Anyway, I was asked by a couple of friends of mine to 'do something' with their website.

I'm interested in comments/opinions from those who deal with this stuff on a day to day basis or even just from a users perspective.

One note, the textual and media content have nothing to do with me it is purely the design/structure that I'm interested in.

And just to stop anybody potentially wasting their time detailing any oddities that I already know about, here is what I've noted from testing thus far....

Code: Select all

Firefox v1.01 (Windows)
  All good renders as intended

Firefox v1.5 (Windows)
  All good renders as intended

Internet Explorer v5.00 (Windows)
  The 'read more' bubble icon appears behind the 'read more' link text

	Quotes have no top margin when shown within a snippet box, or probably more
	acurately, snippet boxes have no top padding when they contain a quote

Internet Explorer v6.0.2900 (Windows)
  All good renders as intended

Mozilla v1.7.3 (Windows)
  All good renders as intended

Opera v8.5 build 7700 (Windows)
  All good renders as intended

Inernet Explorer v5.2.3 (Mac OS X)
  Snippet boxes (which should appear on the left) appear after primary content
	although they are on the left they are not rendered where they should be.

	Form field labels do not align with there associated input boxes.

	Small rendering issue with form textarea, results in a gery line down the
	right hand side of the text area input

	colors do not blend as well as intended/expected

	essentially, site is usable and readable but is not laid out as intended

Opera v8.51 build 2182 (Mac OS X)
  All good renders as intended

Safari v2.0.2 (416.13)
  Layout is rendered as intended

	Color blends are not as smooth as intended/expected

Firefox v1.5 (Mac OS X)
  Layout is rendered as intended

	Color blends are not as smooth as intended/expected

	Begining to think these color issues observed on Mac OS X may be a result of
	the monitor in use and not a browser problem, yet to be confirmed though.
Thanks in advance

Posted: Wed Dec 21, 2005 7:35 pm
by neophyte
For starters don't worry about mac os x IE 5x: hardly anybody uses it, MS doesn't support it, and most of us can't wait for Apple to stop distributing it. Structurally it's sound - html validates on the page I tested. Usability.... I don't like the nav bar at the bottom. More than one nav bar with the same links confuses users. Usability.gov is a good place to go for usability studies and so forth.

Posted: Wed Dec 21, 2005 7:51 pm
by redmonkey
Thanks,

IE no longer ships with Mac OS X as of v10.4 (Tiger) but I always check it, although more out of morbid curiosity more than anything else.

With regard the bottom navbar, one of my pet hates (and theirs as it goes) is getting to the bottom of the page then having to scroll back up to get to the navigation. Currently (it's still a bit of work in progress) most of the pages fit within a single view (if viweing on 1024x768 at full screen) but it is expected that some pages in the future will extend more than slightly off the bottom of the viewing window so navbars are provided top and bottom on all pages for continuity. I could've provided a 'top' link or some such similar but I felt a complete duplication of the navbar was/is a better approach.

Posted: Sun Dec 25, 2005 9:05 am
by lc
Hey.

well ok some crits:

I'd say get rid of the image behind the main text... all it does is make the text harder to read.

Also the blue boxes on the left aren't too subtle... I can understand the gals wanting lots of pink but that blue shouldn't be nessecary. It also makes the latest news text nearly unreadable.

I personally like making "dividers" for paragraphs... like a single dot high line with a slight color fade in it that you put below each paragraph.

I might have done something like that to say... the bottom and right side of the blue blocks as well.. .add a 1 pixel fading line.

Perhaps also only underline the chosen and hover links... not the regular ones in the menu.

Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2006 9:26 pm
by redmonkey
Thanks,
lc wrote:I'd say get rid of the image behind the main text... all it does is make the text harder to read.
Which type of monitor are/were you using? From viewing on the handful of TFTs I have here I'd say that the background image is fairly non-obtrusive. That being said, I've yet to view it on a CRT screen and I have seen in the past that some CRT monitors will render a background image like that with higher contrast which may make the foreground text difficult to read.
lc wrote:Also the blue boxes on the left aren't too subtle... I can understand the gals wanting lots of pink but that blue shouldn't be nessecary. It also makes the latest news text nearly unreadable.
Agreed that the foreground text colour needs adjusting, I have that marked down for a revisit. The boxes aren't designed to be subtle as such, secondary content containers yes, but not so much subtle that they are completely ignored. The bikes they currently have are pink with blue so seemed a natural colour choice.
lc wrote:I personally like making "dividers" for paragraphs... like a single dot high line with a slight color fade in it that you put below each paragraph.
As you say it's a personal preference. I don't see the value of it. If anything I would think that it could lend itself to slight confusion. A visual divider would suggest to me that the following text would be in someway detached from the previous text block and not (as it is in this case) a continuation.
lc wrote:Perhaps also only underline the chosen and hover links... not the regular ones in the menu.
By underlining all menu links it seemed to balance the top and bottom padding/margin of the navigation block, without them it seemed a bit odd.

Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2006 10:46 pm
by John Cartwright
Two things that I noted when looking at the site is mainly the context background makes it dificult to read. Another thing that is complete personal preference, and since you asked for opinions I give you such, to only have 1 location where your links are. Generally, I find it more organized, if you will, when there is one central location for the navigation. In your case, the links are identical but I still find it a bit crowded with the links at the bottom. Perhaps even try removing the whole footer would give your layout a smoother look, and less compact.

Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2006 11:28 pm
by redmonkey
Thanks,

I'm going to dig out a CRT monitor and have a look at the background image. One of their specific comments was that they liked the image being there so I will probably just fade it out a little over time.

Interestingly, another one of their specific comments was that they liked the idea of the bottom navigation bar as it negates the need to scroll back to the top just to choose another link. I agree with your logic of having a central location for navigation and if I thought that there would be only a few pages that would extend out of view then I would go down that route. However, as mentioned previously, it is expected that majority rather than the minority of pages will involve some amount of scrolling. My theory is that by providing navigation both top and bottom on all pages it provides continuity and also adheres to user expectation.
Jcart wrote:In your case, the links are identical but I still find it a bit crowded with the links at the bottom. Perhaps even try removing the whole footer would give your layout a smoother look, and less compact.
Given my current train of thought, that almost seems like sacraficing usability over design? Not 'having a go', could be an interesting debate, then again, could just be purely a personal preference thing as you say.