[56K warn] Honest comments wanted for iris.ac

It doesn't matter if you do all the error checking in the world, or if you have the most beautiful graphics, if your site or application design isn't usable, it's not going to do well. Get input and advice on usability and user interface issues here.

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phpScott
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Post by phpScott »

remember to check for accessibility issue's

watchfire came up with one for level 2
Make sure event handlers do not require use of a mouse
Device Handler Correspondences

your onclick events should have a onkeypress event as well

level 3
Identify the language of the text
solution
documents are required to use the META element with the 'name' attribute value 'language' in the Head section.

as much as the valid css and xhtml, accessibility would be the next big issue, especially as it looks like the site could be part government founded
matthijs
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Post by matthijs »

The font will stay I think since it's clean and easy to read, sorry
No worries. It's too bad the nice fonts are not available on all/most platforms. If you really go for availability, arial is indeed the best choice. Of course you could declare them like font-family: verdana,arial,sans-serif; so that in case someone has verdana (99% of windows users) he/she gets that one.

About the buttons: I remember finding a whole bunch of different ones on the w3c site. Some smaller, some bigger, different colors, etc.

Good luck with the site.
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Chris Corbyn
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Post by Chris Corbyn »

phpScott wrote:remember to check for accessibility issue's

watchfire came up with one for level 2
Make sure event handlers do not require use of a mouse
Device Handler Correspondences

your onclick events should have a onkeypress event as well
:? The javascript that's on the site isn't required... it simply enhances the site for those who have it on. There actually aren't any onclick events at present, only mouseover events and onsubmit events. Odd.
level 3
Identify the language of the text
solution
documents are required to use the META element with the 'name' attribute value 'language' in the Head section.
Ah yes... I do need to put that in there... I could actually put the content-encoding in there too, although our server sends that by default as UTF-8. Does anyone know what meta tag you use to identify the spoken/written language? i.e. English/British ?
as much as the valid css and xhtml, accessibility would be the next big issue, especially as it looks like the site could be part government founded
The project is almost entirely government funded so you got that right indeed. I'm all for accessibility. It generally doesn't involve much hard work and is better all-round for everyone.

I'll get these META tags in place :)

EDIT | <META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Language" CONTENT="en-GB">
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phpScott
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Post by phpScott »

the only reason I posted about the onclick is because a view source showed

Code: Select all

<div id="outer">
	<div id="wrapper">
		<div id="container">
			<div id="content">
				<div id="guest_sidebar">
					<ul>
						<li onclick="window.location='./'" onmouseover="this.style.backgroundColor='#EAEAFF'" onmouseout="this.style.backgroundColor=''"><a href="./">Home</a></li>

						<li onclick="window.location='screenshots'" onmouseover="this.style.backgroundColor='#EAEAFF'" onmouseout="this.style.backgroundColor=''"><a href="screenshots">Screenshots</a></li>
						<li onclick="window.location='developers'" onmouseover="this.style.backgroundColor='#EAEAFF'" onmouseout="this.style.backgroundColor=''"><a href="developers">Development Team</a></li>
						<li onclick="window.location='contact'" onmouseover="this.style.backgroundColor='#EAEAFF'" onmouseout="this.style.backgroundColor=''"><a href="contact">Contact Us</a></li>
						<li onclick="window.location='contact'" onmouseover="this.style.backgroundColor='#EAEAFF'" onmouseout="this.style.backgroundColor=''"><a href="credits">Credits</a></li>
					</ul>
					<hr class="side_rule" />
					<div id="portal_button" onmouseover="this.style.cursor='pointer';" onclick="window.location='https://portal.iris.ac/';">

						<a href="https://portal.iris.ac/" title="Login">IRIS Portal Login</a>
					</div>
Gotta love the government for spending money.
At least I know someone is using my hard earned taxe money for some benifit.
Keep all those ASBO's in waiting, inline :wink:
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Chris Corbyn
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Post by Chris Corbyn »

Ah OK, forgot about those... yeah don't worry, if you look there are hyperlinks as well as click events. The click events just allow you to click anywhere in the list, rather than just on the text.

This is legitimate governemt spending... trust me, we barely got enough to cover our salaries and (increasing) server costs... :(

The government really need to be spending money on this sort of thing (Ermm.. oh this is banned talk so I'll finish briefly), so they're going to be putting ~£30B into behaviour management in schools. Whether we'll see any of it I don't know.
Roja
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Post by Roja »

It looks really solid, and well designed.

That is all.
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Chris Corbyn
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Post by Chris Corbyn »

Roja wrote:It looks really solid, and well designed.

That is all.
8O Awesome. You were always going to be a crucial person to comment ;) Thanks.
darryladie
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Location: East Sussex, UK

Post by darryladie »

Hello again.

I do think it needs a tad more padding within the boxes around the text.
Also, do you really want,
"Currently serving 17 schools with 2145 staff and 14242 students
We have a total of 65116 good & bad behaviour records in the system to date"
to be the first thing that search engines see? I'm thinking SEO here but design is great :lol:

Other than that, I really like what you've done with the place :wink:
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shoebappa
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Post by shoebappa »

Yeah, tis fixed. The little grey vertical bars (in between the 3 columns) shrink down to the bottom so you don't notice they were ever there. Looks better without them imho.
ody
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Post by ody »

shoebappa wrote:Yeah, tis fixed. The little grey vertical bars (in between the 3 columns) shrink down to the bottom so you don't notice they were ever there. Looks better without them imho.
Yeah me to.
ntbd
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Post by ntbd »

Blue underlined titles just look like links to me!

Remember reading that years ago, and still has me hovering over any blue underlined text tut-tutting!
timvw
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Post by timvw »

I find that JavaScript way to obtrusive ;) (Simply attach the eventlisteners when the document is loaded.. And keep the js-soup out of your html ;))

(makes it easier to test the site without js too).
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RobertGonzalez
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Post by RobertGonzalez »

Nice site d11. Flows nice, looks nice, moves very well. The layout is easy and the colors are not distracting at all.

As for the compliance buttons, I personally think they are right on. But if you want some smaller "Brilliant Buttons" for your compliance notifications, here are a couple...
Image
Image

Heck, I'll even throw in a DevNetwork one I had done...
Image
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Luke
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Post by Luke »

[offtopic]
What font is it that people use in those little icons? I see that font used all the time when text needs to be really small... and I'm assuming it is because it is very easy to read even though it's small. I want that font. What is it?
[/offtopic]
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RobertGonzalez
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Post by RobertGonzalez »

Dude, I work for a multi-billion dollar company that has ONE, count them, ONE proxy server for over 1,000 users. Our download speed is literally 1K per second right now. Grrr :x . Do you know how hard it is to find images on 1K per second?!?!?!?

<breathing>
Here are a few resources for "brilliant buttons"...
http://gtmcknight.com/buttons/ (Lots of information about these buttons and a searchable database of buttons)
http://www.lucazappa.com/brilliantMaker/buttonImage.php (Make your own!)
http://www.kalsey.com/tools/buttonmaker/ (Another make your own)
http://ekstreme.com/buttonmaker/index.php (A robust make your own)
http://80x15.blogtrends.info/ (Nothing but buttons -- something like 1300 all on one page (freakin' 1K download speeds))
</breathing>

PS The font is Silkscreen by Jason Kottke(6px).
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