Site Review Please

[jimlee]

Hi All,

http://www.silence.me.uk

This is the first time i've put any effort into making a web site. The purpose of the site at the moment is to have something to show to my potential new boss when I apply for an internal job at work.

I would greatly appreciate any comments or criticisms from anyone who has a spare few mins to check it out.

thanks in advance



jimlad

"There's this thing called being so open-minded your brains drop out." - Richard Dawkins

 

[ca8msm]

Have you viewed the site in any other browser than IE? I looked at it in FireFox and it looks very different!


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[johnwm]

1. Visual
i. Although there are merits in keeping your style simple, you can make things too plain - dead black on dead white can be a bit stark! The odd letter in colour just emphasises the starkness for me.

ii. The main pages start off looking very empty, and if your user has JS turned off then the main pages stay very empty

2. Technical
i. Start off with a valid doctype, then do a validation of your site. You can use:

http://validator.w3.org/

or

http://www.htmlhelp.com/tools/validator/

ii. I would avoid the use of Word as a webpage generator (as on the Cobol project pages), as it looks very odd in non-IE browsers, as well as being hideously non standards compliant

iii. There appears to be no input validation on the contact me form

iv. Look at your site in other browsers as ca8msm says. A lot of those problems will go away when you get rid of the Word junk and get your pages validating OK

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[chrissie1]

I agree with the wise men. And a menu that is in the same place all the time would be nice. Just like I like the same layout all the time.

Christiaan Baes
Belgium

"My new site" - Me

 

[jimlee]

Hi, thanks for the responses,

I kinda knew that I was going to get comments on the starkness of the site (i agree!) to be honest i've been doing this in work because my home pc blew up a couple of weeks ago so i've just been spending my time on getting all the content in there, i'll have a think now on how to liven it up a bit.

As for viewing in other browsers, i haven't yet for the same reason. (can't install mucb in work... too regulated)

I know the word generated pages are dirty and i'm gonna rectify this when I get time, trouble is, some of them are gonna take a long time (print layout charts for example)

ah well , off to work !

jimlad

"There's this thing called being so open-minded your brains drop out." - Richard Dawkins

 

[chrissie1]

You can write pretty good sites with notepad you know.

Christiaan Baes
Belgium

"My new site" - Me

 

[ChrisHunt]

That's a snappy domain name, but it doesn't seem to bear any relation to the content of the site. What does it mean? I can shut you up by giving you a job?

What skills are you intending to demonstrate through this site? If I was looking to employ a Javascript coder, your site might do the trick. If I was looking for a web designer/builder, all that Javascript jiggery-pokery getting between me and the content would actively discourage me from employing you. Just keep it simple and concentrate on the content.

-- Chris Hunt
Webmaster & Tragedian
Extra Connections Ltd

 

[jimlee]

Chrissie,
I wrote everything with notepad except for some parts of the COBOL project, they were already done in word before I wrote the site so i used them as they were and just added some menus. Like your site btw, nice colors

ChrisHunt,
I bought the domain name a while ago and it's the only one i've got at the mo so I used it, was thinkin maybe of getting another for this site for exactly the reason you mentioned.
As for what skills i'm trying to demonstrate, well, I didn't really build the site to demonstrate any web/java abilities although it can't hurt as the department i will be applying to does everything from COBOL/Natural to HTML/Java.


jimlad

"There's this thing called being so open-minded your brains drop out." - Richard Dawkins

 

[jimlee]

oh god, i've just viewed it in firefox :-(

jimlad

"There's this thing called being so open-minded your brains drop out." - Richard Dawkins

 

[johnwm]

Hence the earlier comments!

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If you want to get the best response to a question, please check out FAQ222-2244 first.
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