Your honest reviews please. 4

[Omicron]

Good day,
I'd appereciate any and all comments and input regarding the following webpage:

http://www.mindspring.com/~ajs5

Your input regarding layout, color, and especially the functionality of the heavy use of javascript would be most appreciated. Anyone using IE5.5 and IE6 would be especially helpful. NS users will see numerous issues I'm sure!
And, by all means, sign the guestbook and play with the Personal Stock Portfolio. Thanks in advance.
(And check out my grandson!
- Omicron -

 

[Stuartp]

Omicron,

If I had to review this web site in a sentence, my comment would probably be "not bad, not great." There are plenty of links to good sites, although pages where I had expected to see some of your own content were blank.

In my opinion, the front page is too crowded with everything being crammed on here. I would have presented the categories only, and then let peopple drill down to the finer details. Presented the way it is can be rather bland, as is the case here. There is also nothing on the front page by way of a header identifying the company, name, purpose or anything. Under the about button, I had one page under constuction (always a bad technique - if it isnt finished, dont link it!) and I couldnt help feeling that you were using frames for the sake of using them. Some people cant use them!

Finally, I can honestly say that if you are making "heavy use of Javascript" as you say, this is likely to detract heavily from the sites' appeal. Many people especially corporates have Java turned off as a precaution against viruses. I suspect this is why a lot of the content doesnt show up. Javascript has its uses, but do you _really_ need to use it just to show a set of pictures of your grandson? This is a situation where "less is more". Used effectively it can be useful. Used for the sake of it, as appears to be the case here, is just over kill and will ultimately be harmful in terms of what you are trying to achieve.

Stuart

 

[Omicron]

Stuart,
Thank you for your time and review of the site.
It is much appreciated. I would have liked your opinion of the javascript which is the reason I mentioned it in my original post. I agree with your views regarding corporate distain for JS but as this is a personal site I hadn't expected much traffic from the big boys If you should ever wander back in, turn JS on and give it another look.
Regards,
-Omicron -

 

[paulwood]

I don't really like commenting on other peoples work since it can come across as negative, however since you ask

I broadly agree with Stuart in that it could be simplified by starting with categories with drilling down from there. If you like to use Javascript, creating a menu system within the categories might be a helpful way of doing it. Maybe a way would be to use the arrow icons which are only currently used to prompt via alt tags to click links (I expected to be able to click them).
Although the menu system is clever and always available, I'm not sure it actually helps to have two different means of navigating around the site, maybe you should stick to one or the other?

My personal preference is that if you have text, then a patterned background is not helpful, although as patterned backgrounds go, yours is reasonably clear.

Finally, you are to be congratulated on what must have taken a lot of work to get all the links together, tighten it up a tad and it's a good resource.

I hope this is helpful.

 

[Wullie]

Hi,

I totally agree with the above posts but have a few other things to add.

After checking your code, I noticed some problems which I have listed below.

1) You have not closed the META generator tag and you do not have any info in the tag, so what is the point of having it?

2) You have 2 title tags.

3) The image tag for "images/recommend.gif" is missing the ending >

4) One of the META tags is value, I am not sure if this is meant to be there but I`ve never heard of this before. Looks like it is missing something.

5)You have a table that has 2 width attributes in the same tag, both are different. One has 98% and the other has 93%.

6)You have 2 other tables with the width repeated, this time both are the same. 93% + 93% in both tags.

Other than that and the other things mentioned in the other posts, looks ok. Must have been a lot of work getting all those links up!!

Hope this helps

Wullie

http://www.survivorhelp.co.uk

 

[Omicron]

Thank you one and all. Your comments are sincerely welcomed.
The code is indeed "unfinished" regarding syntax, et al.
Please contune to play with it and "lay it on me"!
Believe it or not, the orginal version did use a drill-down method but I switched to the current "full page" methodology when I saw it being used on several commercial Info Portal sites. Sigh....
Did the "First Time" visitor pop-up work as intended?
I hope you folks sign the Guestbook so I can remember who "told me as it was"!
Anyone else? Please continue.....
Thanks to all.
Regards,
- Omicron -

 

[JHoarty]

Okay, now for a completely different angle! I like the slideshow code. It at least has great potential; maybe could be prettied up, but I'm impressed. I am not aware of any real security threat from JavaScript, nor do I believe that many people turn it off. Cookies and ActiveX controls maybe, but not JS. I think almost every site that's worth a nickel uses JavaScript, including Earthlink, AOL, and Microsoft.

Also, nothing wrong with multiple title tags either, as far as I know. I assume you are trying to enhance search engine placement, and that will still work with many spiders.

The part that I don't like is the stationary background! I always find the text hard to read on pages that lock the background like that. It just bugs me.

The full-site menu on your homepage was really jumpy. Like it was nervous or something. It worked fine on page 2.

Speaking of "page 2", that "title" is so unrevealing. I'm talking about the link on your homepage that says "Check Out Page II". My first reaction is "why?" "What's there?" If you are truly a portal, I shouldn't have to click a link to find out what's behind the curtain.

Great site, by the way. I'd never be so critical of a site I didn't like. I'd just ignore the post! And I don't mean to "start something" with previous respondents. All had very insightful comments. I just wanted to add another opinion. John Hoarty
jhoarty@quickestore.com

http://www.quickestore.com

 

[coldfused]

also your scroll bar css is not used for all links that you have created?..why not use it for all your links?..

carlsatterwhite@endangeredgraphics.com

 

[paulwood]

One further thing occurs to me, the text could probably be reduced a couple of point sizes, I think it's 12 at the moment, 10 might be better, most commercial sites work at that. Just a thought.

 

[Omicron]

John,
Thank you for your support. Believe me, I take no offense to any comments from anyone. That is the reason I asked for them - to learn and improve. I do this for a hobbit. The page is a personal one and all I'm looking for are comments and imput telling me the good, the bad and the ugly.
I hope I get a hundred people to look at it and comment on it.
Once again, glad you basicly enjoyed the site and I truly appreciate your time and input.
Anyone else?
- Omicron -

 

[Boomerang]

Hi Omicron,

You have some link to pages like "Freedonation.com" and "Web stats" etc. If visitors click, these sites are loaded in the same browser. This causes that people loose focus from your site.

I would suggest you add target=_blank or target=_new to your link like: <a &quot;target=_blank&quot; href=&quot;...

But I also saw you used a <iframe> for the link &quot;Web state&quot; but with <iframe> the target=... won't work. But you can leave the whole <iframe ...> </iframe> because I think you don't need it here, and then the target=... works!

good luck,
Erik

 

[Boomerang]

oops typo!!,

<a target=&quot;_blank&quot; href=&quot;...

Erik