please review ourdoings.com "custom style" feature

I've created a news-and-photo-sharing site intended to be useful to
parents and other busy people who have a story to tell with their
digital photos, but little time to tell it.

Feedback would be appreciated on the site in general, but especially
on the "custom style" feature. It's entirely CSS-driven, a technology
of which I'm an admirer but by no means an expert. I'm particularly
interested in knowing how successful I've been at enabling flexible
styling of pages. Are the elements arranged in such a way that you
could make a news/photo page look however you want it to?

If there are changes I should make to the element structure, I'd like
to do it before doing a lot of new styles. I have seven now, and plan
on doing more, generally adapted from oswd or owd.

Here's how to test it:

1. Go to http://ourdoings.com/demostart.html
2. Follow the demo instructions until you have one or two illustrated
news entries. (This should take about a minute; if not, usability
feedback would be appreciated.)
3. Ignore the remaining demo instructions and go to
http://ourdoings.com/style.html
4. Select a style and "Save Changes"
5. Open the "main page" link in another tab
6. Does the main page look decent in your browser?
7. View source and see if the underlying elements are styleable enough.

A special note about the center part of the main page that has news
entries: This sometimes goes out in email, so it needs to work even
with CSS disabled, thus the STRONG element instead of something more
generic.

The funky classes like _2005 are to allow year-specific,
month-specific and date-specific styling. Is this a good idea or
should I just cut those out?

Please followup to comp.infosystems.www.site-design

--

http://ourdoings.com/ Easily organize and disseminate news and
photos for your family or group.

Gazing into my crystal ball I observed Bruce Lewis <brlspam (AT) yahoo (DOT) com>
writing in news:nm9zm9gfuou.fsf (AT) department-of-alchemy (DOT) mit.edu:

I've created a news-and-photo-sharing site intended to be useful to
parents and other busy people who have a story to tell with their
digital photos, but little time to tell it.

I hear you, I am one of those people. I am a web developer in my late
forties with a three year old.

Feedback would be appreciated on the site in general, but especially
on the "custom style" feature. It's entirely CSS-driven, a technology
of which I'm an admirer but by no means an expert. I'm particularly
interested in knowing how successful I've been at enabling flexible
styling of pages. Are the elements arranged in such a way that you
could make a news/photo page look however you want it to?

I chose Greenery - mainly because it seems to be the most pleasing and
doesn't have any issues.

Authenticity looks a bit chopped up in Opera.
Brownies contrast is not enough on links in header.
Earth Wind and Fire is fine except it took a long time to load the first
time. Now that it's in cache, no problems. Purple Perfection just
doesn't have enough purple. Purple is my favorite color - I should
know! Summer Holiday looks nice except "Ten years from now..." text is
too small, and the textbox for enter your declarations is going outside
of its container in Opera.

I also discovered that once you had chosen a style, you cannot choose
another. You can preview all you want, but, selecting Save Changes does
not work if you have already chosen. This is with accepting cookies,
Opera, WinXP SP2.

If there are changes I should make to the element structure, I'd like
to do it before doing a lot of new styles. I have seven now, and plan
on doing more, generally adapted from oswd or owd.

One thing that would be nice is <select name="whatever"
onchange="this.form.submit()"> so that it's automatically done. If you
run the routine correctly, this should be possible, even with other form
elements coming in.

Here's how to test it:

1. Go to http://ourdoings.com/demostart.html
2. Follow the demo instructions until you have one or two illustrated
news entries. (This should take about a minute; if not, usability
feedback would be appreciated.)

The whole thing is complicated. You should never tell anyone to "look
for blah" - what about visitors who can't do that? It should be
intuitive - provide a next link (rather like an install routine). 1. Do
this - next 2. Do that - next
3. Do something - next
4. Do whatever - you're done.

3. Ignore the remaining demo instructions and go to
http://ourdoings.com/style.html
4. Select a style and "Save Changes"
5. Open the "main page" link in another tab
6. Does the main page look decent in your browser?
7. View source and see if the underlying elements are styleable
enough.

A special note about the center part of the main page that has news
entries: This sometimes goes out in email, so it needs to work even
with CSS disabled, thus the STRONG element instead of something more
generic.

The funky classes like _2005 are to allow year-specific,
month-specific and date-specific styling. Is this a good idea or
should I just cut those out?

Probably not a great idea. Better to describe a style, eg. "across" for
a horizontal list. There is no chance that in 2007 or 2030 that across
will have any other semantic meaning.

Please followup to comp.infosystems.www.site-design

--
Adrienne Boswell at Home
Arbpen Web Site Design Services
http://www.cavalcade-of-coding.info
Please respond to the group so others can share

Adrienne Boswell <arbpen (AT) yahoo (DOT) com> writes:

The whole thing is complicated. You should never tell anyone to "look
for blah" - what about visitors who can't do that? It should be
intuitive - provide a next link (rather like an install routine). 1. Do
this - next 2. Do that - next
3. Do something - next
4. Do whatever - you're done.

Thanks for your feedback. I'll be working on all of the things you
mentioned, most especially this bit. In seeking feedback from users
last summer, a what-to-do-next feature was high on the list. I
implemented the demo/tutorial first, then the what-next page. I didn't
ge the what-next page integrated into the demo. I'll do that next.

I'll think about possibly replacing (or making optional) the seven links
at the top of the page with a title and a single link to the what-next
page. There's a balance of letting experienced users do things quickly
versus guiding new users along.