Site Homepage Review Requested www.nss.org

Hi Everyone,

I am Jim Plaxco, a volunteer member of the National Space Society's
Internet Development Team.

I was hoping that some of you here could give us some feedback on our
web site, particularly our home page.

Our URL is http://www.nss.org

Thank you in advance for your assistance.

If you prefer to email me directly, I can be reached at the following
(hopefully spammer proof) address (the reply-to address is a dummy).

jimplaxco
at
nsschapters
dot
org


Best Regards, Jim Plaxco
National Space Society http://www.nss.org
Astrodigital http://www.astrodigital.org

On Sat, 11 Sep 2004 20:53:17 -0500, Jim wrote:

http://www.nss.org

Good. (Mostly) adjust to font size readjustment.

Bad. Not valid mark-up.
<http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nss.org&charset=iso-8859-1+%28Western+Europe%29>

--
Andrew Thompson
http://www.PhySci.org/ Open-source software suite
http://www.PhySci.org/codes/ Web & IT Help
http://www.1point1C.org/ Science & Technology

Jim <Jim (AT) nospamwanted (DOT) com> wrote in
news:hoa7k05aaf1iv1v7e6r3och4ibtrv4rlku (AT) 4ax (DOT) com:

I was hoping that some of you here could give us some feedback on our
web site, particularly our home page.

Our URL is http://www.nss.org

First step is to validate the page's HTML, and your
page fails, because of a lack of character encoding.
http://validator.w3.org/check?verbos...//www.nss.org/

It complains about non utf-8 characters on lines 226 & 230, so if
I take a guess and assume a windows-152 encoding(just because I've
seen this sort of thing before ;-) I find your page has 54 errors,
assuming HTML 4.01 Transitional:
<http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=ht...F&charset=wind
ows-1252+%28Western+Europe%29&doctype=%28detect+automa tically%29&verbose=1>

In fact, you're better to force iso-8859-1 encoding, because
that will show you the errors on lines 226 and 230.

Of course there are other issues, such as using tables for layout,
but start by fixing the existing HTML.

--
Dave Patton
Canadian Coordinator, Degree Confluence Project
http://www.confluence.org/
My website: http://members.shaw.ca/davepatton/

In message <hoa7k05aaf1iv1v7e6r3och4ibtrv4rlku (AT) 4ax (DOT) com>, Jim
<Jim (AT) nospamwanted (DOT) com> writes

Hi Everyone,

I am Jim Plaxco, a volunteer member of the National Space Society's
Internet Development Team.

I was hoping that some of you here could give us some feedback on our
web site, particularly our home page.

Our URL is http://www.nss.org

Thank you in advance for your assistance.

If you prefer to email me directly, I can be reached at the following
(hopefully spammer proof) address (the reply-to address is a dummy).

jimplaxco
at
nsschapters
dot
org


Best Regards, Jim Plaxco
National Space Society http://www.nss.org
Astrodigital http://www.astrodigital.org

Just taking a very quick look .........

From the point of Accessibility guidelines:

(a) A large amount of images need Alternative Text specified (mostly
alt="")

(b) There seems to be a complete lack of structure to each page,
inasmuch as there seems to be a complete absence of headings i.e.
<h1><h2><h3> ...... etc. They're styled as such, but there's nothing in
the HTML mark-up.

Headings are important for navigating the page.

(c) There's no way to bypassing the (repetitive) navigation on each page
and getting to the main content.

(d) There's no break between the items in the menu, causing the menu
contents to run together.


regards

--
Jake

Hi Andrew,


On Sun, 12 Sep 2004 02:15:10 GMT, Andrew Thompson
<SeeMySites (AT) www (DOT) invalid> wrote:

On Sat, 11 Sep 2004 20:53:17 -0500, Jim wrote:

http://www.nss.org

Good. (Mostly) adjust to font size readjustment.

Bad. Not valid mark-up.
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=ht...tern+Europe%29

Thanks for the info. It'll be passed along to the rest of the team.



Best Regards, Jim Plaxco
National Space Society http://www.nss.org
Astrodigital http://www.astrodigital.org

Hi Dave,

On Sun, 12 Sep 2004 02:18:24 GMT, Dave Patton <spam (AT) trap (DOT) invalid>
wrote:

Jim <Jim (AT) nospamwanted (DOT) com> wrote in
news:hoa7k05aaf1iv1v7e6r3och4ibtrv4rlku (AT) 4ax (DOT) com:

I was hoping that some of you here could give us some feedback on our
web site, particularly our home page.

Our URL is http://www.nss.org

First step is to validate the page's HTML, and your
page fails, because of a lack of character encoding.
http://validator.w3.org/check?verbos...//www.nss.org/

It complains about non utf-8 characters on lines 226 & 230, so if
I take a guess and assume a windows-152 encoding(just because I've
seen this sort of thing before ;-) I find your page has 54 errors,
assuming HTML 4.01 Transitional:
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=ht...F&charset=wind
ows-1252+%28Western+Europe%29&doctype=%28detect+automa tically%29&verbose=1

In fact, you're better to force iso-8859-1 encoding, because
that will show you the errors on lines 226 and 230.

Of course there are other issues, such as using tables for layout,
but start by fixing the existing HTML.

Thanks for taking the time to do this. I'm passing your suggestions
along to the rest of the group.




Best Regards, Jim Plaxco
National Space Society http://www.nss.org
Astrodigital http://www.astrodigital.org

Hi Jake,

On Sun, 12 Sep 2004 18:14:48 +0100, jake <jake (AT) gododdin (DOT) demon.co.uk>
wrote:

Just taking a very quick look .........

From the point of Accessibility guidelines:

(a) A large amount of images need Alternative Text specified (mostly
alt="")

Good one. Thanks.

(b) There seems to be a complete lack of structure to each page,
inasmuch as there seems to be a complete absence of headings i.e.
h1><h2><h3> ...... etc. They're styled as such, but there's nothing in
the HTML mark-up.

Headings are important for navigating the page.

(c) There's no way to bypassing the (repetitive) navigation on each page
and getting to the main content.

Not sure that I follow you here. Can you elaborate please?

(d) There's no break between the items in the menu, causing the menu
contents to run together.

A complaint I've had. But you should have seen it before we fixed it.

Just as an FYI, we had previously paid big bucks to a "professional"
to host and maintain our site. The job was turned over to NSS member
volunteers earlier this year. Personally, I am far more pleased with
what us amateurs have done than with what the pro did.

Thanks for your help. I'll be forwarding your suggestions to the rest
of our team.



Best Regards, Jim Plaxco
National Space Society http://www.nss.org
Astrodigital http://www.astrodigital.org

Gazing into my crystal ball I observed Jim <Jim (AT) nospamwanted (DOT) com> writing
in news4dok01vpspgnv21tidkrjpm2g3svvjkeg (AT) 4ax (DOT) com:

(c) There's no way to bypassing the (repetitive) navigation on each
page
and getting to the main content.


Not sure that I follow you here. Can you elaborate please?

You should have a "skip navigation" link. You can either have it
visible, or you can use CSS to hide it from visual browsers.

Eg:
<style type="text/css">
/*this would be better in an external stylesheet*/
@media screen {
..skip {display:none}
}
/*the following will cause the menu not to print*/
@media print {
#menu {display:none}
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<div id="menu">
<a href="#content" class="skip">Skip navigation</a>
</div>
<div id="content">
<h1>The Page Title</h1>
Lorem ipsum....
</div>


--
Adrienne Boswell
Please respond to the group so others can share
http://www.arbpen.com

In message <Xns9569AAA4FF434arbpenyahoocom (AT) 207 (DOT) 115.63.158>, Adrienne
<arbpen2003 (AT) sbcglobal (DOT) net> writes

Gazing into my crystal ball I observed Jim <Jim (AT) nospamwanted (DOT) com> writing
in news4dok01vpspgnv21tidkrjpm2g3svvjkeg (AT) 4ax (DOT) com:

(c) There's no way to bypassing the (repetitive) navigation on each
page
and getting to the main content.


Not sure that I follow you here. Can you elaborate please?



You should have a "skip navigation" link. You can either have it
visible, or you can use CSS to hide it from visual browsers.

Eg:
style type="text/css"
/*this would be better in an external stylesheet*/
@media screen {
.skip {display:none}
}
/*the following will cause the menu not to print*/
@media print {
#menu {display:none}
}
/style
/head
body
div id="menu"
a href="#content" class="skip">Skip navigation</a
/div
div id="content"
h1>The Page Title</h1
Lorem ipsum....
/div


Yes, that's the idea -- except that in your example you use

'display:none' to hide the 'Bypass navigation' link. However, most
Assistive Technology UAs (screen-readers, talking browsers, etc.) will
honour that definition and so it will also be 'invisible' to the AT UAs.
i.e. It won't get spoken.

Using CSS to hide the link is fine (or using the ubiquitous '1-pixel
..gif image' technique); it's just that 'display:none' can't be used in
this specific case.

This will do:

..skip {
position : absolute;
left : 0px;
top : -500px;
width : 1px;
height : 1px;
overflow : hidden;
}

regards.

--
Jake

On Mon, 20 Sep 2004 09:15:37 +0100, jake <jake (AT) gododdin (DOT) demon.co.uk> wrote:

Using CSS to hide the link is fine (or using the ubiquitous '1-pixel
.gif image' technique); it's just that 'display:none' can't be used in
this specific case.

This will do:

.skip {
position : absolute;
left : 0px;
top : -500px;
width : 1px;
height : 1px;
overflow : hidden;
}

And to add, look at the Navigation thread I started on September 12th for
more discussion of these matters.