Site Review Request: murorum.demon.co.uk/bfnwr

I am moving a set of static pages for British Fencing North-West to a CMS
(phpwebsite). The site looks reasonable (at least I think so) in Firefox
and Konqueror, but try as I might I still can't get it to look good in IE 6
at 800x600 resolution (quelle surprise).

I would appreciate it if people could have a look at it and advise me where
I am going wrong. In particular, have a look at the "Results" page and
select any of the tournaments. I have made the margins between the three
columns fairly narrow, to allow the tables holding the results to show
properly. In Firefox and Konqui they are narrow, in IE they are huge.

Similarly, the fonts in Konqui and Firefox look reasonable in size. In IE
they are too large.

Disclaimer - there isn't much I can do about the tables that phpwebsite
insists on using for layout. My template file and style file uses a
slightly modified version of Glish's top box and three columns for layout.
Apologies also for the colour of the results, this comes from the person
who wrote the program that is used to control competitions.

--
Colin Walls
Removed the pink meat to mail me

On Tue, 10 Aug 2004 20:43:34 +0100, Colin Walls
<colin (AT) pinkmeat (DOT) murorum.demon.co.uk> wrote:

I am moving a set of static pages for British Fencing North-West to a CMS
(phpwebsite). The site looks reasonable (at least I think so) in Firefox
and Konqueror, but try as I might I still can't get it to look good in
IE 6
at 800x600 resolution (quelle surprise).

I would appreciate it if people could have a look at it and advise me
where
I am going wrong. In particular, have a look at the "Results" page and
select any of the tournaments. I have made the margins between the three
columns fairly narrow, to allow the tables holding the results to show
properly. In Firefox and Konqui they are narrow, in IE they are huge.

Similarly, the fonts in Konqui and Firefox look reasonable in size. In IE
they are too large.

Disclaimer - there isn't much I can do about the tables that phpwebsite
insists on using for layout. My template file and style file uses a
slightly modified version of Glish's top box and three columns for
layout.
Apologies also for the colour of the results, this comes from the person
who wrote the program that is used to control competitions.

It's really hard to copy and paste a URL from a subject line. Put it in
your message next time.

http://murorum.demon.co.uk/bfnwr/

Microfonts. Can't read it. I give up. Lost a customer.

"Colin Walls" <colin (AT) pinkmeat (DOT) murorum.demon.co.uk> wrote

I am moving a set of static pages for British Fencing North-West to a CMS
(phpwebsite). The site looks reasonable (at least I think so) in Firefox
and Konqueror, but try as I might I still can't get it to look good in IE
6
at 800x600 resolution (quelle surprise).

I would appreciate it if people could have a look at it and advise me
where
I am going wrong. In particular, have a look at the "Results" page and
select any of the tournaments. I have made the margins between the three
columns fairly narrow, to allow the tables holding the results to show
properly. In Firefox and Konqui they are narrow, in IE they are huge.

Similarly, the fonts in Konqui and Firefox look reasonable in size. In IE
they are too large.

Disclaimer - there isn't much I can do about the tables that phpwebsite
insists on using for layout. My template file and style file uses a
slightly modified version of Glish's top box and three columns for layout.
Apologies also for the colour of the results, this comes from the person
who wrote the program that is used to control competitions.

--
Colin Walls
Removed the pink meat to mail me

Not much time so this will be real quick:

Avoid using embedded stylesheets, the whole point is to have one style sheet
for many pages. This way, you only have to edit one file as opposed to
dozens when you want to update. It also saves your bandwidth, and the
method you are currently using kills it.

I'm not sure why you are using tables to position your logos.....that's bad.
Try to use tables for tabular data only, not layouts.

In message <cfb8h6$89b$1$830fa7b3 (AT) news (DOT) demon.co.uk>, Colin Walls
<colin (AT) pinkmeat (DOT) murorum.demon.co.uk> writes

I am moving a set of static pages for British Fencing North-West to a CMS
(phpwebsite). The site looks reasonable (at least I think so) in Firefox
and Konqueror, but try as I might I still can't get it to look good in IE 6
at 800x600 resolution (quelle surprise).

I would appreciate it if people could have a look at it and advise me where
I am going wrong. In particular, have a look at the "Results" page and
select any of the tournaments. I have made the margins between the three
columns fairly narrow, to allow the tables holding the results to show
properly. In Firefox and Konqui they are narrow, in IE they are huge.

Similarly, the fonts in Konqui and Firefox look reasonable in size. In IE
they are too large.

Disclaimer - there isn't much I can do about the tables that phpwebsite
insists on using for layout. My template file and style file uses a
slightly modified version of Glish's top box and three columns for layout.
Apologies also for the colour of the results, this comes from the person
who wrote the program that is used to control competitions.

A couple of thoughts for users who might be *listening* to your site:

(1) Put a link at the start of each page that takes the user immediately
to the main content.

(2) Put some more headings into the HTML; you've got them styled -- but
they're not in the mark-up.
e.g. 'Welcome to BFNWR', 'Announcements', 'MENU', etc. .... probably
<h2></h2>

(3) That calendar you have on most pages -- the contents (days) don't
seem to be links -- so include it as a graphic with the alternative text
set to null -- otherwise the reader with speak each day.

Suggestion:
Look at your site in Opera with the stylesheet disabled, and 'tables'
switched off. This is how a screen reader or talking browser sees it.

Try reading the content out loud, in the sequence it is presented to you
and see if it all makes sense.

regards.
--
Jake

Colin Walls wrote:

Similarly, the fonts in Konqui and Firefox look reasonable in size. In IE
they are too large.

The font size is unreadably small.

Instead of selecting a size of xx-small (!!), use either ems or %. This
is also likely the problem with the differing font sizes in browsers. Each
browser has its own idea of how big xx-small, x-small, etc., should be. IE
is notorious for choosing a noticeably larger size.


--
jmm dash list (at) sohnen-moe (dot) com
(Remove .AXSPAMGN for email)

Colin Walls wrote:

I am moving a set of static pages for British Fencing North-West to a CMS
(phpwebsite). The site looks reasonable (at least I think so) in Firefox
and Konqueror, but try as I might I still can't get it to look good in IE
6 at 800x600 resolution (quelle surprise).

Thanks to everybody who looked at http://murorum.demon.co.uk/bfnwr

I have made some changes to the handling of fonts. In particular I have
moved from named font sizes to % and ems. From what I could garner from
Google this seems to be the way to go. It doesn't look too bad on my 21"
monitor at work, but I am still not convinced about it on an old 14"
monitor running at 800x600.

I have also taken out the table for the heading and just put it in as a
header for the moment.

As for some of the other comments, the inline CSS is added by the module
that lets you subscribe to mailing lists. The calendar will have links in
it, we don't run tournaments in the summer - it is too hot.

--
Colin Walls
Removed the pink meat to mail me