Alumni club website ready for critique

http://www.caagr.org/

I was more or less forced into including the flash intro. I'll drop it
eventually.

I'm aware of the debate regarding CSS vs. tables for layout.

Thanks for any helpful advice.

--
Alex Chernavsky
alexc (AT) aya (DOT) yale.edu
http://www.astrocyte-design.com/

"Alex Chernavsky" <alexc (AT) aya (DOT) yale.edu> wrote

http://www.caagr.org/

I was more or less forced into including the flash intro. I'll drop it
eventually.

I'm aware of the debate regarding CSS vs. tables for layout.

Awesome. So then you'll be switching to CSS, right?
Because that site's layout would be ridiculously easy to do with CSS.


--
Karl Core

In message <nG5rc.225358$M3.97033 (AT) twister (DOT) nyroc.rr.com>, Alex Chernavsky
<alexc (AT) aya (DOT) yale.edu> writes

http://www.caagr.org/

I was more or less forced into including the flash intro. I'll drop it
eventually.

I'm aware of the debate regarding CSS vs. tables for layout.

Thanks for any helpful advice.

Looks OK.

Just a few thoughts regarding assistive technology users
(screen-readers, etc,):

(a) It would be useful to have a link as the very first entry on the
page to allow users to bypass the menu and go directly to the main
contents.

(b) Home page : mention that the link to 'Alumni directory ' opens in a
new window.

(c) Board of Directors: put '* NOMINATING COMMITTEE' at the start of the
table rather than the end. Mark up the headers in the table. Put some
punctuation where there are multiple entries in the cell
e.g. Logan Cheek,
Alex Chernavsky,
Yelena Shapiro.
......... in order to stop the words running together

(d) History: alternative text is needed on the newspaper cuttings
images; the contents of the cuttings need to be available as alternative
pages .... uses 'longdesc' and d-link to access them.

(e) Essay Context:
Mark up the headers in the table. i.e. <th></th>

(f) Your Comments/Post a New Comment: it probably makes more sense to
place '* - Required for processing' at the start of the table rather
than at the end.

Just some thoughts.

regards.


--
Jake

jake <jake (AT) gododdin (DOT) demon.co.uk> wrote:

Just a few thoughts regarding assistive technology users
(screen-readers, etc,):

(a) It would be useful to have a link as the very first entry on the
page to allow users to bypass the menu and go directly to the main
contents.

A blind friend convinced me that it was better to have navigation on the
right (as that is typically laid out after the left) for this reason. I
see that I've managed to muff my own site, which looked perfectly fine
in Lynx at one point. ::sigh::

So, this brings me to a question: if you put the menu at the right (or,
in lynx, the bottom), what's the preferred way to navigate there? In
other words, what should be done to allow someone using a screen reader
to navigate with minimal keystrokes?

I was thinking that making "welcome" a link to the body and keeping the
nav stuff at the top would be perfectly workable. It seems that, during
one of my uploads, each section's link to "top" was accidentally nuked.
Oops.

--
_Deirdre http://deirdre.org
"Ideally pacing should look like the stock market for the year 1999, up
and up and up, but with lots of little dips downwards...."
-- Wen Spencer on plotting a novel

"Alex Chernavsky" <alexc (AT) aya (DOT) yale.edu> wrote

http://www.caagr.org/

I was more or less forced into including the flash intro. I'll drop it
eventually.

I'm aware of the debate regarding CSS vs. tables for layout.

Thanks for any helpful advice.

Tables vs. CSS aside. it has the look and feel of microsoft.com,
square and boring. However for the life of me I still don't know how
you can make this topic and website exciting or dynamic. *With a pat
on the back* yaa done the best that could be.

very best

"Alex Chernavsky" <alexc (AT) aya (DOT) yale.edu> wrote

http://www.caagr.org/

I was more or less forced into including the flash intro. I'll drop it
eventually.

I'm aware of the debate regarding CSS vs. tables for layout.

Thanks for any helpful advice.

The site is pretty clean and easy to navigate, which goes a long way.
While CSS certainly has its merits, from my perspective the missing
ingredient lies in the design.

In general terms, Cornell is a well-known, highly reputable institute
of higher education. It's alumni association Web site should also
capture this prestige. More specific, the header part of the page has
bit of a banner advertisement feel. Not completely but a bit -- by
it's size, form and location -- which makes me tend to overlook it
instead of it anchoring the page. The page also lack a visual center.
My eye is not sure where the path to follow lies, first, second,
third. Someone said "boxy, boring", although I do not speak for them,
I think that comment derives from a lack of visual tension in your
design. By stacking/placing the elements of your page like bricks,
solidly and securely balanced, the design doesn't create any tension
(like something might fall or appears unbalanced).

Technically it's pretty sound though. Fonts are flexible and the
design flexes with the page width. Links are to easy to identify and
it's clear which pages I have already seen and those not yet visited.