Bite me

Site: http://www.pan-europe.utvinternet.ie/
CSS: http://www.pan-europe.utvinternet.ie/css/one.css
and http://www.pan-europe.utvinternet.ie/css/two.css

--
Spartanicus

Spartanicus wrote in message ...

Bite Me !!!

All that effort for a great website, and yet you use a Yahoo Group as your
"Message-Board"

The best free forum software if your sever will accept PHP is phpBB2 boards
downloadable for free which you can install and manage yourself from
http://www.phpbb.com/
Here's a working example at http://www.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewforum.php?f=1

If you don't want that, but just a simple already hosted forum, with a few
small ads then use Proboards at http://proboards.com here's a working
example at http://support.proboards.com/

Spartanicus wrote:

Site: http://www.pan-europe.utvinternet.ie/

Not bad. A few usability issues though...

People generally expect the top-left corner logo to be a clickable link to
the site home page. Yes, I know you have a "Home" link at the top, but
make the logo a link too.

I would probably put the search box *above* the news.

The breadcrumb trail should be links.

In the news section, make the words "Owner's Manual" a link to the owner's
manual.

Otherwise, seems very good.

--
Toby A Inkster BSc (Hons) ARCS
Contact Me - http://www.goddamn.co.uk/tobyink/?page=132

Toby A Inkster <UseTheAddressInMySig (AT) deadspam (DOT) com> wrote:

People generally expect the top-left corner logo to be a clickable link to
the site home page.

1) Rather questionable.

Yes, I know you have a "Home" link at the top, but
make the logo a link too.

2) Anything that is a link should be recognizable as a link, the cursor
changing shape whilst hovering over an object that a user cannot
recognize as a link is not good.

3) The site logo only belongs as content on the index page, on other
pages the logo should not appear as content but only as decoration and
consequently it's coded as a background image. So there's nothing to
link.

--
Spartanicus

Spartanicus wrote:

Toby A Inkster <UseTheAddressInMySig (AT) deadspam (DOT) com> wrote:


People generally expect the top-left corner logo to be a clickable link to
the site home page.


1) Rather questionable.

I can attest to what Toby said... it's irritating to find that the site
logo thing is not clickable and I have read through things to see what
links to the home page. It's not any faster than snipping the URL to
leave the domain.

Spartanicus wrote:

Toby A Inkster <UseTheAddressInMySig (AT) deadspam (DOT) com> wrote:

People generally expect the top-left corner logo to be a clickable link
to the site home page.

1) Rather questionable.

From http://www.useit.com/alertbox/991003.html:

Place your name and logo on every page and make the logo a link to the
home page (except on the home page itself, where the logo should not be
a link: never have a link that points right back to the current page).

3) The site logo only belongs as content on the index page, on other
pages the logo should not appear as content but only as decoration and
consequently it's coded as a background image. So there's nothing to
link.

You can make a background image clickable quite easily:

<a class="logo" href="/">&nbsp;</a>

a.logo {
background: url("logo.png");
}

--
Toby A Inkster BSc (Hons) ARCS
Contact Me - http://www.goddamn.co.uk/tobyink/?page=132

On Mon, 23 Feb 2004 16:17:14 -0500, Firas D. <fd-nospam- (AT) firasd (DOT) org> wrote:

Spartanicus wrote:
Toby A Inkster <UseTheAddressInMySig (AT) deadspam (DOT) com> wrote:


People generally expect the top-left corner logo to be a clickable
link to
the site home page.


1) Rather questionable.

I can attest to what Toby said... it's irritating to find that the site
logo thing is not clickable and I have read through things to see what
links to the home page. It's not any faster than snipping the URL to
leave the domain.

Having to have a home-page-linking-logo in the upper left certainly isn't
something I've seen advised before. That said, expecting it to be is a
little presumptuous.

If you're on the home page, no reason to make a self-referential link, and
many reasons not to. If you're not, and the image is background in nature,
you cannot make it clickable. I think it's the author's choice to make it
a link or not. It's neither right nor wrong, it's an option available to
the author.

That said, I disagree that the logo 'should' be a background image on all
but the home page. It 'can' be, but 'should' is too strong a word. Again,
this is a design issue and not a usability issue. One could as easily
argue that a logo as content 'should' be part of the content of each page,
as it identifies the page as a user gets there via a search engine or a
bookmark. I think the argument for a logo being content on all pages is
stronger than it not being content, yet it's still entirely up to the
author to provide whatever branding content they feel is appropriate.

I would agree that the breadcrumbs ought to be clickable if used. It's a
very easy way to navigate to various sections.

On Mon, 23 Feb 2004 21:45:01 +0000, Toby A Inkster
<UseTheAddressInMySig (AT) deadspam (DOT) com> wrote:

From http://www.useit.com/alertbox/991003.html:
| Place your name and logo on every page and make the logo a link to the
| home page (except on the home page itself, where the logo should not be
| a link: never have a link that points right back to the current page).

Look at the logo on http://www.opro.org - if this is made a link, in order
to maintain the desired look, the border must be removed. And removing the
border makes it a rather poor link.

I have to disagree with this advice. Especially when the Home link is so
prominent as it is on Spartanicus's pages, it's redundant without adding
any usability.

And your example does not make the bg image clickable, it makes the
whitespace clickable. How is this useful on a browser with no CSS access?

Neal wrote:

If you're on the home page, no reason to make a self-referential link,
and many reasons not to. If you're not, and the image is background in
nature, you cannot make it clickable.

You can have a transparent gif on top of it and make that
one clickable, or you can take the image from the background
and place it in the foreground. As it's top left, that
shouldn't be very difficult.

--
Els

Sonhos vem. Sonhos vão. O resto é imperfeito.
- Renato Russo -

Neal <neal413 (AT) spamrcn (DOT) com> wrote:

That said, I disagree that the logo 'should' be a background image on all
but the home page. It 'can' be, but 'should' is too strong a word. Again,
this is a design issue and not a usability issue. One could as easily
argue that a logo as content 'should' be part of the content of each page,
as it identifies the page as a user gets there via a search engine or a
bookmark.

I used "should not be" as "I've decided that it should not be for this
site". That said, the case for not including site branding on all pages
is imo the stronger one, in the visual domain a logo is easily ignored,
in other domains (aural, sensory) it's a real nuisance to have a site's
branding repeated on every page.

The "branding" on a page should imo refer to the content of the page
itself, the site logo only relates to the index page on this particular
site (as it's basically without content, it's a page about the site
itself).

Using that principle I realise that a lot of the other stuff like the
navbar and the left "panel" should also be omitted from the other pages.

Ideally other pages should only contain content local to that page with
only a "home" link to make the rest of the site available for people who
enter the site other than via the index page.

I strayed from this principle because I wanted a "designed" look for
this site, the navbar and left "panel" are placed after the content in
the source to soften the pain as there is no way to let them "dissolve"
as I've done with the logo. Alas I had to resort to the dreaded absolute
positioning to achieve this, with the usual drawbacks.

--
Spartanicus