Critique request for academic home page

Greetings, y'all.

I recently took up employment as a researcher and just slapped together
something resembling a website dedicated to my professional life. I
thought I'd get some opinions on it from a design and usability point of
view. Here's the URL:

http://www.dfki.uni-kl.de/~miller/

I've tried to provide halfway-competent translations of most pages and use
Apache content negotiation to have the server pick the appropriate version
to send based on the user's browser's language settings. (If a translation
into one of the user's preferred languages doesn't exist, an English
version is served by default.) I've also tried to stick to standards and
to separate style from content, so please let me know if I've overlooked
something serious.

The site uses transparent PNGs in the headers. Needless to say, these won't
look very nice in MSIE, but then, the graphics are purely decorative, so at
least no functionality is lost. Due to the nonuniform background, the
icons look really terrible as transparent GIFs.

The sidebar's boxes are all dynamically generated by a Makefile which
automatically gets run a few times an hour. I'm thinking the choice of
boxes could vary among the pages, but I'm not sure exactly in what way.
Maybe a box with external links related to the current page? I suppose
some users might not care to see the webcam box on every page, though some
boxes (e.g., language selection) should definitely be available everywhere.
Suggestions?

Regards,
Tristan

--
_
_V.-o Tristan Miller [en,(fr,de,ia)] >< Space is limited
/ |`-' -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= <> In a haiku, so it's hard
(7_\\ http://www.nothingisreal.com/ >< To finish what you

Tristan Miller may have written:

Greetings, y'all.

Howdy, Tristan.

.............
http://www.dfki.uni-kl.de/~miller/
...................Suggestions?
_________________________________

From the site:

E-mail
tristan.miller (AT) dfki (DOT) de

How about a form?

If you are e-mailing me documents, please don't send me Microsoft Word
files; I would prefer to receive plain text or, failing that, PDF files.
Also, please don't send me HTML e-mail.

Little heavy on the rules, there, bubba.
I'm also on Linux (inferring from your KNode client),
and can read MSW docs (got Open Office installed?)and HTML.
I know people that would send in those formats are butt
ignorant, but I tend to cut 'em a break. A lotta good ol'
boys are perddy smart (Shrub Busch excluded),
even if they don't know computers.
Unlax, dude.

Not a bad looking site, though.
--
Cheers, m http://www.mbstevens.com

Greetings.

In article <ed9Gb.17506$Pg1.1462 (AT) newsread1 (DOT) news.pas.earthlink.net>, m wrote:

E-mail
tristan.miller (AT) dfki (DOT) de

How about a form?

Well, I think most people have e-mail clients. But a search form might be a
good idea if the site gets any bigger.

If you are e-mailing me documents, please don't send me Microsoft Word
files; I would prefer to receive plain text or, failing that, PDF files.
Also, please don't send me HTML e-mail.

Little heavy on the rules, there, bubba.
I'm also on Linux (inferring from your KNode client),
and can read MSW docs (got Open Office installed?)and HTML.
I know people that would send in those formats are butt
ignorant, but I tend to cut 'em a break.

Personally, I'd rather help relieve them of their ignorance than simply
overlook the problems they cause. I have opened many Word documents where
the formatting and pagination went all to hell simply because I happened to
use a different default printer than the one the document was saved with.
This doesn't happen just with Linux word processors, but also with
Microsoft Word itself. Besides, I also use Solaris, and there's no
application on the server that can read Word files.

As for HTML mail, I have it disabled in KMail for security reasons (web bugs
and whatnot). And sometimes I need to check my mail remotely via ssh;
text-based mail readers like Pine can't render HTML.

Anyway, thanks for your comments.

Regards,
Tristan

--
_
_V.-o Tristan Miller [en,(fr,de,ia)] >< Space is limited
/ |`-' -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= <> In a haiku, so it's hard
(7_\\ http://www.nothingisreal.com/ >< To finish what you

Tristan Miller <psychonaut (AT) nothingisreal (DOT) com> wrote in
news:2154913.iu1rccLk99 (AT) ID-187157 (DOT) news.dfncis.de:

How about a form?

Well, I think most people have e-mail clients. But a search form
might be a good idea if the site gets any bigger.

You'd be surprised. Some people use Web-based mail exclusively. A larger
number of people may not always have access to their preferred e-mail
client, as for example when they're on a business trip and using their
hotel's high-speed service. Or they may be browsing from work and not want
to use the company's SMTP server for any number of reasons (e.g. if it's
personal business they may not want to disclose their work e-mail address,
or are embarassed by the stupid "for your eyes only" disclaimer that the
corporate mail system automatically inserts).

Artist, the good little Microsoft drone heard Tristan Miller
<psychonaut (AT) nothingisreal (DOT) com> say...

Greetings, y'all.

I recently took up employment as a researcher and just slapped
together something resembling a website dedicated to my professional
life. I thought I'd get some opinions on it from a design and
usability point of view. Here's the URL:

http://www.dfki.uni-kl.de/~miller/

I've tried to provide halfway-competent translations of most pages and
use Apache content negotiation to have the server pick the appropriate
version to send based on the user's browser's language settings. (If
a translation into one of the user's preferred languages doesn't
exist, an English version is served by default.) I've also tried to
stick to standards and to separate style from content, so please let
me know if I've overlooked something serious.

The site uses transparent PNGs in the headers. Needless to say, these
won't look very nice in MSIE, but then, the graphics are purely
decorative, so at least no functionality is lost. Due to the
nonuniform background, the icons look really terrible as transparent
GIFs.

The sidebar's boxes are all dynamically generated by a Makefile which
automatically gets run a few times an hour. I'm thinking the choice
of boxes could vary among the pages, but I'm not sure exactly in what
way. Maybe a box with external links related to the current page? I
suppose some users might not care to see the webcam box on every page,
though some boxes (e.g., language selection) should definitely be
available everywhere. Suggestions?

It could use a little padding inside the righthand boxes, but other than
that, it looks very informational.


--
AIM: GCCFurryBoy
mellorya (AT) yahoo (DOT) com
http://www.practialdesigns.com/

"Neither hope nor fear" - Isabella d'Este
"For to do either is to fall to the beast" - Joseph Richmond
"The Cow Kings a Bastard! Long live the Cow King!" - Joseph Richmond

"Tristan Miller" <psychonaut (AT) nothingisreal (DOT) com> schreef in bericht
news:1684980.e8MYKhrykp (AT) ID-187157 (DOT) news.dfncis.de...

Suggestions?

Just one that i noticed:
Its hard to tell the difference between links and regular text,
i suggest you change the link colors to a different color
perhaps its best to stick with a blue like color?

Sam