Critique request for a Homepage

Hello,
searching feedback for the site: http://www.rent-a-hp.de

With focus on:
- HTML structur
- Accessibility

The content is in german.

Greetings
Markus

On Wed, 2 Sep 2009 18:11:54 +0200, Markus Bodmann wrote:

searching feedback for the site: http://www.rent-a-hp.de

With focus on:
- HTML structur
- Accessibility

Finally! A Website offering HTML service by someone who can actually
provide them! We don't see /that/ all the time.

I'm going to have some trouble finding things to complain about. (But I'll
do my best. :-) You deserve it.)

Clear and clean page. A little texty but not really bad.

At first I thought the page was for some health care or insurance services.
I guess I jumped to that conclusion from the graphic. She looks like a girl
who *should* be on a you-can-trust-us-with-your-family site.

Valid markup and valid CSS. Yay! I couldn't use the W3C links in the lower
left, since I happened to have Referrers turned off, but my Web Developer
add-on in FF lets me check easily anyway. I'm not sure how much those W3C
badges help your visitors (beside us picky Web nerds), so you may want to
just drop them. You, at least, deserve to include them (until you make some
change, heh heh).

Your markup (at least on the Home page) appears to be semantically
relevant, or at least arguably sound. Your numeroud DIVs appear to be
useful containers, not just substitutes for <p> elements. Good work.

The bodytext is a bit small, and just slightly uncomfortable for me to
read, but it's still legible (footnote about MWSt being a separate, special
case [OK]). The CSS shows

body {font:0.8em Arial, Verdana, Sans-Serif;...},

which makes me think you might not have Arial on your test machines and are
looking at the page in Verdana. Verdana has a larger width and so looks
better at smaller sizes than e.g. Arial. For me, .8em is too small, and I
have to wonder why you want to make your text 80% of every users' preferred
text size. (Those with a minimum text size set will see different results.)

As I move the right edge of my browser inward, the "Basis Paket" graphic
moves inward with it. As it does, I notice a light edge where it should
blend with the horizontal gray bars. Looks like something in right.gif.

Below about 1025px width, the "Kinderleicht" block drops down to make room
for the right.gif. Below 795px, the right.gif drops down below the menu
bar. Right.gif includes gray background bars of its own, so at this width
the page looks a bit broken (although it remains fully functional; yay
again). I don't know what you should do to remedy this, if you even want to
worry about it. By that point, your other floats have dropped and
rearranged themselves, anyway.

Note that I (like some others out there) practically never have my browser
maximized, even though my window is usually 1280px wide. I don't have a
handheld device, so I don't know what such users would see. (FF/Web
Developer in "Small Screen Rendering" mode show just text.)

Now, being that the text starts out just a bit too small for me (and
because I *always* do this when checking a site), I scrolled up the text
size a few notches. Even at the first notch up, the menu items start to
expand out of the nav bar. Scrolling down (in case anybody would want to do
that) causes a similar repositioning. In case you haven't thought to look
at that before, you should. Again, the page remains functional, which I
think is great (and rather rare).

You asked for a review of the Homepage, which German-speakers seem to use
to mean the entire site (not just the landing "Home" page). After a quick
look at the other pages I'd say they have about the same advantages and
disadvantages.

I've been looking more at accessibility for those with screen-reader
assistive technologies lately (after seeing some user trials on YouTube[1]
and following some discussions about HTML5), and I expect blind users to
have some trouble with content like your "Beratung und Support" contact
info. I think this is a large (and generally existing) problem in general,
though. I think we have to concentrate much more of our energies to improve
our pages.

I see the "Barrierefreiheit" section at the top of the Infos page. This
tells me you know about the problems of having obstacles for some visitors
to a site. I hope you can find some good resources to help you provide good
content to your visitors (and clients' visitors). I see you also offer a
link to Einfach für alle, which I did not know about (thank you!). I think
you're doing well.

HTH.


[1] In English, and not especially well formatted, there is a series of
videos testing different methods of table markup for AT accessiblity. A
blind, experienced user tries to understand the data in a number of
different tables. Focusses on HTML5 markup possibilities but it's my first
occasion to see a blind user trying to use a Web page. Series starts at
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ftQIQ91Ff4> and I found it quite
interesting.

--
Viel Glück und mit besten Grüssen
John

"John Hosking" <john-nin2 (AT) bluemail (DOT) ch> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:7g8ppjF2ng3o3U1 (AT) mid (DOT) individual.net...

On Wed, 2 Sep 2009 18:11:54 +0200, Markus Bodmann wrote:


body {font:0.8em Arial, Verdana, Sans-Serif;...},

which makes me think you might not have Arial on your test machines and
are
looking at the page in Verdana. Verdana has a larger width and so looks
better at smaller sizes than e.g. Arial. For me, .8em is too small, and I
have to wonder why you want to make your text 80% of every users'
preferred
text size. (Those with a minimum text size set will see different
results.)

Hm, I have Arial on my test machines and i could read the text very good.
Perhaps a different interpretation from the systems?

Here a screen with 0.8em:
http://www.pic-upload.de/view-3010904/rent1.png.html
And a screen with 1em: http://www.pic-upload.de/view-3010913/rent2.png.html

Below about 1025px width, the "Kinderleicht" block drops down to make room
for the right.gif. Below 795px, the right.gif drops down below the menu
bar. Right.gif includes gray background bars of its own, so at this width
the page looks a bit broken (although it remains fully functional; yay
again). I don't know what you should do to remedy this, if you even want
to
worry about it. By that point, your other floats have dropped and
rearranged themselves, anyway.

Note that I (like some others out there) practically never have my browser
maximized, even though my window is usually 1280px wide. I don't have a
handheld device, so I don't know what such users would see. (FF/Web
Developer in "Small Screen Rendering" mode show just text.)

I think there are two options: First a fixed min-width, but than persons
with a
resulution under 1024 have to scroll vertical. But on the other side who
have a
resulution under 1024px width?

I now fixed the width on 1000px.

For handheld I have a extra CSS File.

Now, being that the text starts out just a bit too small for me (and
because I *always* do this when checking a site), I scrolled up the text
size a few notches. Even at the first notch up, the menu items start to
expand out of the nav bar. Scrolling down (in case anybody would want to
do
that) causes a similar repositioning. In case you haven't thought to look
at that before, you should. Again, the page remains functional, which I
think is great (and rather rare).

I think about how to repair it.

I've been looking more at accessibility for those with screen-reader
assistive technologies lately (after seeing some user trials on YouTube[1]
and following some discussions about HTML5), and I expect blind users to
have some trouble with content like your "Beratung und Support" contact
info. I think this is a large (and generally existing) problem in general,
though. I think we have to concentrate much more of our energies to
improve
our pages.

I tested the page: http://rent-a-hp.de/support.html with JAWS (a
screenreader program)
and think it works.

Viel Glück und mit besten Grüssen
John

Vielen Dank und viele Grüße

In article <4aa231f6$0$32675$9b4e6d93 (AT) newsspool2 (DOT) arcor-online.net>,
"Markus Bodmann" <markus (AT) dokutv (DOT) net> wrote:

"John Hosking" <john-nin2 (AT) bluemail (DOT) ch> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:7g8ppjF2ng3o3U1 (AT) mid (DOT) individual.net...
On Wed, 2 Sep 2009 18:11:54 +0200, Markus Bodmann wrote:


....
Here a screen with 0.8em:
http://www.pic-upload.de/view-3010904/rent1.png.html
And a screen with 1em: http://www.pic-upload.de/view-3010913/rent2.png.html

The latter is not font-size 1em; for most of the text. I see an awful

lot of repeat "font-size: 12px". First you should not be using pixels
for units for these things and second, you should not have to be
repeating this so many times in your CSS. *Especially* after you have
used the universal selection to give the very same thing! But for other
reasons too.

....

I think there are two options: First a fixed min-width, but than persons
with a
resulution under 1024 have to scroll vertical. But on the other side who
have a
resulution under 1024px width?

I now fixed the width on 1000px.

Fixing a width and specifying a minimum width are two rather different
things. Specifying a width is specifying, in one very definite act, both
min and max. The idea of min width is to allow some flexibility the
other way, ditto the idea of max width. Actually I am not seeing any
1000px in above URL.

--
dorayme