Critique please

Redoing a site for a local organization - please critique:

http://test.glenmeadows.com

Thank you,
--
Wayne
http://www.glenmeadows.com

On 2005-09-05, wayne <wdh (AT) swbell (DOT) net> wrote:

Redoing a site for a local organization - please critique:

http://test.glenmeadows.com

Thank you,

Much improved. You already have the big google button at bottom
right. It doesn't go with the decore at the top of your links.

Colors look good.
Bring G/M logo background to same shade of blood-purple as button
backgrounds and header background?

My monitor is 1024X1248, and the content text is too small to read.
If you didn't set its size, it would default to what I like without
my having to re-size the text.

--
mbstevens
http://www.mbstevens.com/cgi/mkatt.p...ique_Generator

aa wrote:

Sorry about that 'aa' address. Was just trying out the slrn
news client, and it kicked my boo-tay!
--
mbstevens

wayne wrote:

Redoing a site for a local organization - please critique:

http://test.glenmeadows.com

Thank you,

Hmm. I had your old glenmeadows.com site.

At 'test'...
Get rid of that animated fire gif!

If you're going to label the images in the gallery at all,
give them names useful to your visitors.
Banjo_20050003.jpg doesn't convey much information to
me at all, except that it has a banjo somewhere in it.
You're using a poor thumbnailing program?
--
mbstevens
http://www.mbstevens.com/howtothumb/

wayne wrote:

http://test.glenmeadows.com

The "birdlogo" is not centered over the menu.

The colors in the "birdlogo" have no relation to the main color scheme.
There are a couple of stray blotches in the "building" image on the
home page. The upper left corner, and right center just above the tree. I
would also crop out part of the sky and most of the grass.
The BABA logo at the head of "Memberships" and "Photo Album" is at a
different position than the rest of the pages.
Make the text in the nav menu larger. You set it at 1em but that does
not change anything since earlier you set the "content" font-size to 95%.
So 1 em = 100% of the 95% of my desired font size.
The link for the current page is not disabled in the nav menu.
Why wrap <h1> in a "logo" div? Apply the styling directly.
I agree with tm: The photo gallery would look better if it were fluid.
It is easy to do, caption and all. And even works in IE.

Overall the site looks good: simple, clean and consistent.

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

mbstevens wrote:

aa wrote:

Sorry about that 'aa' address. Was just trying out the slrn
news client, and it kicked my boo-tay!

Stick with it. It's bitchin'.

--
Blinky Linux Registered User 297263

Killing All Posts from GG: http://blinkynet.net/comp/uip5.html
End Of The Good GG Archive GUI: http://blinkynet.net/comp/gggui.html

mbstevens wrote:

wayne wrote:

Redoing a site for a local organization - please critique:

http://test.glenmeadows.com

Thank you,


Hmm. I had your old glenmeadows.com site.

At 'test'...
Get rid of that animated fire gif!

If you're going to label the images in the gallery at all,
give them names useful to your visitors.
Banjo_20050003.jpg doesn't convey much information to
me at all, except that it has a banjo somewhere in it.
You're using a poor thumbnailing program?

Thank you for you comment. The original site is at
http://bayareabluegrass.org

The president of the club asked for help with the webpage and I
volunteered to help. There is one page on the original site that takes
over 30 minutes to load because of the pictures, and none of the pages
are the same when moving through the menu.

I apologize for the photo galleries being tables, but I did not do them
by hand, used gThumb thumbnail viewer. There is still a lot of work
needed for image labels. The program took the file name (an option I
selected over img_001 .... as the alternative) but many of the file
names don't have very descriptive names.

The program cut down considerably on the amount of work needed to
generate the galleries.

I will try to get rid of the fire gif, but the "Fire on the Strings
Festival" is an annual event and very big with the club. I'm sure there
will be much resistance!

The page will be at bayareabluegrass.org and bayareabluegrass.net as
soon as all of the bugs are worked out.

Regards,

--
Wayne
http://www.glenmeadows.com

Jim Moe wrote:

wayne wrote:


http://test.glenmeadows.com

The "birdlogo" is not centered over the menu.
The colors in the "birdlogo" have no relation to the main color scheme.
There are a couple of stray blotches in the "building" image on the
home page. The upper left corner, and right center just above the tree.
I would also crop out part of the sky and most of the grass.
The BABA logo at the head of "Memberships" and "Photo Album" is at a
different position than the rest of the pages.
Make the text in the nav menu larger. You set it at 1em but that does
not change anything since earlier you set the "content" font-size to
95%. So 1 em = 100% of the 95% of my desired font size.
The link for the current page is not disabled in the nav menu.
Why wrap <h1> in a "logo" div? Apply the styling directly.
I agree with tm: The photo gallery would look better if it were fluid.
It is easy to do, caption and all. And even works in IE.

Overall the site looks good: simple, clean and consistent.

Thank you for your help. I changed the size and position of the bird
logo to center it. Still have to work on colors. I cropped the building
picture too.

Some of the pages had the baba image wrapped in <P> and some didn't,
corrected that too.

I changed the font size as well.

The logo is wrapped in <h1> because there is supposed to be one on every
page and it is supposed to be relevant to the web site (or so I've read).

The gallery took a lot of time to generate, even using tools. I am using
gThumb thumbnail viewer as I use Linux. Do you have a suggestion for
another tool?

As for disabling the current nav button, I use ssi includes and the menu
is the same every time because it is the same file. Is there a method
to programatically determine which page is displayed and disable that link?

Regards,

--
Wayne
http://www.glenmeadows.com

wayne wrote:

Thank you for your help. I changed the size and position of the bird
logo to center it. Still have to work on colors. I cropped the building
picture too.

The dimensions set in the building's width and height attributes do

match the image's dimensions; the aspect ratio is wrong for the image:
496/333 vs 748/354. To speed page loading reduce the image's actual size
to match its target size.
And use a lower JPEG quality factor to further reduce the size. It does
not need to be a print quality image.

The logo is wrapped in <h1> because there is supposed to be one on every
page and it is supposed to be relevant to the web site (or so I've read).

I had asked why the <h1> was wrapped in a div. It appears superfluous.

IIRC, <h1> and the <title> should be rather similar, if not the same.

As for disabling the current nav button, I use ssi includes and the menu
is the same every time because it is the same file. Is there a method
to programatically determine which page is displayed and disable that link?

I use PHP <http://www.php.net/>. It generates the custom nav menu for

each page. It makes maintenance much easier. And it could be used to
create the gallery page(s) as well.

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

Jim Moe wrote:

The dimensions set in the building's width and height attributes do
match the image's dimensions; the aspect ratio is wrong for the image:
496/333 vs 748/354. To speed page loading reduce the image's actual size
to match its target size.
And use a lower JPEG quality factor to further reduce the size. It
does not need to be a print quality image.

Good point, will work on that.

The logo is wrapped in <h1> because there is supposed to be one on
every page and it is supposed to be relevant to the web site (or so
I've read).

I had asked why the <h1> was wrapped in a div. It appears superfluous.
IIRC, <h1> and the <title> should be rather similar, if not the same.


As for disabling the current nav button, I use ssi includes and the
menu is the same every time because it is the same file. Is there a
method to programatically determine which page is displayed and
disable that link?

I use PHP <http://www.php.net/>. It generates the custom nav menu for
each page. It makes maintenance much easier. And it could be used to
create the gallery page(s) as well.

Haven't had a chance to become familiar with PHP yet, but believe the

hosting company offers it. I will begin exploring changing the pages.

Thanks for your help.


--
Wayne
http://www.glenmeadows.com