Does my menu work ok or is it awful ?

Does my menu work ok or is it awful ?

http://www.uel.ac.uk/afrika-studies/about.htm

Chris.

Chris. wrote:

Does my menu work ok or is it awful ?

It is awful.

It doesn't slide in in Firefox (Mozilla based browsers have doubled their
market share in the past 9 months). So a large chunk of the page is
entirely inaccessible.

It isn't marked up as a list, when it is a list.

You use some form of JavaScript to change the background of table data
cells, which gives the impression that anywhere is the cell is a viable
click target - however on the text is actually a link.

It is generated from JavaScript, so it is invisible to anybody who turns
JavaScript (which is repeatedly recommended by security companies to users
of Internet Explorer) or uses a browser which doesn't support JavaScript.
(This includes GoogleBot).

You use a Doctype for a non-standard markup language, and the URL you
reference to get the DTD returns a 404 error.

--
David Dorward <http://blog.dorward.me.uk/> <http://dorward.me.uk/>
Home is where the ~/.bashrc is

In article <60A_c.877$mJ4.8591484 (AT) news-text (DOT) cableinet.net>, Chris.
says...

Does my menu work ok or is it awful ?

http://www.uel.ac.uk/afrika-studies/about.htm

See for yourself. THis screen grab shows what it's like all the time:
http://usenet.kibo.org.uk/chris.jpg

Moz. Firefox 0.8

--
Hywel

http://sponsorhywel.org.uk/

Chris wrote:

Does my menu work

No, it does not. I hate those things. Why not just use a bit of real estate
and have a simple stationary menu.

After I "found" the menu in question I found that it was unusable. I have my
font size set to larger. At this font setting the bottom half of the "menu"
is not visible. The hover effect is disturbing. Why not hover the actual
words as well as the background?

It simply fails to operate when javascript is unavailable. Estimates
currently put this at 10 to 15% of your potential audience. Making your
site unusable to these people is like turning your server off for six weeks
out of the year.

The search engines are not going to index your site. At all. There are no
links for them to follow.

ok or is it awful ?

See above :-)

http://www.uel.ac.uk/afrika-studies/about.htm

--
Cheers
Richard.

"Chris." <chris2003 (AT) aol (DOT) com> wrote:

http://www.uel.ac.uk/afrika-studies/about.htm

Both. It works, and it is hideously ugly.
It does function.

The Doormouse

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The Doormouse cannot be reached by e-mail without her permission.

On Sun, 05 Sep 2004 08:21:22 +0000, Chris. wrote:

Does my menu work ok or is it awful ?

http://www.uel.ac.uk/afrika-studies/about.htm

Chris.

What do you think?

For me, it does not work because

1) I think it looks horrid. But it is *almost* appealing. Not sure what
subtle changes would help it, except maybe removing the "Menu" label on
the right. And getting rid of the salmon colored rollovers, or at least
choosing a different color.

2) It does not work in my gecko-based browser (Mozilla 1.7. Well, I'm
assuming that the menu is supposed to "slide" out of the way or
something.) The menu obliterates the text in the upper-left of the page.

http://engineering.jhu.edu/~jeff/temp/screenshot.png


3) It seems like it is not serving a purpose other than to satisfy a "gee
whiz look at the neat thingy" sensibility. The menu could be more
effectively created statically.

--
Jeffrey Silverman
jeffreyPANTS (AT) jhu (DOT) edu
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