A friend asked me to review his site

A friend has asked me to review his site because I'm a 'seasoned surfer'
while he feels he is not. This is work in progress that a web-design
company is doing for him.

I thought I'd let you lot get your teeth into it and I'll go back to him
with your comments so he is better armed when he talks to the designers.

The address is: www.fatpromotions.co.uk/wood/

Thanks for your suggestions.

My comments on the page would be to make it validate! The first four errors
are for: leftmargin, topmargin, marginwidth and marginheight. The other
seven are missing "alt" tags which may be due to go in in the
"production" version but aren't there yet (though I always find it
easier to put these in as I go along).

I think the logo/header is too big, don't like the colour and think the
lines of text are too long for easy readability.

There, I've kicked it off, now I'd like to hear from you.


Justin.

--
Justin C, by the sea.

Justin C <justin.0405 (AT) purestblue (DOT) com> wrote:

A friend has asked me to review his site because I'm a 'seasoned surfer'
while he feels he is not. This is work in progress that a web-design
company is doing for him.

I thought I'd let you lot get your teeth into it and I'll go back to him
with your comments so he is better armed when he talks to the designers.

The address is: www.fatpromotions.co.uk/wood/

I wouldn't bother. You can't teach monkeys how to make web sites, and
that's what he has hired: monkeys. I hope he's paying them peanuts.

--
Spartanicus

"Justin C" <justin.0405 (AT) purestblue (DOT) com> wrote

The address is: www.fatpromotions.co.uk/wood/

Tell the designer:

Do not sepcify font size in pixels, it stops those who use IE from changing
the font size to suit themselves.

Why does the page not flow to the size of my canvas? Fixed sized pages are
something from the last century.

The big orange blobs over the text annoy me. Makes it hard to read (white on
orange...).

Mailto *does not work*.

The HTML:

Tables for layout, not the done thing these days.

Dreamweaver. This gives it away: - Function MM_swapImage() . Why doesn't
the designer learn HTML and CSS and learn to produce a real site?

Cheers
Richard.

On Fri, 04 Jun 2004 09:40:32 GMT, Justin C <justin.0405 (AT) purestblue (DOT) com>
wrote:

A friend has asked me to review his site because I'm a 'seasoned surfer'
while he feels he is not. This is work in progress that a web-design
company is doing for him.

I thought I'd let you lot get your teeth into it and I'll go back to him
with your comments so he is better armed when he talks to the designers.

The address is: www.fatpromotions.co.uk/wood/

Logo is much too wide. And I hope it wasn't your friend who wrote the copy
"Thank you for visiting our website." as a h2. Oh, wait. It's not a h2. No
semantic markup whatsoever. *sigh*

There is no sense to using table design on this page. This can be done
cleaner and lighter with CSS. (Maybe FAT refers to the file sizes they
serve? )

Overall, boring monochromatic design. But let's be thankful they didn't
use "mystery meat" navigation on this page - like they do on their home
page.

Advice: friend should get out. Fast. These guys are awful. Start looking
for a designer whose page looks good in a text browser, doesn't do any of
the obvious poor usability things, etc. I am shocked anyone would ever use
these folks after seeing the home page.

Justin C <justin.0405 (AT) purestblue (DOT) com> wrote

A friend has asked me to review his site because I'm a 'seasoned surfer'
while he feels he is not. This is work in progress that a web-design
company is doing for him.

I thought I'd let you lot get your teeth into it and I'll go back to him
with your comments so he is better armed when he talks to the designers.

The address is: www.fatpromotions.co.uk/wood/

Thanks for your suggestions.

My comments on the page would be to make it validate! The first four errors
are for: leftmargin, topmargin, marginwidth and marginheight. The other
seven are missing "alt" tags which may be due to go in in the
"production" version but aren't there yet (though I always find it
easier to put these in as I go along).

I think the logo/header is too big, don't like the colour and think the
lines of text are too long for easy readability.

There, I've kicked it off, now I'd like to hear from you.


Justin.

I like it. It's simple, fast and provides all the information you need
to know.

There needs to be a title (ie. not "Untitled Document". Also, the line
"Thank you for visiting our website" sounds unprofessional and should
be removed.

I think the brown is a bit ugly, but that might just be the company's
'colour', so it might not be able to be changed. The navigation bar,
ie. the "Services" and "Email" buttons should be higher up, not at the
bottom of the page where people have to scroll (and might miss them,
especially as they are the same colour as the other elements). The
header is large as you said, but then again it draws attention to the
company.

There is too much text though (as there is too much here as well!),
but the text is necesary I suppose. What might be an idea is to
'categorise' the text (like , or place the main idea each paragraph is
trying to get across at the very beginning in a few words, and bold
them.

When it says "feel free to contact us", the contact us should be a
link to actually 'contact' them - people will read it and think 'yep,
I want to know more' and then click it immediately. Also, think about
whether or not it should say "we can probably help", you don't sound
too certain that you can help, now do you?

Hope this helps some, these are just some things that popped out at me
as soon as I visited the site.

(I'm no good at coding so I won't attempt to touch that aspect!)

Justin C <justin.0405 (AT) purestblue (DOT) com> wrote in message news:

I think the logo/header is too big, don't like the colour and think the
lines of text are too long for easy readability.

I like the logo on the front page but, could be just a hair smaller.
They do make the logo smaller on the other pages which is a lot more
pleasing.

The color is to bold for white text, it stains the eye and doesn't
make me focus on Paul's services. The white text in the orange makes
me want to click on the text for more indepthness. I think they can
get the same text effect with a soft background color.

After looking at FATPROMOTIONS website and portfolio I think they
could be more creative.

The "Thank you for visiting our website" should be replaced with a one
liner to make you want to read on.

Just my comments

Justin C <justin.0405 (AT) purestblue (DOT) com> wrote:

www.fatpromotions.co.uk/wood/

This page loaded so slow that I feared a 404-error (very bad).
Other than that, the layout is excellent.

Overall, this is a very good design with only one critical error.
Oops - TWO errors - it does not validate. Minor validation issues.

The design is too large for my screen at 800x600, and I would correct
that. The load time MUST be fixed. There are some very minor issues that
you should consider - text size, and validation for examples.

The Doormouse

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

In message <slrncc0gsg.p4g.justin.0405 (AT) eddie (DOT) masonline.demon.co.uk>,
Justin C <justin.0405 (AT) purestblue (DOT) com> writes

A friend has asked me to review his site because I'm a 'seasoned surfer'
while he feels he is not. This is work in progress that a web-design
company is doing for him.

I thought I'd let you lot get your teeth into it and I'll go back to him
with your comments so he is better armed when he talks to the designers.

The address is: www.fatpromotions.co.uk/wood/

Thanks for your suggestions.

My comments on the page would be to make it validate! The first four errors
are for: leftmargin, topmargin, marginwidth and marginheight. The other
seven are missing "alt" tags which may be due to go in in the
"production" version but aren't there yet (though I always find it
easier to put these in as I go along).

I think the logo/header is too big, don't like the colour and think the
lines of text are too long for easy readability.

There, I've kicked it off, now I'd like to hear from you.


Justin.

I quite like the site. It's fairly basic, but the logo and colour scheme
remind me of the front covers of the O'Reilly technical books.

Other posters have listed the main shortcomings of the site:
(a) Non-fluid pages
(b) Table-based when it really doesn't need to be.
(c) Inability to re-size the text in IE
(d) Lack of structure to the pages e.g. No headings in the mark-up.

In the various lists, some list items terminate with a full-stop, and
some don't. For consistency, terminate each item with a period.

I'd suggest rechecking the text for typos; there are a few.

regards.

--
Jake

The Doormouse <doormouse (AT) att (DOT) net> wrote:

Overall, this is a very good design with only one critical error.

A good VISUAL design - the coding is a mess, and I forgot that this was
"Alt.HTML.CRITIQUE".

The Doormouse

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

"jake" <jake (AT) gododdin (DOT) demon.co.uk> wrote

In message <slrncc0gsg.p4g.justin.0405 (AT) eddie (DOT) masonline.demon.co.uk>,
Justin C <justin.0405 (AT) purestblue (DOT) com> writes

A friend has asked me to review his site because I'm a 'seasoned surfer'
while he feels he is not. This is work in progress that a web-design
company is doing for him.

I thought I'd let you lot get your teeth into it and I'll go back to him
with your comments so he is better armed when he talks to the designers.

The address is: www.fatpromotions.co.uk/wood/

Thanks for your suggestions.

My comments on the page would be to make it validate! The first four
errors
are for: leftmargin, topmargin, marginwidth and marginheight. The other
seven are missing "alt" tags which may be due to go in in the
"production" version but aren't there yet (though I always find it
easier to put these in as I go along).

I think the logo/header is too big, don't like the colour and think the
lines of text are too long for easy readability.

There, I've kicked it off, now I'd like to hear from you.


Justin.


I quite like the site. It's fairly basic, but the logo and colour scheme
remind me of the front covers of the O'Reilly technical books.

Other posters have listed the main shortcomings of the site:
(a) Non-fluid pages
(b) Table-based when it really doesn't need to be.
(c) Inability to re-size the text in IE
(d) Lack of structure to the pages e.g. No headings in the mark-up.

In the various lists, some list items terminate with a full-stop, and
some don't. For consistency, terminate each item with a period.

I'd suggest rechecking the text for typos; there are a few.

regards.

--
Jake

I would like to add a little. If they persist on using a table format that
isn't needed for this design tell them not put a table width size and have
it default. That way it would set up to be center in any sized browser.
Also, where the orange ovals are at the bottom, they are using a little top
and bottom GIF's and orange shading for the center which can make it mess up
when playing with browser sizes. These can easily be drawn to one image
making it a little cleaner lines down the sides and less clutter to the
code. I also didn't like the orange and thought that the logo was to large
for the body font. Maybe a more burnt amber orange might be less bright.

Tazzy




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