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Review Requested - WhatHostingShould.BE
Websites/HTML pages critique & reviews Discuss and review existing WWW material (alt.html.critique)
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Review Requested - WhatHostingShould.BE -
02-21-2006
, 08:16 PM
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| http://whathostingshould.be - No navigation menu without Javascript. Cannot get past the home page. |
certainly shows signs of transitioning (a good thing). Use HTML 4.01 Strict.
- No background color given for <body>.
- The full justification looks very messy when the viewport is narrow.
Browsers do a lousy job of full justifying.
After enabling JS...
- The menu overlaps the main content. You must have specified a fixed text
size which is smaller than the minimum I have set in my browser. This
pushes the menu into the content.
- I did not pick through all that JS code. And why is it inline? Why not
an external file?
- All 4 links for hosting options go to the same page. Why bother to have 4?
- The gray background in the tables is rather dark reducing the contrast.
- The tables are too narrow compared to the rest of the page. 70%?
- A consistent <h1> phrasing theme would be nice. Sometimes there is none,
sometimes a useful page header, other times with unnecessary verbiage.
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jmm (hyphen) list (at) sohnen-moe (dot) com
(Remove .AXSPAMGN for email)
#3
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Galen wrote: http://whathostingshould.be - No navigation menu without Javascript. Cannot get past the home page. - Do not use HTML Transitional for new work. Although the coding style certainly shows signs of transitioning (a good thing). Use HTML 4.01 Strict. - No background color given for <body>. - The full justification looks very messy when the viewport is narrow. Browsers do a lousy job of full justifying. After enabling JS... - The menu overlaps the main content. You must have specified a fixed text size which is smaller than the minimum I have set in my browser. This pushes the menu into the content. - I did not pick through all that JS code. And why is it inline? Why not an external file? - All 4 links for hosting options go to the same page. Why bother to have 4? - The gray background in the tables is rather dark reducing the contrast. - The tables are too narrow compared to the rest of the page. 70%? - A consistent <h1> phrasing theme would be nice. Sometimes there is none, sometimes a useful page header, other times with unnecessary verbiage. |
there - it was driving me bonkers.
Hmm... Maybe a redirect for browsers without JS enabled? Seems to me that'd
be possible - I'll look into it.
The menu calls out to a JS file as well as the inline code - I cheated and
used DHTMLMenu (Sothink) and that's the output... Other than that I used
Notepad and 1stPage as both Macromedia's Dreamweaver and FrontPage just were
too bloated for this project and I find Notepad's about the best for me.
I'll root about and find more headers to add. I liked the way the <h1>blah
blah</h1> looked.
I can't get the menu to overlap? Well when you expand it then it does but
it's supposed to? The only alternative I could think of would have meant
moving the body of the content over to the right and that would have wasted
quite a bit of screen area. I did think about making the content div float
so then maybe it'd move over automatically but, well, I really suck at this
sort of stuff.
Anyhow, thanks for the insight. I'll look into it a bit more and the various
packages are meant to be different pages - just haven't gotten there yet.
Thanks much for the help.
Galen
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#4
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I can't get the menu to overlap? Well when you expand it then it does but it's supposed to? [...] No, just the menu without any flyouts. |
you should see the menu extending into the content.
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jmm (hyphen) list (at) sohnen-moe (dot) com
(Remove .AXSPAMGN for email)
#5
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To follow up with some WHT forum stuff (and a few NG posts) and to get some additional opinions... (Yes it validates with the exception of a couple of pages which are clearly identified) http://whathostingshould.be (snip) Galen |
Most of my review was done on a 600 X 800 pixel CRT, using Netscape 7.1
full-screen unless stated otherwise. I did NOT read the comments of
others before writing this review.
Nice clean look, easy to read text, nothing to distract from the message.
I do not care for validation links, though yours, being just text, are
less distracting than most.
I'm conflicted about the clever domain name. It IS clever, but I'm
inclined to feel that the .be suffix should be used
ACK! When I disable JavaScript, there is no navigation at all. Some of
your visitors will never get off the home page. See
http://pages.prodigy.net/chris_beall/TC/JavaScript.html
With JavaScript on, increasing text size just one notch (to 120%) causes
the base navigation to start to overlap the body text. Larger sizes
make this worse. This did not happen in IE 6, probably because the
navigation text did not enlarge at all, which means those with poor
vision might have difficulty navigating.
When the window width was reduced to about 632 pixels, an extra
horizontal scroll bar appears just below the bottom
'WhatHostingShould.BE'. That's unusual and ugly.
If the window width is reduced further (about 323 pixels) all of the
body text comes under control of the secondary horizontal scroll bar.
In effect, it becomes impossible to read.
Justified text is generally harder to read than ragged-right, unless
column width is very narrow, as in newspapers. Nevertheless, I had no
difficult reading the text in my setup. (At 1024 X 768, I suspect the
lines would be longer than I like and the justified text would then
become annoying).
I like the content on the home page.
Moving to other pages:
All three hosting plans, and the 'comparison' page, have identical
content. You probably plan to some up with separate pages for each.
I'd just use the one comparison page, tie it to the 'Hosting' navigation
(which I'd change to 'Plans') and leave it at that. Any time I've
looked at hosting sites, I've ended up looking at the comparison page
(if they have one). The others are somewhat superfluous.
features.html - There are two links towards the top of this page. Both
took me to .mht files. IE 6 seemed to know what to do with them, but
Netscape 7.1 and Opera 8.51 just displayed the source, which wasn't pretty.
planx.html - Towards the bottom, it says '...read the terms of
service...', but that's not a link to them. It should be.
Peeking under the covers:
Why Transitional DOCTYPE? New sites should be using Strict.
The rest looks good; much better than most.
Chris Beall (no reward expected)
#6
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Hmm... Maybe a redirect for browsers without JS enabled? Why would you want to do that? And how do you expect to do that reliably? Not with one of those <meta refresh> things, I hope. ish. Your site needs to be accessible without JavaScript. Your site also needs to be accessible without using a mouse. You fail on both counts here. Please rethink the use of DHTML menus at all. They are awful from both usability and accessibility standpoints. I usually curse the dreaded things because my dexterity with a mouse is lousy. Submenus that pop out to the side, like yours, are especially hard for me to use. More than half the time, the mouse "accidentally" moves out of its "zone" on the way to some submenu item, triggering a different menu. Then I have to go back and start all over again. grrrrrrrr! :-( |
articles they have a link which, when clicked, will expand and links can be
contained within them. There are also true DHTML options that would be
easier but I didn't have much time so I set it to a <div> value for menu and
tossed it in the left and called it good for now as it's easily replaced.
Your post gives justification to that. Thank you and I'll look into it
PROBABLY before the end of the month.
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I can't get the menu to overlap? Have you tested the site using a browser other than IE? |
overlapping that I see in all of them is intentional? It only overlaps when
the mouse is over it? My impression was that it was somehow under/over the
menu by default? I can't make it do so here though I've not tried all the
fixed pixel sizes for FF and, to be frank, can't optimize for every single
user convention on the planet with inclusion of the layout that I've chosen
and the feature set. Open it, for instance, with OffByOne and you'll
probably want to shoot me. Well over 99% of the traffic at any of my sites
is with those browsers any days. I opted, for time's sake, to ensure that
they would render "okay" in mostly default configurations and well, this is
why I asked you guys.
The navigation without a mouse... That's interesting... I'll check the forms
too to see if they're navigable without a mouse (via tab and alt+tab on a
Windows layout - I'm not so sure on Mac OSes) and if not I'll set the
default in them. I don't think I did so actually. I'm not even sure that I
remember how.
Anyhow, thanks VERY much for the ideas and the insight. To say that you guys
are invaluable (though I suppose some people might think you're too
agressive) is an understatement. I posted - intentionally - for a review
knowing/hoping that the critiques would be harsh. If there's a fault, an
insight, or a failure, then I want to know about it
I think, from watching the group, that most people come expecting people to
jump up and say "yay! what a good site!" on their first try. BS! I posted
knowing, I think, (and ego aside) that I'd have issues to look into and
fixes that could be made. Instead I read about a million reviews (it seems)
from other people and figure it actually came out pretty well! *chuckles*
I'm amazed it wasn't given far worse reviews. ;-)
Thanks again. I'll likely tweak a bit more over the next
days/weeks/months/years and ping back for a new review when anything major
has been done to the site. For now I think I'll work on your posted
responses as well as the others PROBABLY this weekend IF I can get the time.
Galen
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#7
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Nice clean look, easy to read text, nothing to distract from the message. |
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I do not care for validation links, though yours, being just text, are less distracting than most. |
that hosting customers come to expect exactness and validation. I *almost*
went XHTML but feared I lacked the capacity (patience really) to pull that
off that way.
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I'm conflicted about the clever domain name. It IS clever, but I'm inclined to feel that the .be suffix should be used |
lark and we intended to use the main domain name for it but to test that
they were actually giving them away I grabbed that one. It was "cute" enough
to be kept and is now on auto-renew. We're going to add WHSB<tld> type
things and park them shortly probably.
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ACK! When I disable JavaScript, there is no navigation at all. Some of your visitors will never get off the home page. See http://pages.prodigy.net/chris_beall/TC/JavaScript.html With JavaScript on, increasing text size just one notch (to 120%) causes the base navigation to start to overlap the body text. Larger sizes make this worse. This did not happen in IE 6, probably because the navigation text did not enlarge at all, which means those with poor vision might have difficulty navigating. |
that with NS
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When the window width was reduced to about 632 pixels, an extra horizontal scroll bar appears just below the bottom 'WhatHostingShould.BE'. That's unusual and ugly. |
dimensions and as such I couldn't fix it with my current layout. I tried - I
think it's due to all sorts of reasons and IIRC (it's been a bit now) the
result was "better" if I dumped the image and just went with a text area as
the "header" div and just made it look like an image.
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If the window width is reduced further (about 323 pixels) all of the body text comes under control of the secondary horizontal scroll bar. In effect, it becomes impossible to read. Justified text is generally harder to read than ragged-right, unless column width is very narrow, as in newspapers. Nevertheless, I had no difficult reading the text in my setup. (At 1024 X 768, I suspect the lines would be longer than I like and the justified text would then become annoying). I like the content on the home page. |
to get it to look decent in 800x600 AND 1024x768 so called it good. I did,
early on in the testing, check in as small as 400x300 but quickly gave that
up. If you're surfing in that mode and searching for hosting - we don't want
to do the support. Nothing personal but a loss of a client is acceptable
when it means an increase in time that can be used for other things and
anyone searching for hosting on a 7" monitor... No, wait, we'd still take
'em... We're nice like that...
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Moving to other pages: All three hosting plans, and the 'comparison' page, have identical content. You probably plan to some up with separate pages for each. I'd just use the one comparison page, tie it to the 'Hosting' navigation (which I'd change to 'Plans') and leave it at that. Any time I've looked at hosting sites, I've ended up looking at the comparison page (if they have one). The others are somewhat superfluous. |
so I could get it open as we had a few clients wanting to move in and
wanting to know plans and pricing. Grammatical errors have been fixed too -
there were a few - an English teacher (from the UK actually as we Americans
don't speak English I don't think) fixed them up for me including the
TOS/AUP which was even given a, "I guess that's about 90% inclusive and the
assumptions would be granted in courts in that county." by a lawyer (liar)
friend who's kept on retainer when I remember to pay him for my other
business.
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features.html - There are two links towards the top of this page. Both took me to .mht files. IE 6 seemed to know what to do with them, but Netscape 7.1 and Opera 8.51 just displayed the source, which wasn't pretty. |
one needs a MHT reader for *NIX however. Suggestions? PDF? .CHM? .DOC? I
wanted something that could be pretty easy to alter. Should a client request
a specific module be installed, for instance, and can justify it then I'd
like to be able to update the page with just a few simple mouse clicks to
show the new content. Have any ideas? I could ALSO, likely, save it as
web-page complete and upload it in .zip format. Most tarball handlers will
open .zip files and there are a million and one ways to open them on any OS
really. Hmm... Thanks for that - I'll look into it and have a solution
shortly I hope.
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planx.html - Towards the bottom, it says '...read the terms of service...', but that's not a link to them. It should be. |
planning on adding a couple of other payment options including a merchant
account and to link to that now would be premature I think? I could tell the
robots not to index that page for now but I'd really not like to have a site
seen with a link to one privacy policy instead of all of them. I suppose I
could word it different? I could remove the underline too I guess... I'm
open to ideas/suggestions on that one as it's definately something that
people will probably consider.
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Peeking under the covers: Why Transitional DOCTYPE? New sites should be using Strict. |
changing some of my old work and somehow it ended up transitional. I'm not
sure that it matters a great deal? The layout was actually for a site that I
was playing with maybe 2 or three years ago? One benefit that I do have is
being one of the Microsoft MVPs and with this get access to all sorts of
abilities in their community. I *might* ping one of them and ask them if
they can go ahead and take a look at it for me. They'll happily do so
though, honestly, most of them/us seem better suited on MS server platforms.
I think they'll know about validation as the FrontPage team (which doesn't
generally validate AFAIK) is in there.
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The rest looks good; much better than most. |
people come to this NG in hopes that they'll be given a pat on the back and
told that they did a great job and nothing needs to be changed. My company's
purchase came with a million and three (so it seems) templates for various
hosting companies. They were all flash and bloated and all sorts of silly.
They're nothing like us, we strive for simplicity and honesty. Our goal is
to provide what hosting should be by what we felt we should have had for
hosting all these years. We'll happily accept a loss on this - the reason is
that we were going to be paying for hosting anyhow. If we break even we're
happy. To offer SEO/Submission as an added service means that we (actually
it's me personally for this part) can hone our skills and offer a value
added feature that might matter to eCommerce sites and those are whom we're
aiming at or people who have personal websites but want traffic to pay for
their hosting.
From other groups...
It looks too basic. (Duh? It's MEANT to... However when presented with the
reasoning I saw the light.) Something so simple as a plan for pricing in an
image format below the menu navigation area would be good? It's like it's
missing something. I tried to make good use of the screen space and wanted
to leave the usual webmaster free to do what ever it is he does - which
seems to be not much for a few weeks but that's partially my fault. <g> So I
did it...
It looks like it was done by a kid. Well, yeah? Kids are, generally, pretty
simple and basically honest (unless it's a cookie or something they've done
wrong) and we're just big kids with a bunch of space and killer networks. It
is MEANT to be exactly as it is - with the exception of it's missing
something which I grant is true - search to be added for what it's worth -
and if it looks simple then I've done my job. I could have it bloated flash,
scrolling text, and all sorts of crap. That's not the goal, won't be the
goal, and likely won't change.
I like it. Yeah, that's nice but that doesn't do me any good. I asked for
reviews for one reason - I want to know what other people think I
could/should do to improve the site. That is, I thought, the point of a
review?
Dump the DHTML menus. Well, first they're not true DHTML. They're
JavaScript. I really should and likely will but that's not for a while to
come I don't think - will post reviews for the template when it's done.
Where's the uptime? We don't guarantee anything other than best effort but
you can review that at any time you'd like by clicking on the forum and
there's a link in there or you can ask a pre-sales question and a link will
be sent to you. It's 99.98 the last time I looked and that's only because
I'm an idiot and made for 25 minutes of downtime when we moved over.
Otherwise it'd be 100% still. Pointless. Read the uptime agreements again
and then be realistic. Your host, probably a reseller, doesn't have control
of the internet. Downtime is not insured against - it's an assured issue for
various things like attacks or upgrades. It's going to happen. Want 100%
then look to virtualization via VMware products and your own trunk.
There was more but many of them pointless. Bar none I got the BEST results
from posting in here.
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Chris Beall (no reward expected) |
out something with us or, alternatively, I can share something in return
with you? If you have, for instance, a site and want to hit the reply button
(it's a real email address - yes I'm insane for doing so) then I'll go over
it with some nifty way-too-expensive software and ship you the results or
upload them and then submit them or something for you. This applies to
anyone else who's given a review so far. (No, you can't post a review after
this and get this...) I'll happy do so and will probably even submit the
site for you just because I want to make the software do something. I have
only a dozen or so clients left from when I used to do this and those are
all scheduled so I don't actually DO anything but make sure there's a PC
running and connected when submission is due. The income's nice but, well,
it's pretty borish. I'm much happier doing support and admin work and don't
really need any money any more.
Ah well, I think I've digressed long enough and taken more than enough of
the time which you've already given more than you should have. Thanks much
and I'm 100% certain that I'd like to do something to at least show my
happiness/gratitude? Not just for you but for the two other people who
responded. If you should change your mind or gmail eats your response as
SPAM (it's been known to do so) then kgiii AT kgiii *dot* info (yeah you bet
your arse I munged that one though any of the domain addresses for
whathostingshould.be should work just fine) and I'll figure something out
for you three?
You all give this service free. To be honest? I've had clients who would pay
for this sort of review. Between you and the other two reviews here I'm
pretty sure I can find my way to dial in the site to be even better. Some, I
guess, come here and ask for a review and get angry when they're told their
mistakes. Go figure?
Galen
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