site critique

I am about halfway finished with a redesign of a friend's web site. I
am interested in any and all ideas of what's good or bad and how
things might be improved.

http://new.canbypublications.com/phnom-penh/

There is still some content missing -- a lot of listings -- but you
should be abale to get the idea. Only the Phnom Penh section has
anything in it.

Thank you in advance.

cruiserweight wrote:

I am about halfway finished with a redesign of a friend's web site. I
am interested in any and all ideas of what's good or bad and how
things might be improved.

http://new.canbypublications.com/phnom-penh/

Nice, clean look and (IMO) good color choice. Great first photo with the
boy jumping.

The very first thing I did was upsize the text, as the menu text (the
stuff lower down wasn't visible yet) seemed a bit small. When the text
is upsized, the menu points at the right tend to disappear off the page.
It could just be a white-on-white problem, but I didn't see e.g. where
Ratanakkiri ended up.

I'm pretty sure I won't like the ad when it replaces the AdSample that's
there now. Why lead off your page with somebody else's business?

The secondary menu at the top and the expansion of those same choices in
the right sidebar weren't immediately obvious to me. However, now that
I've figured them out, I really like them. Quite a lot, in fact.

The footer's a little tall. What's all that space at the bottom for?

Markup claims to be XHTML, but is served as HTML. So why XHTML?

Markup errors on the pages I tested. See http://validator.w3.org/

CSS problems. See http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

The title on the page you pointed to is "Phnom Penh, Cambodia". Do you
also want some mention of Cambodia Travel Guides? I don't know.
Actually, it seems that Cambodia Travel Guides don't get much mention on
the page at all (once, teeny, in the footer, and the linked graphic --
without alt attribute! -- in the header).

Interesting-looking site. GL!

--
John

In article <4a3b529a$1_3 (AT) news (DOT) bluewin.ch>,
John Hosking <John (AT) DELETE (DOT) Hosking.name.INVALID> wrote:

cruiserweight wrote:
I am about halfway finished with a redesign of a friend's web site. I
am interested in any and all ideas of what's good or bad and how
things might be improved.

http://new.canbypublications.com/phnom-penh/


Nice, clean look and (IMO) good color choice. Great first photo with the
boy jumping.

The very first thing I did was upsize the text,

Me too... agree with much of what you said. Something that always seems
to irritate me is unnecessary horizontal scrolling. The seed is sown:

..container {
width:980px;

And this sort of thing:

#navigation #primary {
height:32px;

guarantees trouble because text grows in boxes that cannot fit it in...
In other words, beware of specifying heights. Either don't do it at all
(best advice where text is involved) or do it with em.

--
dorayme

On Jun 19, 4:14*pm, dorayme <doraymeRidT... (AT) optusnet (DOT) com.au> wrote:

In article <4a3b529a$... (AT) news (DOT) bluewin.ch>,
*John Hosking <J... (AT) DELETE (DOT) Hosking.name.INVALID> wrote:

cruiserweight wrote:
I am about halfway finished with a redesign of a friend's web site. I
am interested in any and all ideas of what's good or bad and how
things might be improved.

http://new.canbypublications.com/phnom-penh/

Nice, clean look and (IMO) good color choice. Great first photo with the
boy jumping.

The very first thing I did was upsize the text,

Me too... agree with much of what you said. Something that always seems
to irritate me is unnecessary horizontal scrolling. The seed is sown:

.container {
* *width:980px;

And this sort of thing:

#navigation #primary {
* *height:32px;

guarantees trouble because text grows in boxes that cannot fit it in...
In other words, beware of specifying heights. Either don't do it at all
(best advice where text is involved) or do it with em.

--
dorayme

Thank you very much. Exactly the kind of stuff I wanted to hear. I
agree, if you are browsing with less than a 1000px wide viewport, then
you will get the horz scroll bar. This is unfortunate, but I've found
no better solution. 100% wide is, IMHO, even worse, because it creates
sentences they are simply too wide to be read comfortably. Given the
choice, I chose going with a fixed width.

max- and min-width properties would be the right response here if only
ie respected it. Is there a better? Please advise.

In article
<37ebae00-875c-46d8-9ce9-fd749baaeacf (AT) x1g2000prh (DOT) googlegroups.com>,
cruiserweight <bayon86 (AT) yahoo (DOT) com> wrote:

On Jun 19, 4:14Â*pm, dorayme <doraymeRidT... (AT) optusnet (DOT) com.au> wrote:
In article <4a3b529a$... (AT) news (DOT) bluewin.ch>,
Â*John Hosking <J... (AT) DELETE (DOT) Hosking.name.INVALID> wrote:

cruiserweight wrote:
I am about halfway finished with a redesign of a friend's web site. I
am interested in any and all ideas of what's good or bad and how
things might be improved.

http://new.canbypublications.com/phnom-penh/

Nice, clean look and (IMO) good color choice. Great first photo with the
boy jumping.

The very first thing I did was upsize the text,

Me too... agree with much of what you said. Something that always seems
to irritate me is unnecessary horizontal scrolling. The seed is sown:

.container {
Â* Â*width:980px;

And this sort of thing:

#navigation #primary {
Â* Â*height:32px;

guarantees trouble because text grows in boxes that cannot fit it in...
In other words, beware of specifying heights. Either don't do it at all
(best advice where text is involved) or do it with em.

--
dorayme

Thank you very much. Exactly the kind of stuff I wanted to hear. I
agree, if you are browsing with less than a 1000px wide viewport, then
you will get the horz scroll bar. This is unfortunate, but I've found
no better solution. 100% wide is, IMHO, even worse, because it creates
sentences they are simply too wide to be read comfortably. Given the
choice, I chose going with a fixed width.

max- and min-width properties would be the right response here if only
ie respected it. Is there a better? Please advise.

First, there are workarounds for IE and this way you do not make
none-IE6 users pay for its sins? Use max-width. And deliver something
more specific via a conditional for IE6.

<http://www.quirksmode.org/css/condcom.html>

But generally, and more simply, you can specify the box that contains
paragraphs or even paragraphs themselves to be some reasonable number of
characters via em (1em does not equal 1 char, but you can get the hang
of the relationship with a few experiments. Try it before needing
something more formal).

I sometimes quite like 35 ems, sometimes I fancy larger. You could
deliver some fixed em figure to IE6 as a width, and a max to all other
modern browsers.

Do post any URL you are wondering about, folk here will gladly make
suggestions.

--
dorayme