Site critique request please

Please critique this site which I helped create. It's a web hosting
company. Please ignore html and css validation errors so there's no need to
pass the site through a validator. The errors which have lower priority
will be fixed later when I have some free time.
I am more concerned with site layout, ease of navigation, user
friendliness, functionality and anything that gets in the way of smooth
user experience.

Thanks.

http://www.dotnet-hosting.com

Tony

"Tony Bukres" <tony (AT) dotnet-hosting (DOT) moc> wrote

Please critique this site which I helped create. It's a web hosting
company. Please ignore html and css validation errors so there's no
need to
pass the site through a validator. The errors which have lower
priority
will be fixed later when I have some free time.
I am more concerned with site layout, ease of navigation, user
friendliness, functionality and anything that gets in the way of
smooth
user experience.

Thanks.

http://www.dotnet-hosting.com

The site is slow to load, at more than 1.5 minutes I would gone without
a second
thought.
layout only take up 1/2 my screen even with added toolbars and
browser side panels

Contrast in left side panel is very poor, many colourblind user can not
read
it including my elderly colour blind father who is looking for web
hosting
at the moment.

text size is too small and cannot be resized by the user in IE

No mention of which currency the prices are in, even on the order form.

No alt text on features link making navigation difficult in text only
browser.

About Us page goes nowhere

Overall user experience is poor.


Reviewed using Opera 8, IE 6, Firefox, and a Voice Browser.


Cheers

On Fri, 24 Jun 2005 23:28:14 GMT, Trusylver wrote:

"Tony Bukres" <tony (AT) dotnet-hosting (DOT) moc> wrote in message
news:v6ltjcdlc36m$.mzzf8113xom6.dlg (AT) 40tude (DOT) net...


Please critique this site which I helped create. It's a web hosting
company. Please ignore html and css validation errors so there's no
need to
pass the site through a validator. The errors which have lower
priority
will be fixed later when I have some free time.
I am more concerned with site layout, ease of navigation, user
friendliness, functionality and anything that gets in the way of
smooth
user experience.

Thanks.

http://www.dotnet-hosting.com

Thanks for you reply. Please read my replies.
\

The site is slow to load, at more than 1.5 minutes I would gone without
a second
thought.

I downloaded the home page on different links. it never took that long. Are
you on a slow dialup? Even speed testers like
http://www.websiteoptimization.com show 14.4k taking less than 1.5 minues.

layout only take up 1/2 my screen even with added toolbars and
browser side panels

The screen is made for 800 x 600 screen, unless your screen is at 1600
width (uncommon), it doesn't take 1/2 the screen.

Contrast in left side panel is very poor, many colourblind user can not
read
it including my elderly colour blind father who is looking for web
hosting
at the moment.

Which part of the left panel? The links on the top part are also text based
in the footer. The rest of the panel has grey text on light colored
backgrounds.

text size is too small and cannot be resized by the user in IE

Will look into this.

No mention of which currency the prices are in, even on the order form.

maybe it doesn't say US dollars but the dollar symbol and the area code can
give a clue. I will add 'US' then.

No alt text on features link making navigation difficult in text only
browser.

text browsers are low priority for me right now.

About Us page goes nowhere

right. During the last minute I noticed the about us dissappeared so I had
to disable the link.


Tony
--
http://www.dotnet-hosting.com
Free web hosting with ASP.NET & SQL Server
No ads - Innovative features

Tony Bukres wrote:

On Fri, 24 Jun 2005 23:28:14 GMT, Trusylver wrote:

The site is slow to load, at more than 1.5 minutes I would gone without
a second thought.

I downloaded the home page on different links. it never took that long. Are
you on a slow dialup? Even speed testers like
http://www.websiteoptimization.com show 14.4k taking less than 1.5 minues.

It shows 14.4k taking 100 seconds. With what system of measurement is
100 seconds less than 90 seconds?

layout only take up 1/2 my screen even with added toolbars and
browser side panels

The screen is made for 800 x 600 screen, unless your screen is at 1600
width (uncommon), it doesn't take 1/2 the screen.

Plenty of wasted H space at 1400x1050, as well.

No mention of which currency the prices are in, even on the order form.

maybe it doesn't say US dollars but the dollar symbol and the area code can
give a clue. I will add 'US' then.

The US isn't the only place that uses "$", and even being a USAN I don't
know where (503) is. Could be Canada, for all I know; it's not the
user's responsibility to know where every conceivable area code is.

--
Blinky Linux Registered User 297263
Killing all Usenet posts from Google Groups
Info: http://blinkynet.net/comp/uip5.html
*ALSO contains links for access to the NON-BETA GG archive interface*

On Fri, 24 Jun 2005 22:04:00 -0500, kchayka wrote:

Tony Bukres wrote:
On Fri, 24 Jun 2005 23:28:14 GMT, Trusylver wrote:

"Tony Bukres" <tony (AT) dotnet-hosting (DOT) moc> wrote in message
news:v6ltjcdlc36m$.mzzf8113xom6.dlg (AT) 40tude (DOT) net...

http://www.dotnet-hosting.com

The screen is made for 800 x 600 screen

There is no valid reason for that. If you think there is, you're wrong.
URL:http://www.allmyfaqs.com/faq.pl?AnySizeDesign

I understand the concept of fluid design. However I started with a ready
made template and making all the pages readjust automatically will take a
lot of time from me to fix. Giving a width of 100% now will break the
layout.
I don't see this as a big disadvanatge. Most users are at least 800 width.
Anyone with greater screen width will see white space. Wasted space, yes,
but it's not going to be in their way of usability. Even top sites like
Yahoo.com and cnn.com suffer from this.

Contrast in left side panel is very poor

Which part of the left panel?

I'd say all of it, plus the other columns, too. Medium gray text on a
pastel colored background has too low contrast for good readability.
It's not much easier to read on a white background. What's wrong with
black text? Do you want the site to be usable or just "pretty" (which is
definitely in the eye of the beholder)?

Adjusted now.

text size is too small and cannot be resized by the user in IE

Will look into this.

The text size is way too small for me, but at least my browser doesn't
prohibit me from making it bigger. Unfortunately, the layout starts
falling apart when I do. It looks broken, or at least sloppy.

Font has been increased. Some parts of layout will break if font is
increased but usability is still maintained.

No alt text on features link making navigation difficult in text only
browser.

text browsers are low priority for me right now.

It's not just text browsers, but also for graphical browsers that have
image loading disabled, as well as for disabled users who use screen
readers. Designing for accessibility generally benefits all users. If
you're really interested in a good user experience, you won't shrug off
things like alt text as unimportant.

Features link has been adjusted.
Thanks.


Tony
--
http://www.dotnet-hosting.com
Free web hosting with ASP.NET & SQL Server
No ads - Innovative features

Gazing into my crystal ball I observed Tony Bukres
<tony (AT) dotnet-hosting (DOT) moc> writing in
news:v6ltjcdlc36m$.mzzf8113xom6.dlg (AT) 40tude (DOT) net:

Please critique this site which I helped create. It's a web hosting
company. Please ignore html and css validation errors so there's no
need to pass the site through a validator.

I couldn't help myself. I also ran it through Tablin and Cynthia Says.
Some clients who are thinking about doing business with you might do it as
well.

Since this is a hosting company, and from the content, it seems your
clients will be developers. As a matter of fact, there was a discussion
"Is W3c validation woth the money?" at alt.html
<http://makeashorterlink.com/?F2675135B>, so I would say that validation IS
important, only for the reason that other developers will want to know
what's under the hood.

The errors which have lower
priority will be fixed later when I have some free time.

You know, one never seems to have free time later.

There is something I don't understand. When one is developing, there is
always some time set aside for debugging and testing of server side code.
When you find a bug, you fix it. You run letters and such through a spell
check to be sure you've spelled everything correctly (or you have one in
memory). If there are errors there, you fix them.

Why do some developers feel that fixing validation errors are not equally
important?

I am more concerned with site layout, ease of navigation, user
friendliness, functionality and anything that gets in the way of smooth
user experience.

With nested tables, some users are not going to have a smooth experience at
all. This is what your page may be for someone using a screen reader:

"Table with two columns and eighty-two rows Table with two columns and
eight rows Table with one column and seven rows Link home Link Webmail
Link Control Panel Link Knowledge Base slash FAQ Link Live Support Link
Support slash Contact Us Link About Us Table end"

On features.aspx:

-Hover over each item for more information-
Users who without a mouse have no way of getting more information. Users
without javascript also do not get more information, and the links go
nowhere.

Also with no javascript the list of Useful Sites disappears.

Thanks.

http://www.dotnet-hosting.com

--
Adrienne Boswell
http://www.cavalcade-of-coding.info
Please respond to the group so others can share

"Tony Bukres" <tony (AT) dotnet-hosting (DOT) moc> wrote

On Fri, 24 Jun 2005 23:28:14 GMT, Trusylver wrote:

"Tony Bukres" <tony (AT) dotnet-hosting (DOT) moc> wrote in message
news:v6ltjcdlc36m$.mzzf8113xom6.dlg (AT) 40tude (DOT) net...


Please critique this site which I helped create. It's a web hosting
company. Please ignore html and css validation errors so there's no
need to
pass the site through a validator. The errors which have lower
priority
will be fixed later when I have some free time.
I am more concerned with site layout, ease of navigation, user
friendliness, functionality and anything that gets in the way of
smooth
user experience.

Thanks.

http://www.dotnet-hosting.com


Thanks for you reply. Please read my replies.
\

The site is slow to load, at more than 1.5 minutes I would gone
without
a second
thought.

I downloaded the home page on different links. it never took that
long. Are
you on a slow dialup? Even speed testers like
http://www.websiteoptimization.com show 14.4k taking less than 1.5
minues.

I am on a 56k dialup in an area with no access to broadband, poor lines
and probably an international line to deal with as well.
(I don't know where your server is located)

there is a big difference between reported speed using a tool compared
to
the real thing.

Most other non flash sites load faster and even some flash sites.


Cheers

Tony Bukres wrote:

I understand the concept of fluid design. However I started with a ready
made template and making all the pages readjust automatically will take a
lot of time from me to fix.

The template itself is completely outdated. Have a look at
http://www.csszengarden.com
http://www.realworldstyle.com (the 3 column template)

Be sure to spend enough time at zen garden to get the idea of what's
actually going on.
--
mbstevens
http://www.mbstevens.com/

On 25 Jun 2005 05:24:44 GMT, Blinky the Shark wrote:

Tony Bukres wrote:

On Fri, 24 Jun 2005 23:28:14 GMT, Trusylver wrote:

The site is slow to load, at more than 1.5 minutes I would gone without
a second thought.

I downloaded the home page on different links. it never took that long. Are
you on a slow dialup? Even speed testers like
http://www.websiteoptimization.com show 14.4k taking less than 1.5 minues.

It shows 14.4k taking 100 seconds. With what system of measurement is
100 seconds less than 90 seconds?

layout only take up 1/2 my screen even with added toolbars and
browser side panels

The screen is made for 800 x 600 screen, unless your screen is at 1600
width (uncommon), it doesn't take 1/2 the screen.

Plenty of wasted H space at 1400x1050, as well.

No mention of which currency the prices are in, even on the order form.

maybe it doesn't say US dollars but the dollar symbol and the area code can
give a clue. I will add 'US' then.

The US isn't the only place that uses "$", and even being a USAN I don't
know where (503) is. Could be Canada, for all I know; it's not the
user's responsibility to know where every conceivable area code is.

This is not something most users are going to scratch their heads over
about. The $ symbol is pretty much known to be used for US dollars. If its
a different currency, then you specifically mention it.

For example, Amazon.com uses $ only and amazon.ca used CDN$. eBay uses # to
mean US dollars and almost every US online store.


Tony
--
http://www.dotnet-hosting.com
Free web hosting with ASP.NET & SQL Server
No ads - Innovative features

Tony Bukres wrote:

On 25 Jun 2005 05:24:44 GMT, Blinky the Shark wrote:

Tony Bukres wrote:

On Fri, 24 Jun 2005 23:28:14 GMT, Trusylver wrote:

The site is slow to load, at more than 1.5 minutes I would gone without
a second thought.

I downloaded the home page on different links. it never took that long. Are
you on a slow dialup? Even speed testers like
http://www.websiteoptimization.com show 14.4k taking less than 1.5 minues.

It shows 14.4k taking 100 seconds. With what system of measurement is
100 seconds less than 90 seconds?

layout only take up 1/2 my screen even with added toolbars and
browser side panels

The screen is made for 800 x 600 screen, unless your screen is at 1600
width (uncommon), it doesn't take 1/2 the screen.

Plenty of wasted H space at 1400x1050, as well.

No mention of which currency the prices are in, even on the order form.

maybe it doesn't say US dollars but the dollar symbol and the area code can
give a clue. I will add 'US' then.

The US isn't the only place that uses "$", and even being a USAN I don't
know where (503) is. Could be Canada, for all I know; it's not the
user's responsibility to know where every conceivable area code is.

This is not something most users are going to scratch their heads over
about. The $ symbol is pretty much known to be used for US dollars. If its
a different currency, then you specifically mention it.

For example, Amazon.com uses $ only and amazon.ca used CDN$. eBay uses # to
mean US dollars and almost every US online store.

Okay, now how about that thing where 100 seconds is less than a minute
and a half.

--
Blinky
International Thank Your Developers Week - June 20-27, 2005
Say thanks to your favorite Open Source team one way or another.
http://blinkynet.net/comp/tydevs.html Yes, Eight Days A Week.