[thelist] SITE CHECK: (time for a beating) site check please (URL HERE!)

Chris W. Parker cparker at swatgear.com
Thu Aug 1 11:59:01 CDT 2002


i was beginning to think NO ONE would reply!

thanks for the tips they are definitely well appreciated!

(keep scrolling)

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Marc Seyon [mailto:seyon at delime.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, July 31, 2002 5:42 PM
> To: thelist at lists.evolt.org
> Subject: Re: [thelist] SITE CHECK: (time for a beating) site check
> please (URL HERE!)
>
>
> Message from Chris W. Parker (7/31/2002 01:00 PM)
> >whoops! forgot the URI.
> >
> >http://www.swatgear.com/storefronttest2/indexTest.asp
> >
> >it will be http://www.nonlethal.com/ when it's done.
>
> Chris,
>
> These are just a few random thoughts. Incidentally, I only looked with
> Opera 6 (Win2k)
>
> 1. The aadvark looks good, but rather... pointless. Like a
> fridge magnet
> stuck there just because.

the reason i stuck that there was because (1) it filled up space, and
(2) i thought a big blank square looked even funnier. but i'll be honest
and say that i didn't think it looked funny HAVING the aardvark there
either. so

i will take it out and see what happens.

if you could, please tell me what you suggest i do instead that would
help a lot. take it off and don't replace it? replace it with something
else?

> 2. Need some space between the motorcycle pic in the first
> grey box and the
> accompanying text (on the sides, not bottom), and that text
> starts a couple
> lines down from the top of the box, probably because of the
> placement of
> the image

yes, i've noticed that but haven't got around to fixing it. do you have
any suggestions? i figure i can just use some sort of .pictureInText
class to pad/margin the right side of the picture. but i haven't tried
that yet so i don't know how it will work.

> 3. Looking at the nonlethal.com News box, there seems to be
> very little
> space there, almost inevitable that scrolling will occur. Any
> way to lose
> some of those dotted lines? Fit more info into the viewable space?

this will probably go away before it launches because of the reasons you
gave. it's sort of turned out to be not as hot an idea as i had
originally planned.

the width of the columns is one thing i've had to battle one. on the one
hand, if their really big they're ugly (at least i think so), but they
can fit a lot more information, which would be easier to read as well.
and then the opposite is true as well. smaller is "better" but can't fit
as much information.

> 4. World News - I think you've mixed up the weights for the
> headline and
> the source. Which is more important? Surely the headline (to
> me anyways).
> But the source is what shows as bolded.

good point. i hadn't thought of that believe it or not!

one question on this thing, did the news box look really big, widening
the right column when you looked at it? when i use opera 6.03(i think?)
on my comp. it is really large. and i think that's because the styles
aren't reaching it and i'm not sure why. it's a javascript function
stored in a <script></script> file. any ideas?

> 5. Because of the placement of the footer, with smaller
> browser windows, it
> slides over the grey left column.

the lowest i went was 800x600 and i don't remember it doing that. but i
will change it back to how it was.

originally i had it centered in the content area, but then i thought it
looked funny not being in the center of the screen. so i made it center
based on the outermost table.

> 6. Personally I think there's just too much grey on the site.
> The bar along
> the left, the borders and heads of the content boxes, the
> text. I'm not
> saying splash colour all over, it just looks rather... grey.

i will keep this in mind and see if i can come up with something.
although color is not my strong point (as you can see) so i don't know
what's going to happen. maybe a light blue? or a light green? (oh crap.)

> 7. Does that first square ad on the left say that Amazon.com
> is on sale for
> $49.99????? Wow. I didn't realise things had gotten so bad. ;-)

yes, they sure have.

> 8. I've got absolutely no idea what the bottom line of the
> 2nd ad says,
> even after staring at it, inches from the monitor for a
> couple minutes.
> "Saw It Today" "Ask It Today" "Sum It Today"? oh... right... "Buy It
> Today". Obviously.

"Buy It Today"

good job. (and since i can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not,
they're not real. just fillers. but you seem like an intelligent guy so
you probably already knew that.)

> 9. On the 'Current Set Configuration' page, the black text on
> maroon in the
> tables is awfully hard to read, and may likely be illegible
> to people with
> certain variants of colour-blindness. Though maybe colourblind folks
> shouldn't be playing with those kinds of toys? ;-)

good point on the colorblind people and using these things. the reason
they are black is because i changed the style sheet and forgot to create
a class for them. (they used to be white.)

thanks for all the insights marc.


chris.

p.s. any comments on the left hand menu? that's gone through, like,
three different versions. that's definitely a stumbling block for me.
the layout, information architecture, etc. not sure what to do.



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