[thelist] Template Check (PM) with opinions and help with two problems, please.

[ted serbinski]

> http://home.earthlink.net/~measureone/template/data-tables-template.htma

If you knock of that last "a" on the link it works :)


> Goals: Compatibility back to NS4; Quick loading; Easy, clear navigation;
> Clean design; Good robot navigation for indexing.

Looks very clean and easy to understand in both IE6 and NN4.08. I like how
the search is very accessible, along with the menus being divided up, makes
browsing very easy.

 - One thing I noticed, the links at the bottom of the page, Home Products
Catalog, ect, well at first glance they didn't appear to be links. Rather
they appeared to be some sort of legal jargon or "junk" for lack of a better
term. Once I actually read a few I quickly knew they were links. However, if
you were to add underlines to these or somehow differiante them it would
make them far more noticeable for people who quickly scroll to the bottom of
the page :)

- Second thing, highly picky, but in IE6, where you have the little quarter
circle next to the top level menu, it doesn't appear to be antialiased at
all, so its jaggedness is a little eye sore when looking at the menu. I
know, I know, but smoothing it out could do wonders :)

- Third thing, slighly picky, in NN4 the menu items at the top, Home
Catalog, ect, appear to be pretty close together, as opposed to IE6. Not a
huge thing, but this sort of throws off the balance at the top. Not a major
thing, if it can be fixed easy, go for it, just because a majority of your
people are NN4 like you said.


> Design: The client likes the colors and the simplicity. I'm worried it's
> "too" plain. I'll revisit the idea of using CSS buttons every few months
> when I see the NS4x users dropping even more.

Sure, the site is a bit bland, but for what it appears to be offering, the
colors seem to work well and get the point across. However, maybe making the
links some shade of blue to match the red/tan would work well, adding color
to the site, and making it easy to distinguish links.

Overall though, looks great, clean and simple, the way I like it :)

ted