My website

[BenMillard]

 

I might be getting off-topic a little here, but I think this needs to be said.

 

I agree with making the site look good is important. But you can't just say the effective attributes of a website are more important than making it efficient, because statements like that only apply to certain websites.

 

Having a flashy site that looks amazing, and is fun to play with is good, but the problem with that is it can't handle a lot of content (ie: articles spanning multiple pages). For portfolio websites, and websites without a lot of written content, it is important to have a site with all the bells and whistles.

 

For a website with quite a bit of content, like GTANet and the average blog, it is good to have a design that not only looks great, but works. It needs to be efficient but effective at that level of content.

 

When websites such as Wikipedia and W3C (with a vast amount of information) come into focus, having a nice design isn't very important. The most important thing is that it works with all systems, and is friendly to disabled persons.

 

For this particular website, making it look good is probably more important. Just don't forget to make it efficient.

Spot on. Websites are devices for people to perform tasks, normally research and comparison. People do not use the Web as a 17" art gallery. They don't care about how trendy the web designers are. Many have no idea how a website is even made. All they want is the information they are looking to be readily available in an easy to use format. Extremely simple presentation like Google, eBay, Amazon, Expedia and pretty much every major website is what allows people to carry out their desired task in the way which suits them best.

 

Optimised, efficient sizes with flexible layouts and fast page completion times (so no large images) let people quickly and conveniantly do what they wanted and then get on with their lives. Content is what drives people's Web use, not graphics. People don't revisit sites because they are pretty, they revisit sites that have content relevant to them. This is why some really atrociously made pages (like Google) get endless return visits and, conversely, it is why extremely efficient designs like W3C also get loads of return visits.

 

Good presentation on a computer screen requires gentle backgrounds and clear fonts. For example, people don't want to admire faint cursive fonts on evocative backgrounds because, although attractive, they are very difficult to actually read on computer screens. Simple sans-serif fonts or ones with minimal serifs are what people want because they are easy to read. This example shows that what people want from design is practicality; they want stuff that is easy and fast to use. As demonstrated in every other type of human-interfaced technology, people demand that devices be simple to use and to suit their needs. For websites, this translates into designs which respond to different browser settings (such as font size and viewport width) and present the information clearly with intuitive, helpful navigation.

 

They don't want to wait or struggle or stop to admire the view, they want to get their task done and get going.

[Hexhamlad]

I agree with the whole google thing because there is pretty much zero flair around there site but it is extremely effect at what it does. Like you mentioned people dont want a "pretty" place they want a effective place driven with content.

 

On the other hand the site i am trying to create is something that catches the eye with art/graphics rather than content. Because of the fact i have very little content but alot of work to show people, i only have around 10 paragraphs of text at the very most to put on the page. But over time i will have somewhere near 500 images to fill the pages.

 

The point i am making is basically you cant drive a page with content if it isnt a content based site, of course if your amazon or google then ofcourse you can and its VERY effective.

 

This doesnt take away from the fact i want my page to be easily navigated and nice too look at, because otherwise it will put off clients.

 

 

 

[BenMillard]

A site which has no content would just be a blank page. The content of your site is the graphical work you have done and the stuff you write to advertise that service. Content doesn't just mean text, it includes other media such as images, sounds and video. The website is a device for people to access that content in way which is easier than downloading the data files and opening them in an editor.

[Hexhamlad]

A site which has no content would just be a blank page. The content of your site is the graphical work you have done and the stuff you write to advertise that service. Content doesn't just mean text, it includes other media such as images, sounds and video. The website is a device for people to access that content in way which is easier than downloading the data files and opening them in an editor.

when i say very little content i was comparing to google or amazon, people arent going to come to my site because it has the most content but because it has something unique.

[Mercie]

A site which has no content would just be a blank page. The content of your site is the graphical work you have done and the stuff you write to advertise that service. Content doesn't just mean text, it includes other media such as images, sounds and video. The website is a device for people to access that content in way which is easier than downloading the data files and opening them in an editor.

*smack*

[Hexhamlad]

Ok just to let you all know that johnno is helping me with the site, i have recently given him the layout and he is busy coding stuff as we speak. he is around 40% finished so i hope with in about a week i can post the new layout/site and hopefully i can get some more feedback from you guys.

 

Hex

[BenMillard]

I look forward to see what you two come up with together.

[Hexhamlad]

ok id like to take this chance to thanks Johnno very much for all of his help over the last two weeks he has went out of his way to code a site for me. He has also helped me in more ways than i care to list. He is pretty much an all round good guy

 

 

Ok this is the new design for my site pelase leave feedback thanks again i created the layout and all the graphic work and pretty much everything else was johnno.

 

http://www.hexnewmedia.co.uk

[BenMillard]

Firstly, the site requires a viewport at least 654 pixels wide to prevent horizontal scrolling. Handheld devices and PDAs won't be able to do this, so you will have to find a big desktop PC or carry a laptop around with you to show the site to possible clients when away from where you are based. It also means that potential clients for your graphics won't be able to access the site when they are on the move unless they have a bulky laptop with them. Having said that, the lack of a "handheld" CSS link means that handheld users will probably see a truely old-school site in the style of two decades old.

 

Secondly, the site does not resize when in viewports wider than 654 pixels. Since there is an increasing divergence in the desktop sizes people use and extremely large desktop sizes are becoming less uncommon, visitors will find the site gets lost in their viewport. If I run my FireFox maximised it has a viewport width of 1600 pixels. This site hardly fills a third of the width. It's tiny!

 

Even when using a browser width of 800 pixels, the site looks small and the gaps around the outside are not the same. The site is centrally aligned horizontally but not vertically, yet there is a gap at the top. It's a very curious position to put a website. When viewing in Internet Explorer 6, a viewport height greater than about 620 pixels results in there being a white strip across the bottom of the page.

 

 

Sidebar

why are list section titles set up as the first item of the list they are the title to? The whole point of having a title for the list is that it is removed from the list to indicate what the subject of the list will be. Also, these section headers are just using the <strong> tag when they should be using <h2> or <h3> depending on the headers present in the content.

 

 

Font Size

 

font-size:0.7em;

As if it wasn't enough that this an insanely tiny font size to use anyway, it is even smaller than the already too small font sizes of sites like Google and Microsoft Hotmail. This puts the site out of line with the mainstream and puts it out of line in the wrong direction. Text on minutors and screens is hard to read at the best of time without hotshot web developers thinking it's a good idea to make it even harder. Not only is the size stupidly small but in IE6 is goes microscopic on font sizes below "Medium" which is SUCH a well-known issue (which has even been discussed in WD&P) that I am staggered any new site is falling into that trap. Especially someone like Johnno who is supposed to be technically profficient.

 

Use percentages for font size to avoid the IE6 oddities and improve font size consistancy across other graphical browsers. Using 100% means the font size will be whatever the user's preference is. Using "0.7em" means it will be 30% smaller they want it to be. Unless they are using IE6 with a font size below "Medium" because they it will be microscopic. Of course, because the font size is so small they will probably try using a larger setting. So, I tested what would happen if they did that. "Larger" is alright, apart from the "Business Cards" item gets wrapped onto a new line.

 

This is what happens when "Largest" is selected:

1022x1050 - 140kB.

 

And I havn't even moved off the homepage yet.

 

 

Data Waste

The first thing I notice about other pages is that all they have a vast amount of pointless whitespace. What reason is there to slow the site down and make potential clients have to wait just for stuff which does absolutely nothing to improve the site?

 

 

Page Headers

 

location: about / hexnewmedia

Unconventional and meaningless. Most users have no idea how a website is structured but a forward slash indicates some sort of section to them because they are familiar with things like bbc.co.uk/bbcfour indicating a section and so will assume it is indicating that "about" is a seperate section above "hexnewmedia" when, in fact, it is just a piece of punctuation spamming and backward grammar so common on sites pretending to be imaginative. A division sign between two words is utterly senseless anyway.

 

That strip of space would be better as a navigation aid instead of a piece of confused "style" because then it would serve a purpose:

Hexnewmedia > About

 

That would provide a link back to the homepage in the top left because there isn't anything there at the moment. This is just another important convention that every major site uses and which users expect but that is completely ignored here.

 

 

Galleries

Starting with the posters gallery...oh dear. Not only is the site pitifully short at the best of times but it doesn't get any taller to display the gallery images. Instead of gracefully increasing the height of the page so that potential clients could compare all the images easily, they are forced to peer at them through a little peephole. Although the peephole has a scrollbar the user has to figure out that the only way to use the wheelmouse for it is to move the cursor so it is place on the hole...obscuring the stuff they are trying to look at. Using such a small hole means the potential client cannot compare the images to each other easily and cannot view all your work as a whole. The images are not all the same size and the image placeholders change size as the images load. It's clumsy and untidy.

 

Why are there five empty images taking up space? They are just adding an extra distance to the needless scrolling potential clients are required to get through...only to find nothing. They look like custom placeholders for images which are still loading or which are broken, which is not a good impression to be giving.

 

I just looked at the "Covers" gallery. There are even more empty gaps. Why are you so keen to make it seem like you havn't done much work? LMAO, I just looked at the "Business Cards" gallery. There is one image and eleven (11) empty placeholders!

 

 

Summary

I have found so many design errors that I have barely scratched the surface on the technical and semantic stuff. This site is a disaster. Johnno, what the hell were you thinking? Has thout learnt nought from thy master?

Edited August 25, 2005 by Cerbera

[segosa]

A note to Hexhamlad: ignore Cerbera's post, it's nothing to do with you. You now have a functional website which looks good. Don't let his comments make you think otherwise.

 

Just sit back and enjoy the fireworks between Johnno and Cerbera.

[magical_trevor]

Just to prove cerb wrong, I took some screenshots of your site in Pocket Internet Explorer for Smartphone, and the site displays in a perfectly usable fashion:

 

 

 

 

Since pocket IE for smartphone is almost identical to the PPC version, it will almost certainly run fine on PDAs too, although I don't have one to confirm this with.

Edited July 15, 2005 by magical_trevor

[segosa]

Haha, nice!

 

 

Segosa molests magical_trevor

 

 

[Johnno]

Cerb, I was starting to like you again. You started posting like a normal person. But here you are again; picking at the smallest issues.

 

Have you not heard of fixed and liquid layouts?

 

When someone hands you a highly-graphical template and asks you to make a website out of it, you have not choice but to use a fixed layout (you would have never had anyone hand you a template, because of your lack of web development and business skills).

You mention the site not resizing - that is obviously because of the fixed layout.

 

 

The site is centrally aligned horizontally but not vertically

Now that is just being picky.

 

 

When viewing in Internet Explorer 6, a viewport height greater than about 620 pixels results in there being a white strip across the bottom of the page.

As far as I know, this is a bug in IE - reloading generally fixes it.

 

 

why are list section titles set up as the first item of the list they are the title to? The whole point of having a title for the list is that it is removed from the list to indicate what the subject of the list will be. Also, these section headers are just using the <strong> tag when they should be using <h2> or <h3> depending on the headers present in the content.

There was a huge discussion about this on a web development mailing list a while ago - you obviously missed it.

The outcome of this discussion was that lists using the title as a list item functioned far better on a vast array of different systems.

Using the strong tag instead of a heading is what I do - it means that the list title will be exactly the same size as the other list items, without more CSS.

 

 

As if it wasn't enough that this an insanely tiny font size to use anyway, it is even smaller than the already too small font sizes of sites like Google and Microsoft Hotmail.

You haven't made any websites for clients, have you?

Do you even know what a client is?

I thought not.

 

This is a website to showcase graphics. Most modern graphics use smaller-than-average font sizes. Small font sizes are then carried over to related information.

 

I would much prefer (and I know most people here would agree) to see small font sizes, than the f*cking huge sizes you are addicted to - get over it.

 

 

Text on minutors and screens is hard to read at the best of time without hotshot web developers thinking it's a good idea to make it even harder.

Well why on earth do you make your font sizes as an elephant?

 

 

Especially someone like Johnno who is supposed to be technically profficient.

I am technically proficent - I have around 30 professional references and testimonials. What do you have?

 

 

Use percentages for font size to avoid the IE6 oddities and improve font size consistancy across other graphical browsers.

Bullsh*t.

 

 

The first thing I notice about other pages is that all they have a vast amount of pointless whitespace. What reason is there to slow the site down and make potential clients have to wait just for stuff which does absolutely nothing to improve the site?

For gods sake. I was given a template. I had nothing to do with the designing process.

 

 

Unconventional and meaningless. Most users have no idea how a website is structured but a forward slash indicates some sort of section to them because they are familiar with things like bbc.co.uk/bbcfour indicating a section and so will assume it is indicating that "about" is a seperate section above "hexnewmedia" when, in fact, it is just a piece of punctuation spamming and backward grammar so common on sites pretending to be imaginative. A division sign between two words is utterly senseless anyway.

Once again, I question your business skills, as it is once again obvious that you have never had a client give you a template.

The client requested I do this. Take it up with Hex, not me.

 

 

Why are there five empty images taking up space? They are just adding an extra distance to the needless scrolling potential clients are required to get through...only to find nothing. They look like custom placeholders for images which are still loading or which are broken, which is not a good impression to be giving.

 

I just looked at the "Covers" gallery. There are even more empty gaps. Why are you so keen to make it seem like you havn't done much work? LMAO, I just looked at the "Business Cards" gallery. There is one image and eleven (11) empty placeholders!

Again, I simply added in the tables with blank data cells. The client then added the striped filler images instead of removing the blank cells. It was his move.

 

 

Not only is the site pitifully short at the best of times but it doesn't get any taller to display the gallery images.

This is a problem. Granted. Give me a solution, or shut up.

 

 

This site is a disaster. Johnno, what the hell were you thinking? Has thout learnt nought from thy master?

I disagree strongly. And so do most other people here.

You are not a master at web development. You are a guy (although I question this) who is so depressed that you pick the slightest errors in other peoples work.

You are not a web developer. You have your head so far up your ass, that all you can see is your knowledge of web standards. You cannot see that there is MUCH more to web development than getting every single page on the web up to date with perfect compliancy.

You know XHTML and CSS - so f*cking what - these are not the only things a web developer needs. A web developer needs to be able to create websites that appeal to a large audience (I can safely say that your "websites" do not have a great appeal factor).

A web developer also needs some knowledge of graphic design; you obviously have never created a website from a graphical template. Not to mention that you are so wrapped in making every page perfect, you neglect to add graphics. It has been proven that visitors much prefer to see graphics and colours.

 

Most clients don't know what web standards are. A good 95% of clients couldn't give a flying f*ck about web standards even after you explain.

 

Did you know that there is a world that isn't lived on computers?

It has trees, rivers, roads and people - maybe you should poke your head out of you're parent's garage and go for a walk, snooze under a tree, or go meet a girl?

[BenMillard]

My comments are to whoever is responsible for whichever element each comment is about. "It's not my fault, he did it" doesn't fix the problem. Incidentally, most people don't know what the correct standard for naptha levels in petroleum are but if their fuel economy plummets because the refinery is doing it wrong, they do notice that. Standards are formal devices to help developers prevent errors and inefficiencies. For a developer to make things which work consistantly across past, present and (most importantly) future devices, standards must be used. In order for a developer to ensure visitors can use the site easily, usability guidelines must be...err...used.

 

It is entirely correct that the public doesn't know about the formal standards; they have better things to do than wade through technical jargon. What they notice is the effect of non-standard (or just plain bad) code, such as a big white stripe across the bottom of every page. They notice the effect of sites which do not take into account the needs of the visitor, such as extremely small font sizes. The standards are there to prevent these undesirable effects because when visitors notice these effects on a site, they just go elsewhere.

 

 

Font Sizes

Sites which are hard to read are quickly left and potential customers of tht site will look elsewhere. The "black background, white text and streaky blue images" category of site are a dime a dozen and visitors won't hesitate to look elsewhere. By using a readable font you would have a competitive edge, especially since most decision-makers tend to be over 30 and require larger font sizes.

 

A setting of 100% does not make the text big or small. It simply uses whatever the user wants to use. And it stops the text from going microscopic in IE6 which is not "bullsh*t" and I can't believe you would say it was.

 

Viewing the site in IE6 with "medium" font size:

1022x1050 - 115kB.

 

Viewing the site in IE6 with "smaller" font size:

1022x1050 - 100kB.

 

Along with the earlier example of the site self-destructing when the font size "largest" is selected, your choice of font size and font units along with the fixed layout are causing a lot of problems.

 

 

Faults of the Mainstream

The mainstream is often wrong. The mainstream use <table> elements for layout but Johnno is using weird-ass <div> elements. If the mainstream were right, then Johnno would be wrong to use <div> elements for dividing the page into logical sections. Even though this technique improves device inter-operability, reduces page size, reduces rendering time, allows redesigns to be conducted rapidly through updating the CSS and a myriad of other benefits. The mainstream is, obviously, wrong about <table> layouts being a good idea. The mainstream is also wrong about tiny font sizes making life better for the visitors. The mainstream is wrong about fixed width and/or fixed height layouts improving the visitor's experience.

 

The mainstream is often wrong due to a lack of respect for (or knowledge about) the way visitors use pages. People visit pages to get things done. They don't visit pages because they enjoy having to load every page twice to overcome it's poor coding. They don't visit pages because they are difficult to read. They don't visit pages because they waste loads of space and are positioned weirdly. These examples are, in fact, things which turn visitors away.

 

 

White Stripes

As shown in the above images, the white strip is very unsightly. Johnno's solution is to assume the user will:-

1. Decide this as a rendering glitch in IE6 and not an intentional piece of styling or an error with the page.
2. Have a sufficiently detailed technical knowledge of how sophisticated rendering engines work in modern graphical browsers (specifically IE) and be aware that causing a redraw of the entire page will fix the glitch.
3. Causing a suitable redraw event.

Bearing in mind hardly any Web users even know what a "rendering glitch" is, this seems like a slighty risky solution. On top of that, since a highly learned website developer such as Johnno doesn't even seem completely sure how to solve it, it is extremely unlikely that any actual visitor will know how to do this. It is the role of the developer to avoid putting unrealistic requirements on ordinary users. Although it is not desireable, the reality of IE's proliferation and faults mean that special measures must be taken by web developers to ensure the majority is catered for. Especially so for commercial sites.

 

 

List Titles as List Items

There is no <lt> element for "List Title" and <li> is limited to the "List Item" usage. Therefore any title for a list would have to be placed outside of that list, since a list title is not a list item. When adding titles to other elements such as <pre>, <table> (when used for data), <img> and so on, the title is always placed outside of the element it is entitling. It's obvious that is how it should be. A title indicates that a collection of data follows and so the title cannot be part of that data. Bit of an indictment against whatever mailing list you were reading that the participants would get something so obvious so wrong.

 

Incidentally, the "Business Cards" list item wraps onto a new line when a font size above 70% of what IE6 uses for "medium" which ends up meaning the item wraps on pretty mediocre font sizes. Since larger screens are becoming more common, more people select larger font sizes as their default. With the prospect of future browsers like IE7, a lot more control is going to be easily available for users to adjust the text in websites and so developers must ensure their current affordances for the font manipulation of current non-IE browsers who already have advanced font options is sufficient. The easiest way to do this is make the layout resizable because that way the layout opens up on larger screens to allow larger fonts to be used. Also, everything stays proportional in fluid layouts which is an aesthetic boost as well as an improvement to usability.

 

 

Summary

Rebuilding the site to use a flexible layout would solve a lot of problems. Using a larger font size would make the site easier to read. Improving the semantics of the markup (which I still havn't really gotten into) would make it more meaningful to search engines. The effects of these changes would encourage more visitors to stay at the site and remember it instead of clicking the search result, seeing it is a bit hard to read/use, then going back to the search results to try another.

 

Something I have never really understood is why some sites are moving their primary navigation to the right hand side. Any ideas what the reasons for this are?

Edited August 25, 2005 by Cerbera

[Johnno]

Rebuilding the site to use a flexible layout would solve a lot of problems.

How do you propose you make a liquid layout from a highly-graphical template?

 

If you wanted to help someone (there's a new idea for you), re-make this layout as you see fit.

Here is the PNG.

Good luck with this new experience.

 

I know that this is a good website.

I know people like it.

I know I am right.

This is taking up too much of my time which I could be devoting to my websites - therefore I shall continue no longer.

 

Hex, I personally do like your new website.

[Svip]

Font Sizes

Sites which are hard to read are quickly left and potential customers of tht site will look elsewhere.  The "black background, white text and streaky blue images" category of site are a dime a dozen and visitors won't hesitate to look elsewhere.

As Johnno already pointed out, you happen not know how people act. Before I knew how websites were written, font size was something I care 0% about, and I think most people would.

 

People are looking for content, not font size, of course small unreadable fonts would be useless, but font size like the one Johnno showed us is far from unreadable, and thus is a useable font.

 

So no, people wouldn't look away, cause ask me this; Where should they look elsewhere? It's not like all of them have a list of websites to look through.

 

 

Faults of the Mainstream

The mainstream is often wrong. The mainstream use <table> elements for layout but Johnno is using weird-ass <div> elements. If the mainstream were right, then Johnno would be wrong to use <div> elements for dividing the page into logical sections. Even though this technique improves device inter-operability, reduces page size, reduces rendering time, allows redesigns to be conducted rapidly through updating the CSS and a myriad of other benefits. The mainstream is, obviously, wrong about <table> layouts being a good idea. The mainstream is also wrong about tiny font sizes making life better for the visitors. The mainstream is wrong about fixed width and/or fixed height layouts improving the visitor's experience.

 

If you are selling something, wouldn't like the majority to buy it? And thus the majority is part of the "mainstream", right? Oh sure the mainstream is wrong, but if you give them what they want, don't you think you would be able to sell?

 

 

List Titles as List Items

There is no <lt> element for "List Title" and <li> is limited to the "List Item" usage. Therefore any title for a list would have to be placed outside of that list, since a list title is not a list item. When adding titles to other elements such as <pre>, <table> (when used for data), <img> and so on, the title is always placed outside of the element it is entitling. It's obvious that is how it should be. A title indicates that a collection of data follows and so the title cannot be part of that data. Bit of an indictment against whatever mailing list you were reading that the participants would get something so obvious so wrong.

 

First of all, yes, W3C might have it's idea about what each tag should be used for, but using it differently is a form of being innovative, other than just following strict rules. Yes, I must admit I don't use <li> for list titles, but maybe I should.

 

Oh and, you're wrong about <img>, the title is replaced within the image with "title" as an attribute.

[Hexhamlad]

Hex, I personally do like your new website

so do i, and to be very honest i dont care what most people are saying because there not clients. The people i get business from are people who know very little about graphics or webdesign. I feel you have done an excellent job and alot of people who have posted here have been over critical. remember he did this for free and out of the goodness of his heart. I thank everyone else for the comments.

 

Hex

[segosa]

We still haven't seen Cerbera's highly standards-compliant liquid layout made from that image yet!

[BenMillard]

 

We still haven't seen Cerbera's highly standards-compliant liquid layout made from that image yet! 

I don't have time to do half-baked designer's side projects for them. What Johnno said really speaks for itself: He doesn't care.

 

 

 

Font Sizes

Sites which are hard to read are quickly left and potential customers of tht site will look elsewhere.  The "black background, white text and streaky blue images" category of site are a dime a dozen and visitors won't hesitate to look elsewhere.

As Johnno already pointed out, you happen not know how people act. Before I knew how websites were written, font size was something I care 0% about, and I think most people would.Ridiculous. The size of the font is the single biggest factor in whether the text is easy to read or not. Most people find computer screens difficult to read from, so fonts and font sizes are very important.

 

 

People are looking for content, not font size, of course small unreadable fonts would be useless, but font size like the one Johnno showed us is far from unreadable, and thus is a useable font.

Perhaps you can read it under the specific circumstances you are in, but other people have smaller screens, poor quality screens, glare from sunlight, bad monitor settings and most people have less than perfect vision. Therefore, the font size will be an issue. As I demonstrated, anyone who views the site in IE using "Smaller" or "Smallest" as their font size will be met by text which is just a couple of pixels high! I expect even you would find that hard to read.

 

The thing to bear in mind is that potential clients will be adults whose eyes will not be perfect. They may even need glasses. Making the font size larger means they'd don't have to struggle to read it and it also becomes that much easier for everyone else to read.

 

 

So no, people wouldn't look away, cause ask me this; Where should they look elsewhere? It's not like all of them have a list of websites to look through.

Erm, Google?

 

 

Faults of the Mainstream

The mainstream is often wrong. The mainstream use <table> elements for layout but Johnno is using weird-ass <div> elements. If the mainstream were right, then Johnno would be wrong to use <div> elements for dividing the page into logical sections. Even though this technique improves device inter-operability, reduces page size, reduces rendering time, allows redesigns to be conducted rapidly through updating the CSS and a myriad of other benefits. The mainstream is, obviously, wrong about <table> layouts being a good idea. The mainstream is also wrong about tiny font sizes making life better for the visitors. The mainstream is wrong about fixed width and/or fixed height layouts improving the visitor's experience.

If you are selling something, wouldn't like the majority to buy it? And thus the majority is part of the "mainstream", right? Oh sure the mainstream is wrong, but if you give them what they want, don't you think you would be able to sell?Firstly, I was talking about the mainstream of web developers. Most people in the population don't even know that a <table> tag is, so I'm obviously not talking about the majority of visitors. This makes your statement largely irrelevant.

 

Making a website suit the expectations of the majority is a good idea, except that people are used to viewing crappy sites. This means they are starting to expect bad design, like flashing animations for adverts, broken links and links styles which cannot be distinguished from the content. This means that instead of giving them what they expect, you should give them what they actually want and need - static, unobtrusive adverts, fully working links and distinctive link styling. Many sites (Google, eBay, Hotmail, etc) use fluid layouts (some better than others) and so most users will expect the site to suit their browser. The website should adapt to the user and not require the user to adapt to the website.

 

 

 

List Titles as List Items

There is no <lt> element for "List Title" and <li> is limited to the "List Item" usage. Therefore any title for a list would have to be placed outside of that list, since a list title is not a list item. When adding titles to other elements such as <pre>, <table> (when used for data), <img> and so on, the title is always placed outside of the element it is entitling. It's obvious that is how it should be. A title indicates that a collection of data follows and so the title cannot be part of that data. Bit of an indictment against whatever mailing list you were reading that the participants would get something so obvious so wrong.

First of all, yes, W3C might have it's idea about what each tag should be used for, but using it differently is a form of being innovative, other than just following strict rules. Yes, I must admit I don't use <li> for list titles, but maybe I should.Using tables for layouts was considered "innovate" and look what happened. It make the Web very difficult for millions of people to access and made nearly every website slow to download, slow to render, expensive to run, expensive to maintain and not commercially viable. Part of the reason the ".com bubble" burst was because the complicated, nested table layouts companies thought were so clever were not. They took a long tim to download on the internet connections of the time and took several seconds to render on the computers of the time. They are still much, much, much slower than <div> layouts even with modern connections and computers.

 

Using the technology in the correct way ensures it will operate efficiently, since it is being used in the way the browser expects. Also, the technology is designed by programmers, ethernet experts and many other highly educated people and is reviewed by a large collection of companies (including Microsoft, Opera, Mozilla, etc) which ensures the technology is the best it can possibly be. Using it correctly makes the site faster, more accessible and more sucessful. Putting titles as items in the list they are supposed to be the total of is clearly retarded. Titles should be seperate from their content, otherwise the title is just part of that content and there's no point in having it.

 

 

Oh and, you're wrong about <img>, the title is replaced within the image with "title" as an attribute.[/b]

That isn't true, images are given titles the same as code samples. "My Holiday Pictures" would a title and would use <h1-6> with the images placed underneath. The title="description" attribute is to provide a short summary or give instructions to the visitor when the element is hovered over by the mouse, given the focus by the keyboard or when listed in a page statistics (such a summary of all images on the page). Edited July 26, 2005 by Cerbera

[Tornado Rex]

As I demonstrated, anyone who views the site in IE using "Smaller" or "Smallest" as their font size will be met by text which is just a couple of pixels high!

Oh please! The only reason anyone would ever do that is to make gargantuan text (like that of your 'Conventional' skins) semi-decent to look at. And if they somehow did it by accident, well, frankly, that's not the webmaster's problem. It would be like telling a game company to fully support all hardware ever made, and any direct x-ish type things they use to run their game.

 

Now don't get me wrong, standards are there for a reason. I'm not disagreeing with that, but there becomes a point when it's trivial to follow them exactly. I'd rather wait an extra two seconds and not feel the urge to gouge my eyes out. Maybe that's just me though

[gta_king]

Personally I like the website. I'm not going to enter the debate about Web Compliency and W3C Standards or whatever but thinking strictly as a potential customer would they want to look at a site which does the job which means it gives you the information. With this site it not only gives you the information you need but it presents it in a way that will appeal to the customer.

 

When someone looks for a graphic design site they're not going to want to see a site that looks like Google, they want to see something which will catch their eye and make them think "Hey this site looks great, this person must know what he's doing"

 

Good job Johnno

 

[Luke]

As I demonstrated, anyone who views the site in IE using "Smaller" or "Smallest" as their font size will be met by text which is just a couple of pixels high!

Good! Isn't that the whole point of having small text, it's small? If it's too small, then the user can choose the "Stupidly Large" font-size setting if they plan on reading it using their binoculars from accross the valley with their 5" monitor pointed towards the window. Right?

 

Please stop saying what customers will potentially do until you can produce a list of projects you've developed that's as impressive as other peoples.

[Hexhamlad]

this is starting to get rather heated.

 

i cant see what all the fuss is about no mayyer how much people argue the site is finished so it there for good