Michael Grant wrote: > Anyone else want to give me an opinion? I figure cf-comm is probably the > best, well-rounded cross section of tech and design skill around and I'd > like to make sure I haven't missed anything before we unveil it to the > client. :D >
Michael, You asked for it, so here goes! Most of the comments you've received to date have focused more around look and feel, so I'll take a slightly different tack. Please don't be offended by what follows. I'm not sure how much weight you place on standards, usability, and accessibility with respect to 'designing for the web', but if any of those matter to you - in particular usability - then the site has some problems. Question: Do you check your sites across the various browsers at different resolutions and font sizes to see how they react under *stress*? Do you also check with JavaScript, images and CSS disabled? The reason I ask is because, in order to see what everyone else was seeing, I had to reset my browser defaults (removing minimum font size among other things) which indicates an immediate problem. The site is aesthetically very pleasing when this is done, although then I struggle to read the text (keratoconus), which is obviously the reason for my 'larger than average' minimum font size as well as a higher DPI. However, the layout cannot handle any stress or font re-sizing without breaking almost immediately, and the W3C recommendation is usability up to 200% font zoom (obviously this is only best practice and not mandatory). In all honesty, with my personal settings it was unusable due to all the fixed height boxes in the layout - not an uncommon technique when making boxes *pretty*, especially with rounded corners, and one that I break all the time. Admittedly my defaults are rather large, but that's the point - it's my environment, not the designers! Try it for yourself; zoom the text several times (text zoom, not page zoom) in your preferred browser and watch. I'm on 1024x768px at the moment so it doesn't take many iterations to blow up, and although I don't know the client base/intended audience, I'd suggest it's a resolution that needs catering. Screen shots of first load at my normal settings attached[1][2]. Obviously I'm not suggesting we try and take into consideration every possible user configuration and design for it. On the contrary in fact - a site should, in my opinion at least, still be usable and content accessible under the majority of user settings. To that end there are some steps designers/developers can take to ensure our sites hold together under a variety of conditions. The summary version of which is ... test, test, test ... on multiple browsers, multiple OS platforms, multiple screen resolutions, with regular and excessive minimum font sizes, with and without JS, with and without images, with and without CSS. You've probably heard the saying "the web is not print", and although it's occasionally misused and even abused, the principle still holds true[3][4]. BTW, I'm not suggesting you're a print designer! No tables for layout (good!) and I see a style sheet, but there's an incomplete doctype, use of leftmargin. topmargin, marginwidth, and marginheight on the body, and use of the <center> tag which is deprecated as well as being superfluous (this is all possibly the result of a misconfigured editor, but that's just a guess). I recommend validation as a first step[5] after adding a complete doctype. More on doctypes here[6][7]. There are only a couple of cross-browser issues that I can see. Opera 9 and10 display a curious chunk of white space between the middle rows (said space is pushing down the ultimate gift row) and you appear not to be supporting IE6 and all its weirdness, which I can fully understand. And if you're not interested in standards, accessibility, or usability then you can pretty much forget everything I said, because the client probably wont even notice! But then again, they aren't paid to notice :-P Maureen wrote: > Very nice. Someday I'm going to figure out how to do those round corners. The basic concept and methodology using images[8], and a more up-to-date CSS only roundup[9]. I'm all done. HTH adieu Mark ------------------------------------------------------------------ [1] http://www.cwc.co.nz/sandbox/sundance1.jpg [2] http://www.cwc.co.nz/sandbox/sundance2.jpg [3] http://tiny.cc/ELKbJ [4] http://tiny.cc/pIMy5 [5] http://tiny.cc/uUrGk [6] http://tiny.cc/uOtuU [7] http://tiny.cc/h6rLa [8] http://www.alistapart.com/articles/customcorners/ [9] http://tiny.cc/g67ab ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Want to reach the ColdFusion community with something they want? Let them know on the House of Fusion mailing lists Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/message.cfm/messageid:297022 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.5
