:) thank you. ill be digesting your reply, and the one from judah and making some nice changes...
btw, i wholly planned on moving the menu up, just didnt get a chance yet ... and it looked so comfortable there so i left it, until im finished content (which its easy to tell thats not done yet, and im almost there with the payment form and the ssl cert!) thanks guys. tw On Wed, May 13, 2009 at 10:15 PM, Mark Henderson <[email protected]> wrote: > > Tony wrote: >> can i get the mark henderson take on my newest site :) >> >> http://www.salisburycorporatelaw.com/live.cfm >> >> thanks :) >> tw >> > > Wow, that truly is one male dominated firm! > > I like your design style, and the site is aesthetically pleasing, but it > does suffer from some drawbacks. Font sizes are reasonable at normal > browser defaults (there is very little mouse text and when this is used > it seems appropriate enough to me) and the content positioning/layout is > good, with one caveat. The bottom navigation bar (and I believe EriKa > suggested you need a navbar) still makes no sense to me. Those links are > all significant and don't feature anywhere else in the layout, so why > are they at the bottom? It's common practise to place such an important > aspect of the design 'before the fold'. To that end, I would expect it > at the very top, probably below the header logo but before the company > photo. That just seems intuitive to me and, like I said, your average > web surfer (and we surely don't fall into that category) will thank you > for it. Ask yourself this - who wants to have to scroll to the bottom of > every page in order to navigate elsewhere on the site? On that note, you > could also then add the same 'text only' links in the footer (make them > small, make them subtle, make them anything you want!). And besides, > it's recommended to always have an equivalent text link for every image > link. I'll talk more about the use of images and possible alternatives > shortly (and the nav bar is one example where this can be applied). > > But, and there is a but! I pose the same question to you as Michael - > have you tested all the various scenarios I described in the other > thread?? The answer is NO! OK, so the question was rhetorical :-) The > site works well without styles, but with images disabled breaks > horribly, and that comes down to your CSS. When I disable images I get a > lot of black text on a black background, and a bunch of dark red links > on the same black background, making it totally impossible to use[1]. I > would just close out and move to the next site if this happened. Match > your background colours closely with the background images you are using > and the text will always be readable (see the color warnings in your CSS > validation results). This all comes down to testing - and to make it > easier simply use the web developer toolbar for Firefox (it's as > invaluable for this kind of thing as firebug is for debugging). I'm > pretty sure you already have it, and if not, that's your first task![2] > > I mentioned above very little mouse text, and that's true where text is > used. But your site relies heavily (a little too heavily in my opinion) > on the use of images. This is more opinion than fact, but I would have > simply used CSS to position the text that reads "Thanks for visiting. We > are busy wrapping up..." especially since this is obviously only > temporary. I would not have used full images for the services/planning > boxes either, and they ARE unreadable for me. The headings, sure, but > not the content. Another aspect to consider when using images this > heavily are those little buggers called the search engines - they do > enjoy textual content a lot more. To that end, there are various > techniques to create equal height boxes, and this appears to be an > important design feature[3][4]. There are also other ways to reduce the > image weight of sites these days, another being FIR[5] and this is an > approach you could easily use on your headings (all of them!) and in > this case even the boxed content will probably be ok. The navigation > does look nice, but there are CSS methods available using a single small > background gradient to achieve the same thing[6]. Unfortunately the > image in that example no longer exists so you wont see the true effect, > but you get the idea (there are many more examples of navbars on > maxdesign, and here's a better example of the type of visual effect that > can be achieved[7], even in gray!). The only thing sacrificed in these > instances is the drop shadow on the text, and even that will change with > the introduction of the text-shadow property in CSS3 (and now that IE8 > is on-board, this probably wont be as far away as once thought). > > Delving into the code now. Validation results are pretty good. However, > this is 2009 and the likes of align="center" (along with > <center></center) are well and truly deprecated and should not be used. > You can use margin: 0 auto and text-align: center to replicate this > across browser-land. Also, with your tables (is that tabular data I > see?) you still need the cellspacing attribute, but the rest can go. > Equivalent CSS would be something like table {margin:0; padding:0; > border-collapse:collapse;} > > Oh, you probably already know this one too but I thought I should > mention it. I'm getting an invalid security certificate on the payment > link. > > Food for thought at least. > > HTH > Mark > > -------------------------------------- > > [1] http://www.cwc.co.nz/sandbox/salisbury-attorneys.png > [2] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/60 > [3] http://www.gunlaug.no/contents/wd_additions_22.html > [4] http://www.gunlaug.no/tos/moa_11f.html > [5] http://www.mikeindustries.com/blog/sifr/ > [6] http://css.maxdesign.com.au/listamatic/horizontal26.htm > [7] http://css.maxdesign.com.au/listamatic/vertical07.htm > > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| 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:297171 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=11502.10531.5
