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The story: My small business had a basic web site designed and hosted by a IT pro for past 5 years which I was happy with at the time. Computery things are a hobby with me and have been learning + getting to understand HTML, a little of CSS, and general web site design concepts, and with the help of a WYSIWYG (Serif) re-designed my site. Only after a lot of insisting by me would the IT guy upload it and replace his old design with mine. In fact he derides it and implies it’s more or less a waste of time. I’m was aware of a couple of points while doing it e.g. page width may cause scrolling on a 800×600 display, a lot of pics could mean slow download time on 56kb dial up, but felt it was as good as a lot I’ve seen.

Friends and family are complementary (but they would be) so having learnt from and admired the know how of fellow loungers here I trust their comments. If any of you could spare a few minutes to have a look and let me know what you think here I dont mind criticism at all as I can only improve from it just so long as it’s got a reason. I can’t help feeling my IT guy has a sour grapes feel about him because he can see his few pounds a month for “maintenance” disappearing!

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Others will probably comment on the technical aspects, I just looked at the “surface”.

The site looks good to me with one exception, which is just a personal preference: I don’t like the pale gray background behind the text, I’d rather keep it transparent. See screenshot below.

(By now, most people have 1024 x 768 or more, so horizontal scrolling shouldn’t be much of a problem)

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Hi Jeff.

A couple of thoughts from me. Take them how you will, I’m also just an amateur- who has learnt from constructive comments other people have made.

1. If you want to be credible in England, you have to spell your name “Geoff”

But (a little) more seriously.

2. Text and background colour differ a little. Try to match the yellow. (For anybody else but an interior and exterior decorator, that wouldn’t mastter )

3. When the link leads to the same page, don’t make it active. If you are on “Home”, then the “Home” link should probably not be active.

4. I think your big pictures are too big, and the thumbnails too small. I’m on ADSL, and the big pix take a few seconds to load (though that may be your server). The big pix appear to be 100k-150k each. I don’t know how you’ve stored the pictures- could you make them smalled by decreasing the clour depth, or number of colours? I have no incentive to click on a thumbnail if I can’t see enough of it to know what I’m likely to see.

5. The wording you have could be improved a little. Or evan changed in format.

eg, instead of “Some examples of interior work, click thumbnail to see larger image”

Have larger letters “Some examples of interior work” and then, in a smaller font underneath, “click thumbnail to see larger image”. (Agian, match font background to page background).

Good luck with it all!

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I think it’s a nice job, Jeff! Keep in mind that I’m much, much more of an amateur at HTML than you are, so:

1) Unlike Hans, I like pastel backgrounds but there’s something about that yellow that glares too much for my ol’ eyes. I do agree that text should sit on the same color background as Hans and Geoff said.

2) On the Home page, there is one hot link with an alt= and title= but the other one has none of either. Your call.

3) Like Geoff, I find the thumbs a little too small, but I think the larger one could stand to be even a little larger yet. I’d like to see more detail, for example in the fireplaces. Your design concept is great (not having to hit the “back” button after viewing a large pix) so I think there’s room on the page to increase the sizes of both a little bit without causing scrolling.

4) Finally, how about putting the explanatory text below the pictures in a “box” of some kind for emphasis. I’m talking about the lower text in this attachment, not the shorter, title text above. I’m also a great believer in capitalization. I think the title text should be: “Kitchen Cabinets” and the explanatory text should start: “Plain…”

I can see why your IT guy is giving you some grief. Not only are you putting out a nice web product, but you’ve got a “competitive” link at the bottom of the page! Good Job!

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>> …but you’ve got a “competitive” link at the bottom of the page!

Er… Isn’t that the same Jeff?

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Yeah, that’s what I mean. He, Jeff, is in competition with his (soon to be ‘former’ ?) IT guy, offering to teach people how to do their own web stuff.

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Ah, I read what you wrote as being that Jeff was advertising a competitor.

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> Unlike Hans, I like pastel backgrounds

I have no problem with pastel backgrounds, but I would prefer the text to have the same background color as the page, instead of the text sitting in a box with a different background.

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Al

I’m finding that the big picture takes a little bit to load. Is it just me? (I’m on ADSL). Or does Jeff need to find a faster host? Thta’s the reason I would have liked the detailed picture to be a little smaller, it’s more practical than asthetic.

If the thumbnails are going to be larger, perhaps they need to be in 2 or 3 columns down one side to avoid scrolling.

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On my cable connection, the larger pix take about 2 seconds each to load with a clear cache.

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On my ADSL connection (with cleared cache), the large pictures take about 0.5 seconds to load – but I’m a lot closer to England

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Just one small point from me – I would change the Title of the page to something more relevant.

If you alter the line:

to something like:

this would be displayed on the top bar of your browser and on the tabs (if used).

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Serif Web-Plus likes to generate huge amounts of HTML, doesn’t it!

In addition to agreeing with most of the comments made above, I would tidy up some of the grammar and punctuation (remember this is your friendly neighbourhood Lounge Pedant speaking!), and change your photo on Page5 so you don’t look as if you are just about to have a bucket of water thrown over you!

I would also cloak your email address to try to reduce the amount of spam you get, or (preferably) just use the web-form.

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I like reality…I WAS about to have a bucket of water thrown over me!! And as the Lounge Pedant and corrector of grammar and spelling etc this may give more cause for concern. I promise you I have cut and pasted this reply unaltered from a support person …..

Ticket Subject: hosting a website

Ticket Response:

—

Hi Jeff,

If the system is rejecting the name then it is a good sign that it does not except that perticular suffix.

Regards

Tim

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Thank you all for your comments I have taken them all on board and will be doing ammendments sometime in the future. And yes..the link..Jeff… is looking to diversify as old age and illness is forcing him to look for other means of earning a living, and is hoping to turn what has been a bit of fun helping out others understand basic computer stuff into maybe another part time business

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Hi Jeff

I like it, it gets the message across. I had not read Hans’ comment until after and I must say I had a similar feeling too about the colours. I have this real thing about white, crisp backgrounds because then I can throw all the colours that I want on the top part and as internal decorator and designer you have to use the page as your palette with strong and thrusting colours, warm reds, oranges and yellows and this can be done quite easily without being garish.

One thing that my browser picked up on is the mix of fonts that are appearing, you have a mixture of times new roman and also Arial, sans serif. I suggest you stick to one font-family only. I have therefore taken the liberty of adjust the style tags in your web pages to:

body {
margin: 0px; padding: 0px;
font-family: Arial, sans-serif;
}
.Normal-P
{
margin:0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align:left; font-weight:400;
}
.Heading-2-P
{
margin:19.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px; text-align:center; font-weight:400;
}
.Normal-C
{
font-size:11.0px; line-height:1.27em;
}
.Normal-C0
{
font-size:11.0px; line-height:1.27em;
color:#0000ff;
}
.Normal-C1
{
font-size:21.0px;
line-height:1.14em;
}
.Normal-C2
{
font-size:16.0px;
line-height:1.25em;
}
.Normal-C3
{
font-size:21.0px;
line-height:1.14em; color:#ff0000;
}
.Heading-2-C
{
font-style:italic; font-weight:700;
font-size:20.0px; line-height:1.30em; color:#00008f;
}

the formatted styling is in the attached text file. I have just removed the various fonts and placed the font family in the body element so that they are copied by heredity. Try it out and see how it changes the site, I have not changed sizes of font.

I can assist you if you like to put these styles into a css file and show you how to attach the file to all pages so that you can change it once and it changes the whole site. The offer is there.

A small point but it is one of accesibility and that is text as graphics as per your footer, people with visual impairment cannot always read text as graphics as they sometimes increase the font size within the browser and they cannot resize it….small point but this does not ruin the effect of your site.

Never mind about the IT guy, I am sure I can pick holes in his work . At least here the advise is free and we are happy to help out

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Jerry, thanks so much for your suggestion and codes. I will have a play with this but may struggle as using the Serif programme means a bit of fiddling and “insert code here” exactly in the correct spot. Your offer to help more is greatly appreciated and reassuring to know I can call on help when needed. Other things will be taking priority for a while and as the overall reaction to my site is not completely negative I will probably leave it as is for a while (not least because I have to beg and cajole the chap who “hosts” it to upload any changes) and I am encouraged that a couple of enquiries have come through from the site in the past week so it is getting as much response as the old one.

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The thread seems to concentrate on the appearance of your site and that is important. But the technical aspect also deserves attention. If you go to:

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://w…corating.co.uk/%5B/url%5D

you will find that your page has failed validation and 10 errors in the HTML and what they are listed. I would suggest it’s worth a look particularly if you click the Revalidate button.

Malcolm Walker

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Thank you. That is very useful and somewhere to bookmark for “future projects”

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Jeff

As Malcolm has now mentioned the technical side to your page ( Not a major problem as it stands as the issues are very small)

If you open your HTML in a text editor (NOT Word)

1) Do a find and replace for . It is nesting in the link to computer-tutor.me.uk at the bottom
2) Remove onload=”OnLoadPngFix()” from everywhere on the page as it is referencing a function that is not present on the page
3) Replace all ampersands (&) with & amp; (no space between & and a) throughout the document. This is a known URI bug in browsers

And finally a very small error

4) In href=”http://www.duluxselectdecorators.co.uk/Jsp/index.jsp” target=”_blank”> make it something like:

href=”http://www.duluxselectdecorators.co.uk/Jsp/index.jsp” target=”_blank” alt=”Dulux Select Decorators” title=”Dulux Select Decorators” >

After that you will get a validated HTML 4.01 page and a lovely W3C badge to put on the bottom of your page

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! didn’t realise how much is involved in getting things just right.Have made the tried changes as suggested and in your other reply, just need to get these changes uploaded, my hoster has gone on holiday now (he says)

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