Site check

[jamie.heaney]

hello

I'm finishing up a site I built for a friend who works with one of the local museums. It's almost done and you can click here (http://www.portsmouth1009.com/wentworth) to view it as it stands. A few things left to do and no meta tags yet. but here's my questions...

Does the site hold up on a Mac? I've had a terrible time finding one to view it on.

CSS opinions? Never used CSS before, it was a virgin whack at leaving tables. In particular, mozilla does not align the two columns evenly on the history pages, etc... and I'm lost as I've tried to tweak the CSS to no end.

I used a gif to post her email address on the site, and used a server side php page for the form. Will this be secure enough for her to not be spammed to death?

And I guess, what do you think of the site? I know the flash buttons have their downside to not using hard links, but the site is so clean and formal as it is, I had to give it something more... ps. older well-to-do boardmembers like clean and formal.

thanks so much for any replys. be mean, be nice, its all critique... thanks again.

[rockboy]

Nice looking site. Aesthetically it seems to match the subject so I don't have anything more to say about that.

I do have a few comments though, just food for thought.

How will someone without Flash navigate? It would be nice to have a non-flash nav method.

Email address image. Your code is...
<img src="images/address.gif" alt="Sorry, email is image protected against spam">
Alt text should be a description of the image itself (e.g. "email address image"). Use a title attribute for a tooltip that provides additional info. FYI alt text does not show up onscreen for Mozilla (Firefox) users. Title text does.

Text size. Your default is probably ok for most but there could be a problem for those who want to use a larger text size. IE won't allow text to resize due to absolute (px) instead of relative font sizing in the CSS.

Column alignment. You could line up the div tops by using absolute positioning. You could also put those div's in a content div container underneath the navigation block much like using nested tables. Mozilla won't line up the top of the column div's for me due to placing an Adblock tab on the left side of your flash nav object. If the column div's were both within a div container they would shift together.

Minor tweaks. I'm just being picky cause you asked. ;)

Overall, nice site. They'll be pleased. :)

[renegade600]

You site needs alot of work. In additon to the previous comments about alignment (which is currently terrible), I am not sure but you may need to check into being Section 508 Compliant if you receive any money whatsoever from state or local government for the museums.

Also the background image needs to be lighter. It is very distracting.

It could be a good site when you get the bugs out.

[jamie.heaney]

thanks for the replies so far.

One big question I have is about relative text sizes. I've seen 'em' suggested and was wondering what you all do?

The museum is not publicly funded in any way, though the manager is double checking with the board to make sure there are no private foundations linked to state money. But just the same, we've been talking about the best way to attach a plain html site just for compatibilities sake... not exactly what I wanted since this is pretty much volunteer work.

The alt text, yes, i knew it wasn't showing etc in mozilla... just a little joke on my part, but I completely forgot about the title tag, thanks.

I've been messing about with the 'container' div thing. It would be nice to get rid of those layers of divs around every object. Originally, i was chasing my tail making that thing fit a 6x6inch browser (for as crappy as it may be, notice how I figured out a way to get all those columns to fold ok...lol) without a horizontal scroll appear, for small screens... finally convinced my friend that this was killing me and people with browsers set that small would be used to a horizontal scroll.

And thanks for noticing the background renegade, i agree to no end, but, too many people kept telling me to darken it... it was such a lovely watermark at first... you should have seen that black beautymark before i carved it up and dropshadowed it...:dizzy: yea, seems I'm learning alot about the webdesign vs client struggle.

thanks again for all the replies, I'm a total noob, so I'm surprised noone was more brutal. such a nice bunch a guys. :wave:

[rockboy]

Relative font sizes...
http://www.w3schools.com/css/css_font.asp

If you specify the body font-size then the rest of the tags/classes can scale from that. I usually use something like small or medium for the body font-size then scale the other tags:
H1 {font-size:150%;}
H2 {font-size:130%;}
.tinytext {font-size:xx-small;}
etc.

Font-family...
I noticed you had used Palatino as your primary font (p tag in the CSS) but I don't have that font so I saw Times New Roman as the serif default. Palatino might differ enough from Times that what others see is not going to reflect what you see. You should specify a more common font so "everyone" can see the site the way you build it. At least specify some more common alternates so you can control it more.

Containers and scrolling...
If it's easy then I make it work for everything but I don't worry about anything less than 800x600.

Navigation...
You could add a simple text navigation at the bottom of the page like on this page (scroll way down). The flash will probably work for most but at least there will be something for everyone.

thanks again for all the replies, I'm a total noob, so I'm surprised noone was more brutal. such a nice bunch a guys.We save the brutality for those who think they already know everything. But don't. :rotflmao:

[jamie.heaney]

thanks rockboy.

using percentages seems so obvious now. i don't know how i didn't bump into that before somewhere.