Aqua-Soft ForumsHi gang, I'm incharge of my church's web site and would like some constructive criticism. mainly the "children's" stuff.
your feed back wanted
Need Web Site Critque
Looks pretty good! very clean, and smooth too.
The page you get when you click on the 'children' button is too big tho - it would look fine if it was resized to fit on one screen. I'm viewing at 1280x960, so it would be even worse at 1024x768 which most people use.
Very nice. I can't complain. 
I'm gonna be a little cruel, I'm afraid... 
I'd recommend that you use a consistent layout for all the pages, like the following:
-----------------------------------------------------
| Header |
-----------------------------------------------------
| | |
|Navigation | Content |
| | |
-----------------------------------------------------
| Footer |
-----------------------------------------------------
PH34R MY A5(11 5k1LL5!
As you can see, this diagram doesn't look any good... It looked good when I was editing it, but all the spaces disappear when it's shown normally, and doesn't work in here :rant:. Regardless, it's loosely based around sites like these.
This will then allow users to instantly identify the site they're on from the banner, and easily navigate to other major areas of the site from the navigation.
It might be an idea to go easy on the images - your average page size is about 300-400 KB - they'd take an absolute age to view on a normal modem, and lots of users wouldn't be willing to wait that - they'll just press the "stop" button and go elsewhere. Further to losing some images, it might also be a good idea to stick to more standard fonts like Times New Roman and Arial (for Windows users) or their equivalents.
Whilst things like this may seem like boring things to do, and like they're making your website look rubbish, it actually will make it easier to use and much better for all of the web users who will find your current pages completely unusuable...
Other, more generalised suggestions for using HTML:
- Use the alt tag for images to describe the image in words, for those users who can't see the images for one reason or another, for example:
<img src="../../unavailable.html" alt="this is a very interesting and accurate desciption of my image" />
- Use page titles to more easily identify your pages to blind users who have to listen to the web (and those of us who have 5+ browser windows open at any one time). If they hear a list of pages called "Untitled Document", they're going to have to listen to every page to know which one they want to hear. It's better to set page titles (in the area of the page) to something like "Topic of the current page - My site name", then the user doesn't even have to hear or read the whole page title from their browser to know what it's about. For example:
<!DOCTYPE html
PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<title>This page is about stuff - The site that I made</title>
</head>
<body>
All of my content
</body>
</html>
May I recommend that potential web designers visit the following:
-
Jakob Nielson's "Alertbox" column on web usability
-
Dive Into Accessibility - a page with 30 columns about how to dramatically increase usability of your website
-
A List Apart - a page which details lots of semi-hidden coolness about current web standards, and how to use them to their fullest.
Also, I just checked out your HTML source, and realised that you're using Macromedia Shockwave Flash... Can I recommend that you read this Alertbox column about "Low-End Media for User Empowerment".
Summary:Fancy media on websites typically fails user testing. Simple text and clear photos not only communicate better with users, they also enhance users' feeling of control and thus support the Web's mission as an instant gratification environment.
If you want any help or advice on web site design, or anything web related, don't hesitate to ask - I do this stuff for a large, professional company, where we have to make sure that we don't discriminate users... Also, it's worth doing this stuff because, under some countries' discrimination laws, web sites which aren't equally accessible by all users, regardless of disability, are actually illegal, and you can get "done" for discriminating against people in the same way that an employer, for example, could for employing a fully able user over a disabled one (when the decision should not be related to their disability)...
I also noticed that on a screen resolution of 800 by 600, the user has to do a helluva lot of scrolling to read all the text in images, which could just as well be plain text - the pretty fonts just make it more difficult to read, and the fact that it's an image means that the user can't copy and paste it, or have the text wrap in their browser window if they resize it
I hope all this helps... And I dont' mean to sound like I'm putting you down or anything - I just have very strong beliefs that all users should be able to view a website, not just the select few who can look at the pretty pictures...
Steve
thanks for all the help I will be reworking it soon and will take all the suggestions to heart and come up with a better site. thanks again you guys are great.
Er. I don't want to hijack this thread but also I don't want to start a new one so...
Can someone with a mac see how well this site opens. I've been attempting a site (needs a lot of work) and want to see how compatible it is with mac browsers. I'm not really after feedback until I've done more work but if anyone feels the need to say anything then feel free. Thanks.
Oh yeah. I know it's geocities but thats just to see if it works ok (links etc). I may/may not get a domain name.
I'm not on a mac but many of the graphics are dead, may want to recheck your "paths"
If you just mean the one where the title image would be, then yes it's dead (on all pages).
Thats mostly because I haven't yet made it 
. Was it that or are there other problems?
Thanks a lot for making the effort to check it out though! (Y)
looks mighty ugly to me.
Originally posted by iceborne@Jul 15 2003, 04:47 AMlooks mighty ugly to me.
that doesnt look like "constructive criticism" to me........
-bolero
A good and clean webpage, the way it should be (Y) But Viper is right tho, the children's section is way too big, try to make it a little smaller.
I dont see anything at all.
My Flash-Player seems to have a problem or my browser has a problem with its plug-ins.
Anyway - I dont see anything but two white rectangles on a black background.
Have fun,
McTrinsic
Thanks for the screenshot royboy ! From that I'd say it's firebird not liking the code as all the paths are ok. This is the stuff I wanted to sort out. Why the hell does it work happy as anything in IE but not firebird?! Damn! :nuts:
edit:
I forgot to say, I like your site quite a lot actually. The only thing I can think of to improve would be to use a little less flash so that those who can't run flash easily and those with poor connections can view it more easily.
Pretty nice... :dr_evil:
Cool! I'm in charge of my church's website as well. But I decided to go full PHP instead.. SBI Church
err mostly in Indonesian, so I'm not sure how well you guys will understand 
But I recommend you to use those php modules like mine, so it's easier to post news, update photos in photo gallery, have a song search engine and stuffs.
It's a good start anyway, keep it going :shy:
Good content Roy. I am in agreement with Stevie and do recommend to follow his suggestions.
michaelra: Bagus sekali!
GameboyzGB >>> Lol