Critique of Web Site Please

Looks good. Three things I would do:

1. Remove the scrolling text on the status bar at the bottom of our browsers. It's annoying. How many successful site do you see doing that? My point exactly.

2. Center the image at the top, so it is in sync with the other image below it and the rest of the page.

3. Your image at the very bottom appears to be broken. Just a heads-up.

I don't like the scrolling window and I think the heading looks disjointed to the rest of the site which is centered, but apart from that, I liked the choice of colour and text.
particulary liked the Vet news page with the blured newspaper background, also more recollections would be nice to read, apart from that the site is simple, straight forward and an interesting to read.

Oh and the site counter wasn't working.

ickbar

Thanks very much for your input.
I had no idea that scrolling text messages on the status bar were so annoying ... so I will relegate these to the waste paper basket. Thanks for that.
The general idea was to allow those coming to the page to be advised of new material. I will rethink this part of the site.
Same with the image on the front page ... it was a little different to the image used on the other pages, which prompted me to try a different method of presentation. Back to the center it goes!
More recollections .. Yes, as they are presented to us from the "participants". As we all say ... "you had to be there".
Again, my thanks .. an encouraging start for a rank amateur.
Regards
John Eller

Annoying in the respect they are time consuming for a large scroll such as the alphabetical list you have, I'd prefer a simple link to the page.

regards
mick

Please, oh please, don't format your text using the break tag. It may look fine in your bowser on your monitor set to your resolution, etc., but you have no idea how horrid it looks on mine at my resolution, my this and my that. Please don't try to impose *your* settings on *my* setup.

The scrolling status bar message is like nails on a chalkboard to me.

I'll come back when I'm in a better mood, but I just can't take this right now.

Is there a specific page with the breaks that look bad on your system, or is that a "general rule of thumb"?

Seems there's less angst with less breaks ..

Thanks

John

Quite a nice site & I agree with all that's been said before.

The following are personal preferences:

I don't like being told that "This website will give best results if viewed with IE5 or greater, on a screen resolution of 800x600 or higher." I actually don't think it does look better higher than 800*600 as there is just so much space on either side. 450 pixels is very small for the table and centered text is very hard to read and doesn't look very professional.

I'm not a fan of the fade transition you have goign from one page to another.

I also don't particulalry like the rollover effect you have. I would prefer to change the text colour alone to perhaps the red or yellow to pick out the colours from the logo.

Other than that a nice interesting site.

I look forward to reading your thoughts on other's sites that post here in the critique forum and please stick around.

This is a nice tribute to the Veterans.

I think you should add either links at the bottom of each page or put a "back to top" link at the bottom. This would allow visitors to go from page to page without having to scroll all the way back to the top of the page to get to the navigation links. Actually I would do both.

I don't like the page fade transition or any of the other page transitions on the net today. They were kind of cute to begin with but have become as irritating as animated gifs. You don't need this effect to make your site look good.

I did like the background newspaper effect you did on the news page and good job on the Picture Gallery page. Thanks for not putting all of the full images on the same page like so many people do.

The colors are not bad but it does need livening up a bit.

You have done a good job with this.
Good luck!
disastermaster

Will critique in a bit but first I have to say good on ya! My dad is also a vet and obviously I have grown up with mates who's fathers found themselves in the same position. I have marched in Leeton a few times with one of my mates and her Dad, and have to say I respect you guys so much. So a big thankyou for the effort you have obviously put into this site. This is a chapter of Aussie history that should be remembered, and the burden of guilt for the way Australia treated returning serviceman will not be erased with time.

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Now to the critique:

The roll of honour is especially moving. Normally I would shy away from a change in bg color, but I believe the emphasis is there for a very understandable reason.

The fonts are maybe of the wrong type. I would maybe suggest a cleaner more compact type (eg verdana, or a common stylesheet mixing of arial helvetica sans serif) like the poem at the end of the guestbook.

Perhaps the site could be a little more condensed. I dont mean the # of pages but certainly the layout of the pages.

Scrolling text is quite annoying. Not quite as bad as using the dreaded Marquee (IE only) or the blink (Netscape only) tags.

• As Marc said the logo needs to be centered. I am not sure how well the green text in the logo works with the green background though.
• Let me beat Megan Jack to the punch. You text should not be centered. It should be aligned left and not bolded for easier reading. Also as Gizmold said use a table cell to enforce your margins instead of the line breaks.
• The fade in effect maybe okay to put on your homepage (although it is an IE only thing) but it gets annoying on every single link.
• Your pictures page needs something. All the pictures look like they were kind of thrown up there. I would maybe put a border around them or something else to make it not look like they are just laying there.

In summary I think the color scheme, the page transition and the text layout need the most work.

Thank you one and all.

Your input has been fantastic, and gives us a little more to do to make it "right" for its users. All your comments have been taken on board, and over the next week will be "given a run".

Meanwhile,I will stay in touch. And yes, I'll "stick around" .. thanks for the invitation.

Sincere thanks

John

Just another quick one ...

Is there a means by which I am able to put a *very thin* border around a table. I have tried something like "border=1px" but it comes out a lot thicker than I want, and thereby makes the table look "blocky" ... can't think of another description.

Also, is it possible to change the colours of the sliders etc on the side of the windows? I am happy to be redirected to somewhere else if this is not the appropriate forum for these questions. This is a bit new to me.

Many thanks ...

John

Try this link for your tables.

http://www.smartwebby.com/web_site_design/table_tricks.asp

DM

Thanks for the link to "smarwebby" ...
That is *exactly* what I have been searching for.
Onwards and upwards from here.
Cheers
John

Another little table or filler trick is to user either spacer.gif or clear.gif. Create a 1px x 1px transparent gif. You can make this gif any size or color that you want.

For instance if you wanted a blue line:

Quote: Originally posted by detox
Will critique in a bit but first I have to say good on ya! My dad is also a vet and obviously I have grown up with mates who's fathers found themselves in the same position. I have marched in Leeton a few times with one of my mates and her Dad, and have to say I respect you guys so much. So a big thankyou for the effort you have obviously put into this site. This is a chapter of Aussie history that should be remembered, and the burden of guilt for the way Australia treated returning serviceman will not be erased with time.

As one of a very small handful of people around here who was actually alive during the Vietnam war, I am amazed and somewhat ashamed that I had no idea Australia was involved in that conflict!

I think the colour scheme here is workable and appropriate.

As much as I dislike the Javascript scroll, I hate the page fades much much more! It turns surfing the site into a laborious process.

Lose these two things, bring the navigation up top or to the left, follow the advice about centered and bold type, possibly switch to arial font, and you've got a nice site.

One more observation - the images at the top of your main page are hyperlinked. Thanks to the scrolling message, it is not immediately discernable as to where but it turns out that they are linked to the same page they reside on. Why?

I would say the same thing.. the image at the top definitely should be centered and the scrolling text is annoying..
The colors work well, though..
Just a thought.. the navbar should be on the top or along the side in addition to on the bottom.. don't want visitors to have to scroll through the page to find what they're looking for..
At first glance, it looks like a one page web site.. no other content

Overall, though.. nice job

I am in the process of implementing your suggestions and recommendations, and so far I like what I see. Many thanks.
All the advice has been good, and useful. Need a couple more days to finish them up. Will upload them and advise.

Just one thought ... I have the good fortune to have a nice 19" Sony monitor set with a res of 1153x864, but I have developed this site for a 15" screen (as best I could) which I have nearby. This is why some of the tables are set to 600px. Is this a good idea, or should I just "go at it" and let each browser sort itself out.
Again, my thanks ...

John

You can either stick with a pixel width (I normally use 750) or if it's lots of text a percentage of 95%. It depends on whether the design looks good stretched or not.

If you are working on a large screen you can see how it'll look at different resolutions by typing the following into the address bar of your browser - javascript:resizeTo(800,600)

Looking forward to seeing the revamp (make sure you let us know when it's up by continue with this posting)

I have uploaded the new pages with many of the recommended changes. I think it looks "cleaner", and am generally happy with the results. Still have a little way to go before it is finished, but I wanted to get some of it up there without much delay.

Of particular interest is the removal of the transitions and status bar message, and the scrolling Personnel roll, opting for a 3 wide table instead.

Again, my thanks for your constructive and most helpful input. I have put a credit on our site (on the credits page) to acknowledge your input.

Cheers
John