mikesussman.com
No big deal. Just my personal homepage. Infact, the design changes I made are so insignificant that I'm not really sure it could be called a review request.
Here's a link to the way it looked up to a few days ago.
And here's a link to the way it looks right now.
Like I said, not much difference, mostly minor changes (like a new photo). Although I'll take any suggestions, I'd like to point out my main reason for altering my site and the reason I'm posting here is just because of screen resolution. If you look at the old version you'll see I limited the width to fit in 800x600 browsers. It looks bad with the screen resolutions most commonly used, with all that wasted space on the right. So step one was for me to box in the design and center it. How's it look? But there was one other issue that faced me. Using that very limited width worked okay on most pages but squeezed my use of photos on the home page. So instead of a width of around 750px, my new design is non-elastic at 900px! That's my biggest change and what I would like the most comments on.
Last I heard it was only about 30% of users viewing at 800x600 or lower and falling daily due to the fact that new machines are preconfigured at larger screen resolutions. Is it really worth designing for 800x600 anymore? Do you? If I use an elastic design I run into two issues. If I make my welcome message squashable so that it fits into 800x600, then I run the risk of disaster for extra large screesn resolutions. Anything above 1400width would cause all my paragraphs to become just single lines. So what's the solution? I'll tell you that the ideal solution would have been CSS with the min-width and max-width properties but I have not been able to get those to work properly in BOTH Internet Explorer and Firefox. Suggestions on my width dillema?
Now that I've addressed my main concern let me point out a few more things:
- My old design had no issues with the oval shaped page title graphic but it seems to mess up in Firefox now, with a line under the middle section. I changed NO code in that area so I don't get why it would be different now.
- FYI: I plan to insert header graphic and background images to spice up the look a little more.
- If you look near the bottom you'll see I'm working on a style sheet switcher. It's functional but I'm not done yet.
- I tried using NO tables at all but couldn't do it right. Oh well. But is my use of a table to create the overall template really that bad? I don't think it slows me down at all?
Okay, that's enough talking now. Comment on whatever you want but especially your opinions on the width issue. Thanks.
P.S. It's just a personal site so it doesn't need to be too snazzy, but it still seems boring to me. Like it's missing something design wise. Any ideas of why it seems so empty or what to do about it?
Busy posted this at 21:46 — 18th January 2005.
He has: 6,151 posts
Joined: May 2001
On the width issue, not everyone has the high tech equipment and when you buy a package you usuaully get a crappy moniter, some people just upgrade the box and keep the orginal moniter (I did), I view at 800x600 as it's a niec size, any bigger everything gets too small and adjusting the defaults makes most things to big (windows settings) but web sites are usually ok.
As for the layout, it looks like a well designed CSS site (although done in tables), it has the CSS look yet doesn't .
It's only really the home page that needs the width as the others are only two columns.
I'd probably keep the pages link (top left) on the pale colour when you're on that page, example say you go to the 'awards page', I'm sure you know what section it's in, but if I went and made coffee, or was browsing two or three sites at once (which I am) it's easy to get lost, even a bread crumb navigation trail would be an idea.
You do good work, clearly laid out, easyish to navigate (see above) and good selection of content.
heebiejeebieclu posted this at 19:35 — 19th January 2005.
They have: 527 posts
Joined: Aug 2004
Is there meant to be an image on the left-hand side on the front page?
Second, I think you are confusing business and personal with your site. Prospective clients do not, I suspect, want to see your daughter playing around like a lunatic on the front page of your site. Perhaps you should consider another site just for business?
Personally, I wouldn't give out my daughter's full name and a photo on a website, but that's just me. May I ask how many hits you receive and what promoting you do?
fifeclub posted this at 20:49 — 19th January 2005.
He has: 688 posts
Joined: Feb 2001
Well it seems from everybody that I really
mustrestrict my width to... 780px should be a good number, right?heebiejeebieclu, I welcome you to say whatever your thoughts are on my site but I honestly don't understand some of what you were saying.
Are you referring to the picture of me in the hammock? Does it really seem so out of place that that you thought it may have been a mistake?
This is the part that I'm most confused about
I totally agree that websites should not mix business and personal life. But what business are you referring to? I do have a section where I go into detail about my career (where I've worked in the past, awards I've won, etc.) but I see that as more of an "about me" type section. No different than somebody writing "I'm an assistant manager at Wal-Mart" but they don't own Wal-Mart. I'm just a lowly employee and don't have my own television clients. Is that the section you were talking about? Or maybe you referring to the page listing some of the websites I've made in the past?
My wife says that too.
But seriously, anybody else think that's a major issue? I see hundreds of family websites that include their children. Her last name is obvious because my last name is on the site, but I make sure not to tell anybody where I live other than what city. What's the alternative? She's the star of the show.
Like I said, I welcome your comments (although I'm confused by some). I don't want to come off as defensive. I'm just playing devil's advocate to get a deeper response, either from you or anybody else. Go ahead and convince me to change things.
To answer your questions about site traffic, I don't promote it at all beyond the signature in this forum. I don't even use it in my signature for other forums. I get about 300 unique visitors a day, but it could be zero and I wouldn't be any worse off because it's just personal. 3/4 of that traffic comes directly from a couple of sites that have links to me, and from my signature here.
heebiejeebieclu posted this at 19:52 — 20th January 2005.
They have: 527 posts
Joined: Aug 2004
Another thing, love the ability to change colours, but the Home title stays blue.
Megan posted this at 20:01 — 19th January 2005.
She has: 11,421 posts
Joined: Jun 1999
I run at 1152 x 768 at work but I have my windows taskbar on the right side and my Opera panels on the left so my actual screen width is close to 800 pixels. I often find that browsing with a width over 1000 can get uncomfortable because line lengths get too long. I prefer to keep my browser width between 800 and 1000.
So yes, I think it's important to keep lower screen widths in mind. (and 30% is a lot!)
Megan
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fifeclub posted this at 20:02 — 20th January 2005.
He has: 688 posts
Joined: Feb 2001
Hmm. No hammock photo? That's a problem. May I ask what browser you are viewing it in? It is inside an embedded table (to get the photo on the left and the other text on the right, without the risk of it slipping underneath the photo if the text got any bigger), but the code is nothing special:
<img src="/graphics/hammock.jpg" width="250" height="250" alt="" style="border: 2px solid #000" />'The only other odd thing I can think of is that the photo is really 500x500 and I just resized it in the code to quickly see what it would look like. But that shouldn't do it either. Hmmm.
Thanks.
Abhishek Reddy posted this at 23:07 — 20th January 2005.
He has: 3,348 posts
Joined: Jul 2001
I see a hammock photo. It never struck me as a hammock until it was pointed out in this thread. Not that I didn't recognise it -- I just didn't notice.
It shows up fine in Firefox 1.0. This is in the second link, too, not the first.
fifeclub posted this at 04:31 — 21st January 2005.
He has: 688 posts
Joined: Feb 2001
Okay, here's the deal. After not doing any websites for clients for like 2 years (because this is mostly a hobby for me), I got another gig and my personal stuff needs to take a back burner again. But before I leave this review, I threw together a few alternate homepage layouts that I'd like your opinions on.
First you need to go to the old layout here and click the BLUE SQUARE. The old style is set in a cookie and it needs to be on blue for my two alternate designs to work.
Now here's design #2. I made it 780px wide and ditched those three boxes on the right for one right column that holds my news. (note: don't click a news story because it doesn't fit right yet.)
Now here's design #3. Ignore the double of the same photo, I was just quicky testing out the layout. It's simpler because I ditched both the three boxes on the right AND all of my news.
As general layout ideas, do you think either of these two look better? And does the 780px width work okay? Personally I like the simplicity of #3's look but I'd like to keep the news in a blue box like in #2. Hmm. Anyway thanks in advance for the input.
heebiejeebieclu posted this at 19:35 — 21st January 2005.
They have: 527 posts
Joined: Aug 2004
I'm using firefox
The one you have at the moment is the best.
wwwben posted this at 22:06 — 24th January 2005.
He has: 270 posts
Joined: Jan 2005
#2 looks great i like the color changer! nice work!
fifeclub posted this at 14:36 — 25th January 2005.
He has: 688 posts
Joined: Feb 2001
Okay, I made the basic change to 780px width limit so that it will fit in 800x600 screen resolution without a horizontal scroll bar. Normally that width would work but please check that the width and tell me if it isn't working, perhaps because I also have a margin too. (My 800x600 goes off my monitor so I can't check it properly).
I will choose a wider piture for a better fit but I would like to ask about one major issue that has just come up. Please check in Internet Explorer. Here's the link again but you'll need to click the colored boxes to clear old style sheets out of your cache. The news box on the right is in a table cell with a fixed 225. The top dark blue is a div and the bottom light blue is another div. When you click on any story the widths of the two boxes change so that one is longer than the other. Click the link that says "Janet's Wedding" and you'll see how that this is the case even if there is no too-big picture. I've tried the divs with 100% width and without a width designation and neither way helps. I'm not concerned if it pushes my main contant over but I want to keep these two divs the same width and it just ain't working. (Works fine in Firefox). Any ideas of what I'm doing wrong or how to fix it?
Here's the relevant code, cleaned up before it's parsed:
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="10">
<tr valign="top">
<td>
<p align="center">
(stuff of left side of content section)
</p>
</td>
<td width="225">
<div class="box_top">
NEWS
</div>
<div class="box_bottom">
<b>{title}</b> <span class="font-size: 9px">{date}</span>
<br />{full-story}
<br />{comments-num} Comments
</div>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
and
.box_top {border-top: 2px solid #000;
border-left: 2px solid #000;
border-right: 2px solid #000;
background-color:#66a;
height: 14px;
padding: 5px;
text-align: center;
color: #fff;
font-style: normal;
font-weight: bold;
text-decoration: none;
font-size: 13px;
font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;
}
.box_bottom {border: 2px solid #000;
background-color: #ddf;
color: #000;
padding: 5px;
text-align: left;
font-style: normal;
font-weight: normal;
text-decoration: none;
font-size: 11px;
font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;
}
I can deal with a non-inspiring personal homepage but I just can't put this site on the back burner again until I fix something that just plain doesn't work right. Arggh.
Thanks.
JeevesBond posted this at 01:42 — 26th January 2005.
He has: 3,956 posts
Joined: Jun 2002
It's something to do with the margin/padding of either the tags or![]()
elements that make up those lovely smilies 
Opera and Firefox check the width of the and force the content into that width, however IE takes the width of all the contained elements and makes this act as the minimum width of the container. Hopefully this makes some sense!
You could try to reduce the margin/padding on any p tags within the boxes (CSS selector: .box_bottom p {...}), or do the same for the smiley images. Also you could try to increase the absolute size of the , or even set a width on the elements.
This is yet another example of IE's poor CSS standards support, that say the width of child elements are overidden by those set by the parent - personally I believe the standards make more sense.
A seperate issue is your css, It's very bloaty. You could vastly decrease the number of lines in there quite easily. As an example:
font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;
Is present in most of your selectors, why not just add it to body{...} and delete it from everything else (and the same again for base font size)?
Also I noticed you are including many un-necessary rules, for example:
font-style: normal;
font-weight: normal;
text-decoration: none;
Will this actually have any effect? The general rule of thumb is: If it has no effect, don't bother to specify it.
One more thing! Strictly (pardon the DOCTYPE pun) if you're interested in keeping your site accessible then you shouldn't specify font sizes in absolute values, use % or em values. Personally I build the entire layout - tags and all - with em. This means the ideal, easiest to read, line length at approx 12 words is specified - irrelevant of the users desired font-size setting. A good article on this is: http://www.maxdesign.com.au/presentation/em/
Hope all this helps!
P.S. Your daughter does say some very funny things - bless!
a Padded Cell our articles site!
Tianna posted this at 16:47 — 2nd February 2005.
They have: 24 posts
Joined: Feb 2005
For the most part I like the website design and colors. I do not have a problem with the width size. Your site seems to show up fine. I have my resolution set at 1024 x 768 and I use MSN internet explorer.
On the bottom of the front page where you say here is my life twenty words or less after that you need to make the font/text size bigger because one can hardly see it. Also the last 3 links on your navigation menu need to be same size as the others. They are hard to read and gives the page more consistency
I must agree with some of the past comments about putting pictures of your daughter on the net. I would not do it myself either. But I’m the more cautious type and having been in law enforcement in the past and hear about some of the creeps out there surfing the net. But that is me I’m not the overly trusting type so I would not expose my family like that just has a precaution. But like I said that is strictly my opinion so take it with a grain of salt.
I can see where people get the idea you are mixing your personal homepage with business. Why exactly are you doing this personal homepage? Was it to stay in touch with family and friends? If so, why do you need your resume on your site and awards? By doing that it comes off that you are promoting your business side or looking for a job. Are you trying to introduce yourself to the world for business purposes?
Well I am finished and hope this didn’t come off sounding too harsh - it is not meant too.
Find Great Custom Made Knives by Marvin Poole at sagecreek1.com
stuart posted this at 20:21 — 2nd February 2005.
They have: 4 posts
Joined: Feb 2005
I think that you are a very good website designer and that your current webste is the best. Have you considered other colours?
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