My turn to take some stick!

robfenn's picture

He has: 471 posts

Joined: Jun 2005

I recently upgraded my screen and found that the site looked awful on anything bigger than 1024x768 and was generally poor on some browsers which i hadn't tested in. I am an artist at heart and have been doing SEO for a few years but i am not a coder, i'm pretty bad BUT i am working on a fully accessible CSS alternative site.

I've just wondering what you think of this as a concept, i got it up straight away as i was embarrased about the last one. How it is in your browser and how quickly does it load? Does it look pretty? Sticking out tongue

http://www.sixthsense-esp.co.uk/

Cheers,

-Rob

He has: 123 posts

Joined: Jan 2005

Wow, nice job with the layout on this site. Narrow page content works well here, especially with that striped band you put in the background. It has a very professional feel to it and loads seamlessly. I can only suggest that you shorten the page titles ("Contact Sixth Sense" rather than "Sixth Sense ESP - Contact | Please feel free to contact us for any questions about our services (website design, online promotion, accessibility, online shopping carts etc.) as well as any job you would consider unique. "). This site is definitely a winner!

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demonhale's picture

He has: 3,278 posts

Joined: May 2005

Cool! Looks really good, I like the theme, its my fav color combo, black and orange,...
Dang! it makes me ispired to redesign...(I hope you did not use a template here...)

Megan's picture

She has: 11,421 posts

Joined: Jun 1999

This looks pretty good. Has all the elements you need, nice clean design, well done overall.

I'll suggest a few minor refinements though. Firstly, the background extending from the photo on the sides is really distracting. The shadow with the diagonals is giving me this sort of warped 3-D impression which is just weird.

I like the empty space around the logo but I feel that everything could be pulled up just a little bit. Too much discord between the logo and the rest of the site. Lacks unity.

The horizontal photos are fabulous. They provide an excellent atmosphere for the site. The business stock photos have got to go though. They just look way too "corporate" and impersonal in comparison.

Good job overall Smiling

JeevesBond's picture

He has: 3,956 posts

Joined: Jun 2002

Agreed on the look, this is good. Very good!

What I'd like to add here is that your code contains lots of deprecated elements - nasty font tags! Am also not sure about the image map, you could have done something more interesting with the menu imo.

Clean up your code, invest in a DOCTYPE (they're free! Laughing out loud ), sort out the minor improvements Megan mentioned and it'll be great!

a Padded Cell our articles site!

robfenn's picture

He has: 471 posts

Joined: Jun 2005

I know what you mean about the menu...that was a very lazy moment for me, i will sort that ASAP. Can i ask what DOCTYPE i should be using as its something confuses me?!

I'm actually glad you got freaked out Megan Wink That 3D look was exactly what i was after! Yeah the stock photos aren't great but i use stockbyte which i think is good but they cost like £60 for web quality versions and i just can't justify spending loads more Sad

Thanks for the kind comments everyone, it will inspire to me to crack on to be more accessibile. I'll try and get that code cleaned up and make the titles more intuitive!

-Rob

demonhale's picture

He has: 3,278 posts

Joined: May 2005

BTW you should fix the resolution problem, in FF at 800x600 the page doesnt readjust...

02bunced's picture

He has: 412 posts

Joined: May 2005

and it horizonatlly scrolls at 1024x768. Sad

Other than that a nice website Laughing out loud

robfenn's picture

He has: 471 posts

Joined: Jun 2005

How do you mean doesn't adjust Demonhale?

It scrolls at 1024 because of the gradient fade out, with the diagonal lines i can't just do a background image which just ends at the side of the screen so i'm not sure how i can get round that problem! Confused

Thanks.

JeevesBond's picture

He has: 3,956 posts

Joined: Jun 2002

Your DOCTYPE much depends upon the way you're coding, this looks like HTML 4.01 Transitional to me in which case you can validate against the following (in other words put this in the first line of your HTML file):

Quote:

Then you can check your code for errors at http://validator.w3.org.

To follow the latest W3C Recommendations and coding practices you should be using XHTML 1.x (and this is another story Smiling ).

Have just noticed the fact that I get a scrollbar at 1024x768 like the others, you badly need to fix this. Think css is the answer in this case, let us know if you need further help implementing this.

a Padded Cell our articles site!

demonhale's picture

He has: 3,278 posts

Joined: May 2005

I mean it should center automatically at lower resolutions, and stay that way when incresing to a higher res... More like my site as an example... or just expand it the way some more mainstream site does... Yeah ive been trying to be xhtmll too, gotto stick with html4.01 for the moment... Promote Standardization!!!

He has: 388 posts

Joined: Apr 2005

WOW blew my socks off it looks great. It looks unlike anyother webdesign site ive ever seen. Nice job.

He has: 698 posts

Joined: Jul 2005

Looks good. Nice color scheme and the images are in just the right places so they spice it up a bit.

In IE at 800 x 600 the width of the page is almost 2 times as wide as my screen allows, so I have to do a lot of scrolling. I would suggest fixing this. The main content can all fit in the screen, but not the way it's positioned. Wink

Kurtis

He has: 183 posts

Joined: Sep 2005

Looks good, even with the black background, i really like it. Very GOOD!

dougadam's picture

He has: 87 posts

Joined: Jun 2005

Nice site. The page loaded quick.
9/10

robfenn's picture

He has: 471 posts

Joined: Jun 2005

Thanks for the help and comments people! I have added a text only version to the site today which i hope will benefit the visually impaired.

Cheers!

-Rob

JeevesBond's picture

He has: 3,956 posts

Joined: Jun 2002

Hmmm, well more importantly am still getting that horizontal scrollbar. That looks really bad.

Still no DOCTYPE yet, and I noticed when trying to validate I get the following error:

Quote: Sorry, I am unable to validate this document because on line 36, 106-107, 150 it contained one or more bytes that I cannot interpret as utf-8 (in other words, the bytes found are not valid values in the specified Character Encoding). Please check both the content of the file and the character encoding indication.

There's a copyright symbol in your HTML :eek: get rid of it and replace with a nice
©Well, you did want stick Wink

a Padded Cell our articles site!

They have: 1 posts

Joined: Sep 2005

Hey,

I think it looked awesome. I did catch one typo -- but other than that I LOVE the dropshadow effect.

The typo was in the contact area.

shouldn't there be a comma after "us" in the contact page?

You definitely have an eye for design

robfenn's picture

He has: 471 posts

Joined: Jun 2005

I just read that Chad, i think it's how you read it, i'm not sure if you need a pause there or that. I know what you mean though..i'll get some other opinions on that!

Give me a chance Mr Bond! I will get on it tomorrow though (hopefully...)

-Rob

They have: 140 posts

Joined: Jan 2003

I've seen few websites that are off-center. At first it looked weird, and I am still not so used to it but I like its originality and it doesn't take away from the function at all.

Colors look great. I think it all around works well

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