Need review: www.tonydancy.com - Please!

Im new myself to html but ill share what I think..

#1 lighten up the table background.

#2 add a background to the page that will blend of color match the table.

#3 make text just a touch larger.

#4

Hi, Is very slow loading on dialup, your background image is 323.19 KB

not all of your sections line up, maybe break the background down and align it with CSS.
Your text is to small and to dark, links are to hard to work out (except over hover), maybe use a grey text or coloured links.
Your pages are a bit busy, to much to try follow, maybe add more pages with less content, or maybe 2 columns instead of 3

your main table (bottom) is 1000 wide, so causes scroll bar in 800x600

Took a boo at your site. Heres a few things

1) Get rid of the background. Besides being huge in file size, Its soooooo hard on the eyes when the colors change. And its too big to make out what it is.
2) The side concept of menu titles is not great other. It may work better if you removed the shadow effect which is also hard on the eyes. oh and the black text is too flush with the menu titles
3) You need more life to the site, such as more photos of Tony playing or something. I would have no clue this was a music site until I read, and the golden rule is you should almost set an atmosphere just by visuals.

my 2 cents

First off, I like the overall layout. The sideways titles on the left of those different sections on the front page are great!

That said, the background is way too dark for the text. Definitely lighten it up and make it smaller. You can possibly even keep it just as big and compress it a bit more using whatever image editing software you have.

Also, the PNG files that are those sideways titles that I mentioned before do not, unfortunately, show up correctly in IE. As the majority of your visitors are likely to be using IE, I would fix that. You can either replace the PNGs with some other format, or use one of the several PNG fixes for IE that are out there.

This is nitpicking, but in a couple of those blocks on the front page, you have images. I would float the images on the right since the title's already on the left. I would also make them line up with the top line of text, not the second line of text.

The only other issue I had was that the Tygers' pages had the same basic layout and menus, but looked like a different site. You're not really sure if you're on a different site or not.

Other than that, it looks nice. Certainly a more imaginative layout than we see from many beginners.

Hey! Thank you all for your insightful reviews - sorry I'm lax in responding as I've been spending my time fixing things.

Based on commentary here & elsewhere, the background will be faded.

Also, since you all have viewed the site, I have reduced the background image to about 150kb, so it should load faster.

I've already changed the font so that it reads clearer, I hope.

The paragraphs actually are formatted in CSS, I staggered them because I thought I was being creative. I have since lined them up nicely.

Sigh...I, in fact, did know about the png transparency issue with IE/Windows & I've been struggling with it. I just don't want to sacrifice the clear look for a grainy, pixilated gif. The png images for the headings will be fixed today! I had a brilliant brainstorm last night & will try it out. Not going to say what it is yet in case it doesn't work. Don't want to sound stupid.

I did try floating those images to the right and/or getting the text to start on the first line. Nothing I did changed it. Ideally, that would look better. I'll keep fiddling with it maybe somehow accidentally I'll find a fix.

Oh, the Tygers pages are meant to look different. That's the "nostalgic" part of the site and for those who just want a walk down memory lane.

On the more photos comment - I will be adding an entire photo gallery as soon as I can settle on a good slideshow program. Yes, it is a music site, but I also don't want it to be JUST a music site - I want it to be a place where visitors want to stay and play around. Actually, the background photo was supposed to give that "instant" hit that this was a music site.

With the changes in the png images, the text will not butt up against the headings, so they will be spaced properly.

I think the text will pop out more when the background is faded. Hope so.

Many people have said that the pages are busy or cluttered. I suppose they are a bit - and maybe it's because the text size is larger and things end up closer together. I prefer to keep the text as large as I can get away with because the plan is to attract the 40+ demographic. As anyone who is 40+ knows, reading a computer screen with tiny text actually hurts.

That said, I'll have to rethink adding a page or two to spread things out. I just know from my own surfing habits that if I don't see everything at once, I get antsy and leave rather than endlessly clicking on tab & drop down menus, then waiting for another page to load only to find that it wasn't what I wanted....

I think I've responded to all comments. At any rate, I do appreciate them & will be following up on them. Once I'm done with all the suggested changes, I'll let you know - maybe you can revisit the site & let me know how I did?

Thanks!
mdancy
tonydancy.com

p.s. thanks timjpriebe for the compliment

Hi,

Thought I'd take a look and see if you had a chance to update it yet but I guess with Christmas and New Year thing have been a bit hectic.

Had a read of the reviews before looking at the site and thought "the background can't be that bad surely?", but sorry it is. Fade it quite a lot if you can. If you are using Adobe Golive I'm sure you have some other Adobe bits to sort that out for you.

It's hard to see through the background, but I think you may well have a good site layout hidden there. If I was looking for Tony's music I'd be wating to know:
1) Where I can see him and when?
2) How to get tickets
3) Can I download or buy his stuff?

So you're in the right ballpark.

One thing I have noticed that might actually work is that when switching pages, the vertical writing has a grey background that disappears when fully loaded. It actually looks kind of better in my opinion when the grey background is there... Might be something to play with but sort that background out first.

I don't know if you write the tony's tygers bit, but that all looks pretty good (athough you really need to watch your image sizes for our poor dial-up friends.)

That's all. Hope it helps in some way or other.

Me.

http://www.amisane.org

OK Tony I must admit I had never heard of you and your singing abilities, but I really liked what I saw and heard Now for the site - I think that this background image is too big and obstacles the loading of the site.Maybe you should think of recising it a little - 200 at most,because otherwise it's too heavy. It looks good, but maybe you should think about changing the colors of the links in the left,because their blue color is not very appropriate with the background & they are a little hard to see. That's all for now,keep up the good work.

Hi all,
I made some changes to the site & would like your input again (yet again).

- removed all tables from the "blue" pages, went with all css (yeah me!)
- faded & reduced opacity on the bkg image everyone loves to hate
- fixed color inconsistency in text/graphics
- added border around main box (not sure i like it)
- reduced size of all graphics - does it load faster??
- cleaned up spacing - though still have problems with it being off
- lined everything up nice and neat

Need help with CSS - at least I think that's the culprit. Added top/bottom margins on the main container box, only the bottom shows up on just some, but not all browsers. Also, various inconsistent spacing between paragraphs, just can't seem to get them to be even.

Big one is that now Win IE pushes the whole thing to the far right, causing a scroll bar to appear that wasn't there before. What am I doing wrong with placing that main container?

Need the css doc? Let me know. Thanks!

mdancy
tonydancy.com

p.s. Thanks for the compliments, Pandela! I will pass them on to Tony (the husband material) . I guess that means that nifty flash player works OK. cool

Indeed I agree with the others. The background image unfortunately makes the content a bit hard to read (at least it was for me). Also with higher resolutions there is a whole lot of grey space left empty on the left hand side. You may also want to make your logo a bit more colorful and graphical which would project a more professional image to the whole site.

Best of luck !

Me again.

Can you all take a look at the site again & let me know:
1. Is the page all the way to the left/top of the screen?
2. Does anyone know why Opera won't display bolding? All other browsers do.
3. Is the scrolling still obnoxious?
4. Is the background still obnoxious?
5. Is the red still obnoxious?
6. See any new errors or hateful things?
7. Is it still loading too slowly?

Thanks for your time!!
mdancy
tonydancy.com

I think your background image may leave some impared sight folk with a headache. I also think that you could do a lot to improve your search engine listing by adding some text at the very top of your page detailing your most used keywords. Not bad site, I think you have a knack for it, just look over the site's you like the look of the most and I'm sure that you will find a look you like. When you find a site you like, just take the design elements you find most attractive.

The background is a slight bit better but think really needs t be toned down or removed, a real muted one would be better. load time not to bad now, but was able to read all the previous posts since my last one while it loaded.

Because your layout is in three sections and I am using 800x600 I have to work to view your page, first i have to read downwards then across then scroll up then down again, then if want links up and over again.
You've got a lot of ads and a lot of content, my suggestion would be to seperate each section to it's own page, this way (dear I say it) would allow you to have more ads, but also more keywords which would lead to better ranking.

dont see way you use so much JavaScript?

The background image is still way too big in terms of loading time. 100Kb is still at least 20 seconds for someone on dialup. I think you could really just have the nice arching blue stuff confined to the very top of the page to make it a logo. Then use a nice soft solid color as a background below that.

The vertical text graphics do not stand out as much as they should. It could be because of the drop shadows but it could also be just because they are tilted sideways and that just makes it more difficult to read.

The navigation links on the side I think could be more prominent. If you put them inside graphics or even just a CSS styled list as seen at http://www.alistapart.com/articles/taminglists/.

Overall it seems like you have some very good content and the architecture of the content seems very good.

Hi all!
Thanks for your reviews! I have one last request. I just finished changing the fixed layout to a fluid & would like to know if it worked. The widths are all percentages and the fonts are all ems. This refers to the "blue" pages only - if it worked I'll change the grey too.

So, if you could take another look to see if the scroll bars are gone and that the fonts are readable, and that nothing is cut off.

Still have some tweaking to do on spacing the photos from text, and reducing the width of the header graphic.

Teramen: I've tried to reduce the background size - I'll work on that some more. Thanks for the positive comments on the content and architecture - appreciate it!

Goranbaxy: the javascript is for encrypting the email address, launching the flash player, and fixing the IE problem with displaying png graphics.

Busy: I think the scrolling issue is fixed - please tell me it is! The layout should look less crunched.

I appreciate your reviews - I have about a week to fix everything then I'm off on a trip where I won't be able to work on the site - so your comments are really needed.

Thanks!!!
mdancy
tonydancy.com

For your header... just use text, not a graphic.
Lose the background image... Just use a solid color or a smaller 1 pixel wide gradient that you can repeat along the x-axis.

When I rollover your links the google ads flicker up ito the navigation. Not sure how to fix that, but it is annoying.

Looks like you have a lot of good content. but at forst glance I don't know what the site is about. I would put i an h1 under you banner header that sums everything up.

Maybe a bolder text or a lighter backround, as I had a hard time getting through all the backround noise. Good layout. I'd try to fix the backround if you could. Melanie

cool looking site. I would avoid having text over an image though, makes it hard to read and looking cluttered. I do find it easy to navigate other than that.
Take care, good luck

I use opera as my primary web browser, and the right column text goes way beyond the background graphics.

I would first suggest that you develop+test with various browsers at your disposal

I've moved a post by WesB86 from here to: http://www.webmaster-forums.net/showthread.php?t=32772

This is a more appropriate location for it.

This site is quite clean overall. I'm no stylist, so I prefer to focus on the technical a bit. First is the background. At 41k it's quite large & you're potentially going to be slurping up a fair bit of bandwidth. Similarly with the top logo. Not seeing why this couldn't just be straight text? On my browser (IE6), navigating the bottom portion of the menu (Download) is causing some issues with the Google ads (causing them to blink).

In terms of layout I might suggest putting the "Tony's CD's" front & center since this helps convey what the site is about a little more quickly. On the main page the vertical headers (who / listen / update etc) are a little hard to read and throw me off a little (but then, I was never considered overly literate in the first place).

On the positive, I do like how the Google ads are integrated & the site does get across what it's all about in a few seconds, so it's a solid effort...