A new site for uk horse racing enthusiasts
I would welcome feed back on my new site.
The site is a promotional tool for a friend of mine who is a bit of an expert in picking the winners. Worth listening too actually and I have won quite a few pounds myself so far this summer.
The site was designed using dreamweaver.
I am just a self taught amatuer designer and this was my first dreamweaver effort.
What am I pround off on the site.
Well I like the top menu script. Not sure about the colours though.
I ignored the instuctions that came with it and set it up to be called on each page from a single java script text file.
Set up this way I change one file and the menu gets changed instantaneoulsy across the site. This has already saved me hours of work in multiple page update time.
Some of you may gain from using a similar approach on your own sites.
ie think ease of update and change when you plan it.
Any feedback good or bad from fellow webmasters would be appreciated.
ThePunter
mairving posted this at 23:05 — 16th July 2001.
They have: 2,256 posts
Joined: Feb 2001
thepunter, welcome to Webmaster-Forums.
We only have one request of you and that is that you help us here by reviewing 3 sites listed here in the critique area before we review yours. This helps people like you to have more people review their sites and also helps us, the moderators out a bit.
We look forward to giving you a thorough critique on your site.
Thanks.
Mark Irving
I have a mind like a steel trap; it is rusty and illegal in 47 states
TheGizmoid posted this at 00:44 — 17th July 2001.
They have: 168 posts
Joined: Apr 2001
You have a slight (and unnecessary) horizontal scroll at 800x600.
In NS 4.6 (Mac) your nav links take up two lines, so the blue bar is sitting right on top of your blue text title. The mouseovers in the drop down menus don't work in NS. (They work fine in IE 4.0 but the text is really tiny and hard to read.)
*ALL* of your text is bold. Ugh!
"Click here" links just make the words "click here" stand out. Instead of "For more information *click here*" use something like *Get more information* (where the text between *s is the clickable link).
You have no meta tags. You should also include the site's name in the page title.
The pages need something at the bottom, like a copyright notice/privacy policy link or such in fine print, to make them look "finished".
The site has absolutely no visual appeal and to me it's just plain boring looking. You at least need to have some type of stylized logo instead of plain text. Include an image of the book's cover as well. How about a pic of the author? Some horse racing images? Some excited bettors cheering on their picks to win? A jockey in the winner's circle holding up his trophy? There's a lot you could work with here to convey the excitement of horse racing and winning.
Anyway, good luck with it.
thepunter posted this at 11:05 — 17th July 2001.
They have: 4 posts
Joined: Jul 2001
Thanks Gizmoid
You made a few good points.
One of the best ways to learn is to listen to others so keep em coming
The point you made about unnecessary scroll. Is that easily fixed?
I wasn't sure about your meta tags comment. I thought I had them in. Perhaps there are extra useful tags I have not encountered yet?
I like your point about some imagary to convey the excitment of the winners enclosure. I suppose the lack of graphics boils down to my lack of graphical skills.
I find it easy to produce crude looking graphics but not slick ones. Hence I left them out. Feel inspired now however to give my graphical skills a further test.
Thanks for the time taken to make your comments.
Appreciated.
ThePunter
TheGizmoid posted this at 18:57 — 17th July 2001.
They have: 168 posts
Joined: Apr 2001
Your main table cell is set to 100% width. You have to take into account the fact that the vertical scroll bar takes up about 20 pixels as well. Try setting it to 95%? I think that would do it.
Well, I'm seeing them now. Maybe I was having a pre-senior moment.
Actually, what had crossed my mind was using stock photos given an interesting edge treatment. The trick would be to find the right images.
thepunter posted this at 19:44 — 17th July 2001.
They have: 4 posts
Joined: Jul 2001
Cheers again Gizmoid.
The 95% trick is a handy one to remember.
Thanks for that.
The punter
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