please, review my home site: www.arakno.net

Very slow loading, no warning its a flash site, I'm still waiting for it to load, thankfully netscape has a progress tell tale, 280k is a lot to load.

OK, now I'm confused, I also opened it up in IE5 and once IE and NEt4.7 loaded I have two totally different sites, the IE ones ones in a new window (annoying) but Netscape is the same window.
In Netscape i have two (email is 3rd) options, one is slideshow the other is "mepetres" which I have no idea what it is, so I'll stick with what i know and feel safe with, the slideshow, once there all I get is a very dotted picture of a band? the slideshow is 2 pictures, not worth the wait for it to load.

I tried the other link but the links off that are all broken.

On IE, its a pokemon style layout filled with java applets.
at the top i have to watch this annoying rotating banner that just says "Joba" or something while trying to read the small marquee message, "please be patient, this site is still under construction", oh and the annoying rotating image has changed. "thank you for visiting"

The first screen said "pick your fighter" so thought it was a game site, now I'm there I have no idea what it is, the content doesnt tell me, the links on the side look like personal links.

I just figured out why i got two different views, the left link is the site, the right link is the slideshow thingy, ahhhh

ok now in netscape on the real page your left links dont work, the search bar under google isnt there but i still get the annoying rotating image and marquee, all this in a new window as well. I tried clicking two of the links to the right and they take me to another url, so has nothing to do with your site, the links on the left dont work so I'm stuck.

I think this is just a case of trying to use as many "toys" as you can without purpose. Just because you can doesnt always mean you should.

sorry but it needs a lot of work

Well, talk about being a starter!

You're definitely right about the need for a lot of work! I just wanted to check if I'm working on the right direction!
Many thanks for your comments although I forgot to mention some important data earlier:

-I am almost sure the site DOES NOT work with Netscape, because not only I'm using innerHTML, but I'm also using iFrames (so the left menus will not work)

-perhaps I should focus that this is NOT a commercial site, it is just a family thing. Maybe I should point out that I'm only interested on comments on arakno.net/jorge_warrior.html (or the right-hand side blue cartoon)

The content for the time being is just bollocks. It is only there to make sure things are almost at their right place.
Ok, now it is my turn to go and check some websites

cheers
-

Welcome Joba, which part of Southampton are you in?? I take it you aren't from there originally!

If the site is just your personal site, a place to show off what you can do and stuff then it works. It didn't take any time to load for me but then I have adsl connection.

If you were ever going to go 'public' with it then you will have to rethink as many of the skills you are using are going to cause browser compatibility problems.

Hi 'Webmistress'
Yeah, you're right about it! I'm a UK resident born Portuguese. If you know the UK-Hampshire-Southampton area as well, I'm living just by the Common Park and the University of Southampton at Sirdar Road!

Now I was mostly interested in knowing if the code and the combinations I'm using are errr... "usable" (I use innerHTML with named anchors and sometimes innerHTML loads external html files with iFrames)
As I get the content right, I do not want to rewrite most of the code or change innerHTML for Layers or whatever
As a newbie in web development, I got the impression that it is a lot easier to get your ideas done with MS-IE proprietary tags (and I'm not a MS freak...)
I will start to look at how I can make this crossbrowser...

Thanks a lot for your comments!

Sorry Joba for the harsh first comments, you should of mentioned it was only the one page and not netscape friendly, at least its out and the others wont make the same mistake as i did.

If your new to designing, (seems your not by your site), but if you are I find it easier to build in Netscape than in IE as most times it ends up the same in IE anyway. BUt the other way round, itsa great way to learn, to fault find etc but a lot of poeple give up and blame Netscape for their laziness.

Also if your starting out, learning iframes, layers etc isnt the easiest way to go, learn basic HTML (especially tables) then move on to dHTML (css, javascript) and/or even xHTML, but knowing tables is a bonus, at least for the next few browser versions.

learning HTML is easy, even if you plain to work with editors later on, knowing HTML can only improve your skills.

good luck

I'm getting a 404.

Anyway, Busy, I like the way you think! I don't use any cutting edge, fancy stuff and I build for Netscape 4.x. If it works there, I know it'll work anywhere! On the other hand, like you say, if you only build for IE, there's a good possibility it might not work right in NS. Ergo, I go for the lowest common denominator as far as my construction.

Hey busy, no hard feelings!
Honesty above all!
I appreciated your comments and even if the site is "just" a family thing, it does not follow that it should be crap

As for being a newbie, lets say this is the 2nd site I've done (counting with the first one while at uni).
Since I'm a developer myself, I work in the field, and design isn't a strange word for me, this probably helps out with the starting curve...
But man, do I need to learn & practice!!

Interesting this point you raise about going for the lowest common denominator. Next time I'll know...
Not sure about what you mean on learning about "tables"? What is there to know, as I'm kinda lost here: I thought their use was pretty much straightforward...

Anyways, thanks

Was a little worried I'd upset ya, I dont mean to be mean lol, I just prefer and live by open and honest, dont believe in beating around the bush and all that stuff. how can you get ahead of your not told the truth no matter how bad it is.
my g/f knows not to ask me a question unless she wants an honest answer, and yes I have told her those pants makes her butt look bigger (and I got slapped) but we learnt. enough of that ..

The feedback I get from people learning HTML is that tables are the hardest or scariest part of it, but like anything the more you do the better you get ...

Learning tables is fine, learning how to maximism the use of tables is a little harder but just common sense in the end.
Say you have a banner at the top, and 3 columns of text, most people would make one big table and throw everything into it using a rowspan or colspan, where as the better way is to make the top banner section as one table and the 3 columns another table, this way as the browser reads the info from the bottom part, the top part will already be loaded and give the viewers something to see which makes it appear its loading faster than it actually is.
but if your site takes that long to load there is problems anyway.

The way I learnt HTML was to find a fancy layout and try dupicate it without looking at the source, then once I finished would compare the source codes and learn from their layout, learn the tricks of the trade as they say. using editors is cheating as you can only learn the max from hand coding this way, unless you want to be a master at using short cuts keys.

Yeah I agree that there needs to be some warning about it being a flash site. I'm on an .edu connection and it took quite some time for it to load. I'd hate to see how long it takes to load for dial-up users. The next thing is just a personal preference, but the RED/ORANGE is a little 'extreme.' Makes my eyes jump all over place without being able to concentrate on any one single item. Aside from that, pretty cool stuff...

How does the user know which is what? Left icon gets you to the popup flash stuff, right goes to the normal html page. For the use of tables, I guess making the border's of the table one solid color would be a nice change.