Redesign Critique Required

There is a very odd ColdFusion error showing when the site eventually loads, I think I know why its there but no matter as the page loads fully b4 it appears...

Hmmm.... I feel like I've seen a million other sites like this. Your basic boxy tabled look... it's getting pretty boring.

I can say that I do really like your colour scheme (except for the blue links!) and the logo is really nice (except for the fact that it's way over-optimized - probably just so it won't take forever on this crappy free host?)

"Give your site the cutting edge"

Sigh.... another cheesy and meaningless cath phrase....

Wait - you posted this already right? I like the way you've moved the directory onto the front page - much easier to work with. Colour scheme and logo are much better, as I said.

Oh God! I've become cheesy!!!

First thing that sprung to mind but the more I think about it, it is a pretty crap strapline...Any suggestions?

The Logo is Keegans doing so I cannot take any credit for that and the color scheme follows from there so....

I wasn't sure about the blue links but I thought I would see what everyone else thought...

Boxy? Hmmmm....Can't see how I'm gonna get round this one as the site is pretty heavy in content...Gonna have to give that one some thought.....

I agree with the boxiness - there doesn't seem to be any white space. Giving everything more room to breathe will really help. I would also try changing the gray to white.

That's all for now!

Brooke :snow:

Now how friggin cool is that!

That looks much better!

I agree with the posts here, the unorignal tabling has its detractors for a reason, they are overused and, umm default LOL.

I think you have a lot of includes which might be stopping you from spending any great amount of time on changing them.

Gaining a more customized look may be difficult for that reason, and so when you get a static code going (Know your includes are working correctly, and know that you might not be changing them much) you could possibly add some "flare" to the tables themselves.

Try this in a test page.

Play around with the dotted border color.

K

I like the top that's about all I can say as nothing else is loading for me at the moment. I have refreshed about 5 times and it just hangs for ages & says done without loading any more!

I'll try again later!

Hey flipper, the site has really come a long way, but that host is going to make you famous LOL

We will never forget it HAHAHAHHA

6 minutes and counting.

I thought for a second that your host was limiting your processes, but its ping is coming back at 3083.

About 50 ms worse than the other day.

K

LOL

HAHAHA!!
Hey phil, want to borrow this?
http://www.ettfire.com/file.htm

Just a little of my wierd humor this morning.
DM

I love the little turtles smiling face.

Come on Flipper we are just joshin, if I had a place for a spare domain, WITH cold fusion hosing I would help.

K

Yes Phil,
We are just joshin. Don't get your wittle fweeins hurt...O-Tay? Helps to add a little humor to our problems or else you would just smash in your computer and say to crap with all of it.

Good luck sweetie getting you host problems worked out. We will continue to pick on you till then. BTW...I am getting a time out on the site now.
DM

Hmm.....What can I say?

I'm just deeply touched that I've brought so much joy into all of your lives!

Don't worry I take nothing personally! The number of times I've wanted to smash my HOSTS computer up however, is incalculable...

Thanx for all the replies...I'm going to tweak my boxes later tonight! and after that I might have a look at the site layout!!

The host is outa here I'm signing a paid account 2 night with ExpertHost.com so once I've got that front page nailed down I'll move the site...

Keegan - "Quote"
Gaining a more customized look may be difficult for that reason, and so when you get a static code going (Know your includes are working correctly, and know that you might not be changing them much) you could possibly add some "flare" to the tables themselves.

The problem I have is that the included files holding the resources menu and random resource, on the left & right sides respectively; are generated dynamically using ColdFusion, ie. whenever a new resource is added or a new category/subactegory, these menus will dynamically change reflecting these additons instantly.

The reason for me doing it this way is that the site is still in its infancy, I anticipate having around 2000 resources spread over some thirty categories/subcategories!
So at this stage I'm not sure what the best way to proceed is as I am unsure of how many tables I'll actually need (impossible to predict as the no. of resources is again an unknown)

I'd rather not be in a situation where a user clicks a category only to find no or few resources....

A long winded post I know but you guys have helped me out so much so far I really could do with your opinions...

One last thing....I sell mobile phones 3 million times better than I design websites...everyone has a forte!

Thnx again....

Yes then it is true, the layout is boring right now because of it's development, you confirmed that just now.

When you get to the point where you want to add flare how possible is it to add BGcell images to the table columns? Just curious about the cf scripting your are using and it's capabilities.

K

I suppose it depends on the image. The code I use to generate the menu is:

I had to use php color coding to get the above to display....In a nutshell the query loops through the names of the categories & sub-categories and orders them so that the relevant sub-categories appear under the relevant main category. The bgcolor tag is set be the application.cfm file so that it can be easily globally changes throughout the site.

If you copy the code into a test page you'll get a better idea but it just won't look the same! (If this makes any sense at all

Well, I think I've solved the problems! Click here to see the final design (I hope) of the front page...

If this gets a decent critique I'll take the template site wide...Be kind...this has been driving me nuts!

Its also on the new host so it should load in under a week!

Is ther anyway you can edit the server side source?

Look at this.

I don't quite know what we are looking at doing a critique on now. If it is looks then there is still a lot of work to be done as it's just coloured boxes that do nothing for me, if it is the workings then pass - I don't know php, if it is logos/graphics I can't comment as they don't load and the load time is still very slow & I'm on an adsl connection!

Keegan,

Could you post the bgimage you have referred to in your post pls and I'll have a play about...

Webmistress -

I'm really looking at the layout of the page. I've tried various ways of laying out the left & right nav tables...with & without boxed but nothing seems to work out...any ideas? I cant understand why the site is taking so long to load. Click here and not the link in the sig. as this is on the new host and is working a darn site better than the old one...

Placing a bg image into a table cell is really a tweak thing. You tweak it etc.

Check below for an example

kilclinefuneralhome.com/kilcline_test.shtml

notice to the right of the page the area with

-------
----
--
-

that is text within tables.

Now going from the color scheme that I gave you and you subsequently kept I would say try this image.

http://www.kilclinefuneralhome.com/wf_posts/edgetabletile.jpg

I will try to nail the size that will work based on a screen shot of your current page (The beta url, which btw isnt loading images, the source reports a path from http://storm which is not working.

K

Thnx again Keegan...I'm gonna toy round with this over the weekend...Hopefully I should have nailed it by Sunday!!

Well I've used that tile image for the left& right nav...now the only problem is the hyperlinks...personally I think the red links are a little hard to read on the left but how does it look to you? Link is in the sig...

That looks coo! (First impression)

Thats what I meant about tweaking the image. I am not totally sure how to get the colors right or how I can advise really since I do not have access to exact testing (Know what I mean?) but I think if you play with the colors, play witht the tables you will get it to come out clearer. I agree that the red isnt working but then maybe some tweaking on the image itself and the color of text you might find it.

Maybe have the gradient to fade from white (Which would meld into the middle white area well) and then fade into a similiar lighter green.

I think it looks cool LOL

K

Actually with the bg images for the boxes it does look a lot better now, but the red just has to go! It's ok on the middle white part but on the green it is almost blinding! How about white on the green?

The only other things is the links at the bottom look like they need to be centered and the logo looks awful as being a jpeg the text is fuzzing, have it saved as a gif from the original and it will look much better.

Sort out the link colours on the green and I think you've nailed it

On my modem using Netscape 6.1 --- Nothing, I couldn't see the page despite hitting the refresh button a couple of times.

Andrew

Quote: Originally posted by The Webmistress
Actually with the bg images for the boxes it does look a lot better now, but the red just has to go! It's ok on the middle white part but on the green it is almost blinding! How about white on the green?

The only other things is the links at the bottom look like they need to be centered and the logo looks awful as being a jpeg the text is fuzzing, have it saved as a gif from the original and it will look much better.

Sort out the link colours on the green and I think you've nailed it

Thank god for that!!

Looking good on IE 5.0, bad on Netscape, in netscape 6 the links (red on IE) are normal blue colored and the right column is repeating so you have two columns of background with wide link area. in Netscape 4.7 you have another total look, the seacrh panel is below the logo but the right column isnt repeating, i'd say it loks better on 4.7 than 6

I see in your source code yoru using layers, DON'T, make them tables and all should be great, also see the "css" forumn to fix the colored links etc.

the horzontal lines on the sides are grey in IE 5, black in Net 6 and none in Net 4.7

the links on the left look a little to spread out but otherwise is looking great.

on IE, the red is a little, ummm not sure, it doesnt quite seem to suit, tryed a purple or something - dont use the visted link purple if you try one.

keep up the good work

Pretty sharp lookin job ya did there flipper. I like ALOT!!! Looks great. You polished that turd right up didn't you.

DM

Quote: Originally posted by disaster-master
Looks great. You polished that turd right up didn't you.

DM

You should see the state of the duster I had to use...very hacky!! Big thanx must goto Keegan, however, as he cane up with the logo and ultimately the color scheme....

If this forum ever has a member of the month competition, he'd get my vote!!

OK,

I think I've nailed the gradient problem for users of more than 800x600 resolutions but can you guys check it out on various resolutions as I have a crap graphics card only capable of displaying upto 800 x 600

I,ve set up a Beta page here so I can test it b4 spending two days propagating it through the site!

The original version is in the link in the sig...

Thanks in advance...

Its working in 800x600

Images arent loading though, but you might know that.

K

Oops my fault! forgot to change the base href...

How does it look in larger resolutions?

I do like the look of this page now & it looks ok at larger resolutions but obviously to the right there is a load of white space so it looks lopsided. Don't know if it would look better centered???

Here the link to save going back to find it

Flipper I think it looks great. I am going to make you a beta css file, as well as send you some table code snipets. It will jazz up your tables at the bottom, the nav and the middle table that says: Latest Site News

Give me time to do this, will post it here, or e-mail ya.

K

Cool thanx K!!

Webmistres - I know it must look a little lopsided so what I intend to do is write in a screen resolution detection script and adjust the table width accordingly. Finally I'll center the pages but I'm glad its looking better!

Well not bad the concept is there but it perhaps needs tweaked a bit perhaps!

I like the logo, and the colours are subtle, but as mentioned before I'm not sure the blue hyperlinks work well with the colour scheme.

Personally I dislike banners at the top of pages and it does tend to slow the page on loading. Perhaps include some images to make it more eye catching. There does seem to be a lot of links, which can be a bit over whelming.

Also you should fix that error that keeps occurring.

Have fun building better worlds...

Quote: Originally posted by dfraser

Also you should fix that error that keeps occurring.

What error?