Review please

Works fine in IE5 and I think you have done a very good job. Yes corners are smooth, colours work well and there are enough hr's but not too many as they are serving a purpose. The actual title/logo 'College Rifles Badminton Club' could maybe made a little bit more interesting in a different font but it's not too bad as it is. The only thing I would say is to either put the links as text at the bottom or if not a back to top link.

-viewed in IE5 --> everything ok

-rounded corners --> ok

-'s --> No, I don't think you overused them.

-graphics --> I would do something else with the logo in the upper left corner... It's a bit hard to see what it is. Maybe enlarge it and just place a part of it there.

-colors --> I don't like the colors you use, but that's my personal taste. I would get rid of the blue and replace it with maroon or another red kind of color. Maybe add some black/gray...

Small world, my mum actually plays badminton against this club lol.

Looks good in Ie5 at 800x600, not sure about all the blue and red thou.

In Netscape 4.7 it doesnt line up to good, looks like there is a gap between each image, I can send you a screen shot if you need more info on how it looks.

looking at your source code i notice your using a lot of color codes thats not in the 256 safe range, and are also missing the "#" in front of them, the colors are pretty much the same thou on both browsers so not a biggie.

interesting that you use single quotes instad of double

most of your image tags dont have height, width or alt tags, these could help in fixing the netscape4.7 problem, another thing that could help is to put the table cell contents on one line, like links should be:

this is the wrong way

this is right

the top left logo/icon thing is a little fuzzy as well

Webmistress: Thanks for your help.
I've just added the text links down the bottom.

Quote:
The actual title/logo 'College Rifles Badminton Club' could maybe made a little bit more interesting in a different font

I've been trying to make it more interesting. Earlier, all I had there was the text. I experimented with several other looks but I couldn't get any better than this.
Any ideas on what I could do with it?

Jack: I can't do much more with the logo. It used to be plain black and white. I had to do some colorising to it so it lost some clarity. My client prefers it this way. He also wants to keep those colors as they are those of the club. Thanks for checking, anyway.

Busy, you beat me to the reply...

As I've said, the colors are those of the club, so I can't change 'em.

A screenshot of the gaps would be a great help.

I use single quotes because double quotes can become a problem if converting to ASP. My client may be interested in adding a custom-built news feature on the homepage using ASP, so...

I've yet to add those width and height tags because I'm still experimenting with different images with different dimensions.

Could you also explain to me the differences using the 's with breaks? I put them on different lines so I can read them without having to scroll right (in NotePad). It also makes the code neater and easier to edit.

Thanks.

can you PM me your email address, I cant send attachments thru this, it's 11:15 now, if i get it by 11:30 i'll send it tonight, otherwise I'm off to bed after this but will send it first thing tomorrow morning.

"Could you also explain to me the differences using the 's with breaks?"

ummm, ok think of links, sometimes you see a linked image or even a text link and it has a little dash down bottom right hand corner, thats caused by having the code on seperate lines, same thing aplies to td cell contents
the need doesnt apply to large content td cells or nested tables but is advised to start the nested table or begining of main td cell on same line ..

...

and

first actual text line here
...

its just one of netscapes inperfections if you wanna call it that.

can't you escape asp quotes \" ?

I've always solved any problems caused by next-line-'s by adding a in front of it: or . It seems to work on all browsers...

Using VBScript for ASP, I don't think there are any escape characters like in Perl or JS. Besides, I'd end up with too many quotes to escape.

I've PM'ed you my email address. A bit late to catch you tonight I guess.

Yep, the navs do break up pretty bad in NS 4.78. I have linked to a partial screenshot. The site didn't validate real well. The main problems were the use of single ' quotes instead of double " quotes. The other problem was not putting the # in front of the color.

A couple of other things that I would do:
-Move the text in the navs off the rail a little.
-Consider the use of black text instead of the red that is being used. Right now I think that there is too much red.

The corners looked fine in IE 5.5, Opera 5.12, NS 4.78. NS 6.2. The only major problem was the table breakup in NS 4.78. I guess that breaking up is hard to do (unless you use NS).

Your stylesheet isn't working in Opera 6 - I'm just seeing default blue links.

THe site looks quite good. I like the colour scheme. I would like to see some more red and/or blue carried through the content area - you've used it for text but it still doesn't seem integrated enough for me. Maybe create some sort of larger header that would make better use of colour.

I really like the way you have the birdie flying over the text in your logo. I wonder if you could emphasize that more???? Maybe move the "College Rifle..." text to go directly under it? No... I don't think that would work. Looks fine as it is.

The only other thing I can think of to say is to get rid of the curves in the right corner. Having them there makes it look like the page is cut off. Either that or bump them in a little bit and have red and blue stripes running down that edge of the page.

i only use msn and internet explorer 5.5 and it looks great in all sizes of screen and i think the coloring is excellent.
havent got opera but think i might have to get it if many people are using to check my pages run ok in them. as for netscape i wouldnt worry about the people who use them there arnt that many and those that do are used to web pages messing up all the time

Quote: by Monkeyman
as for netscape i wouldnt worry about the people who use them there arnt that many and those that do are used to web pages messing up all the time

excuse me? somewhere in this site there are a few posts of how netscape (the older versions) are still very popular, even used throughout schools still. as for the Netscape users used to pages messing up, I think you'd actually find Netscape users are tidier coders than other ones, Getting a site to work in IE and Netscape is very easy, and if you can do XHTML then your a Netscape coder hehe cause xhtml uses strict tags, no cheating, no shortcuts, no lazy coding, only proper coding.

Coding in/for Netscape is actually easier and faster, if it works in Netscape it usually works anywhere, if it works in IE then you're probably going to have to edit it to work on other browsers.

Do it once, do it right ...

Quote: posted by Megan
I really like the way you have the birdie flying over the text in your logo.

I had to go back and see the birdie as I never saw one before, then realised what you called a birdie

Thanks for all your replies.

I'm working on the page, editing to follow all your recommendation. But I am keeping it cross-browser. I will soon post the edited version(s) of the page for your comments.

Also, I do not have NS4.xx or Opera x.x so I will be requesting some further assistance where that is concerned.

Thanks again for your time and ideas.

Quote: Originally posted by monkeyman
havent got opera but think i might have to get it if many people are using to check my pages run ok in them.

Opera 6 is by far the best browser I have ever used. Even *with* the banner ads!

Quote: Originally posted by monkeyman
as for netscape i wouldnt worry about the people who use them there arnt that many and those that do are used to web pages messing up all the time

I'm finding that this can vary *a lot* depending on the site. If you take a look at this thread, you'll see that one of my sites had just over 50% NS 4.x users in November of *this* year. Other sites report less than 5%. You really have to check your site stats.

Quote: Originally posted by Busy I had to go back and see the birdie as I never saw one before, then realised what you called a birdie

So what do you call it then?

Quote: Originally posted by Megan
So what do you call it then?

We call it a shuttlecock

we call them shuttle cocks too
"birdie" is cute thou

The page in question

Upon scrutinising mairving's screenshot a little more, I noticed that the width of the whole nav section was wrong (too wide). I trawled through my code, and lo and behold: conflicting widths!

I've fixed that problem, but I don't know if it affects the page's NS compatibility greatly.
I've also adjusted the coding to most, if not all, of Busy's recommendations.

Could any of you kind NS4.x users please check out the page?

The nav part looks good but the table still breaks up towards the bottom.

mairving, thanks for that.

I just noticed that I still have some conflicting widths (with colspans). Not only that but this edited version which I've posted doesn't work too well on NS6. The red line heights are about 10pt as opposed to 1px. :(

Just about to fix those and will upload ASAP.

Here's the updated page. I've reset all conflicting widths and it works on IE5 and NS6.

But NS6 causes more problems with heights of cells containing images.
i.e:
http://www21.brinkster.com/arsoftware/crbc/ns6err1.htm
[image contained in page]

In Netscape 4.7 the naviagation section now lines up but under that and beside it (top header with the "birdie" ) is misaligned.
I peeked at your code and notice a lot of empty td cells, try adding   in them.
Also noticed you use the "&" in your text, you should really use &
Also noticed you used the word "spacer" as your alt tag word, things like this dont really need a word, but still use alt="" (using alt=" " will display a blank alt message on mouseover where as no gap wont)

The page

I've made several changes, including some fundamental design and table-structure editions.
I've solved the problems that I've been getting with NS6 except for the image spacing at the rounded corners (which I'd posted earlier).
Apart from that it looks fine in NS6 and IE5. Although, I think that some of the changes may have an effect on NS4.x output.

Yout ideas on the new design and browser compatibility?

Also, do you think that it would help if the home page had some kind of general intro about the club/site? Will using keywords in that intro assist in a higher search engine result?

Thanks.

The logo/crest thingy now has a very faint white-ish border/box to it.

I think some text about the club is a very good idea and getting the main keywords into the first line of text on the page will help with the search engines. You'll also need a good meta description (this is what most of the SE's will display on their results) & keywords.

The layout is nearly lining up on Netscape4.7, its just something minor, I had a quick peek at your code and there are some images still with no width or height tags and your empty alt tags have a space (these are around the affected area)
I'll have a play with it and see if we can fix this for you, you wont have to design it, unless you want to.

Here is your little thingy without the faint white border around it.

OK, found the problem,
make the blank image in the crest cell (first td cell) 134 wide (instead of 1 or whatever it was) and add width="100%" in the middle td cell of the second row.

and bingo was his name o ....

Thanks for your replies. I've done some more updating as per your advice here.

I can't see any white borders around the logo. Does that happen only in NS?

I am seeing the faint white border in IE6. Here is an enlarged corner of the one that you have on the site now.

Lines up great on NS now

You gals have great eyesite, I never saw that line before, but looking really hard can see it, in IE its more a line, in NS 4.7 is more a different shade blue background.

one way around this could be giving the embelm a transparent background. also the curve to the bottom right of it.

Damn! How the @#%! did you see that??

I've brushed it all out, I hope. See here.

Design is pretty much done. I may change the homepage image, but that depends on the client.

I still get some problems with NS6 output. There are gaps between the curve-images and the bottom of their cells.
Any ideas? I've been trying to fix it for a while now.

Thanks all of you, especially Busy, for all your help.

Looks much better but there is a tiny wee bit left under the bottom left round bit. I was looking for it so others probably wont even notice it!

Oops my mistake, sorry I should of checked it on NS6

Its to hot to sit in front of the PC tonight (middle of summer in NZ for those who think its to cold) so I'll have a look tomorrow if no one else has had a go

*morning time*, had a quick play this morning and its a weird one, fix it in NS6, has a line in NS4.7, fix NS4.7 and it has a line in NS6, I found a way around it thou (as weird as it may be), add align="right" vspace="0" hspace="0" into the img tags that arent aligning properly.
this time I checked it on NS 4.7, NS 6 and IE 5