REVIEW REQUEST: Aardvarkdirect.com (version 2.0)

Loaded very quickly for me on adsl connection. Looks better but I still hate italic writing on screen. For a professional look it needs to be easy to read and veranda is the best imo. What's with all the space on the first page between the news and counter (if you have to have one!!)? The top navigation is better but not sure about the rollover, may grow on me The only thing I will add is that I think all the pages, except maybe the forum, need to look the same and definitely have the same font. On the products page that font is too big imo.

Thanks, I totally forgot to ditch the italics. I will do that first thing tommorow (its late here). As for the font, I have been hestitant to specify one because of all the reading I have done about how the font tag is horrible. I try forcing to Veranda, but I am afraid of what will happen if the user doesn't have that or something (not quite sure if thats even possible).

Same deal with before. I'm dead if I get rid of the counter. I think once we hit 20k he (my boss) will be able to part with it. Maybe I will write him some sort of hidden counter, i dunno. The white space is to keep it off the screen, cuz its ugly.

Thanks! Oh, what do you think about the zoomers? I don't know what else to call it (zoomers is a stupid joke i made with a friend). Im referring to the little graphics that frame the text pages, and the light blue background there. I just put that in tonight, and I like it (think it adds color), but I want to make sure others agree

got a javascript error in opera
Error:
name: TypeError
message: Value on left hand side of '.' is not convertible to Object: document.all

preload didnt work in ns4.7, had to click link to proceed

i have a slow connection at the moment so cant really comment on load time, but it shouldnt be bad since there isnt much to load

once inside the mouseovers in opera show big white (blank) image on mouseover on some pats, other parts are orange, maybe your preload didnt work? whats the grey line for?

ns4.7 the content is aligned left (no instructions either)

the mouse over links (a:hover) are really hard to make out, black to dark blue?

ok opera has finished loading now, all mouseovers work, preload doesnt work in opera or ns4.7

if you can get the preload script to work on all browsers you shouldnt need the splash page, people who return often would soon be sick of it (the logo is well done thou)

verdana is a default windows tag (i think mac as well)

I like the zoomers but they need to be on every page to make the site consistant. As for the counter, get rid asap!! Do you have access to the log files from the hosting company? I would suggest that you maybe download the trial version of TopStyle to get your head around CSS http://www.bradsoft.com/topstyle/download/index.asp. As it is now your site is viewed with whatever the default font is on someones computer and generally that'll be ugly! Use something like 'font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; color: #000000' in your stylesheet for the text and that way it'll display veranda, or if they don't have that arial or if that fails to be on their pc (unlikely) it will use whatever the default sans serif font is. This way you can also determin the font size as well.

caught that with the rollovers as well. Keep in mind I am on a 56K modem.
I noted you have the rollovers done in line. Whilst that is cool, I think you miss out on the preload flag with the image ready rollover creator. This ensures that all images are loaded before the rollover is triggered. All you really have is a rollover function. Here is what I usually have image ready spit out for me as an example:

Cute navbar, I like it! The only complaint I'm going to have here is the user of yellow on mouseover - that would be fine if it was carried throughout the rest of the site, but as it is now it seems kind of out of place. Maybe those dark grey bars could be yellow instead? Or maybe do those in blue and the navigation headings in yellow.

As I navigate the site I'm finding some rather drastic changes from page to page. I prefer the layout of the products page to the one you've used on the others. Also fix up your forum. Lose that tan colour, mix in some yellow, put your navbar at the top there so that it blends better with the rest of the site.

I would also suggest that you get some higher quality photos taken of the products.

Change your fonts on the splash page and main page. I believe they are TNR. And the rest of the site is done with
Veranda.

Oh my! Did you know that you have 7 html, head, title, body tags on the index page?

I really think that you could do away with either the splash or main page. Maybe put them together somehow. In my opinion that is just too much to sift through to get to the content.

For the counter....you can get a counter at sitemeter.com and make the text for the counter the same color as your background as it will be invisible. That may not be the route you want to take but I just thought I would mention it.

Thanks for the great comments everyone, so far here is my new todo list:

Use CSS to change all the fonts to veranda.

Get higher quality photos (already happening).

Ditch the counter.

Go for more consistent layout page to page.

detox: I originally used image ready's preload, but then I decided to integrate one into the preloading screen (the bar). I know that the preloading is functioning correctly in IE (whatever the newest one is). Is it not working for you? I have had trouble getting it to go in netscape (even the image ready one).

Busy: I was downloaded the newest opera last night, and aside from some small table layout issues everything seemed to work for me (including the preload), could you please tell me if you had an older version or not? I also know that netscape 4.7 hates my webpage. Not sure what to do about that, I sort of assumed most people would have moved on to the latest version, is this not the case?

Disaster-master: i wouldn't be very suprised as I am using php includes to get everything done, but I tried to be careful of including more than one html head/body tag per page. I went back and looked at my index and I found one extra one, seems to be coming from the news program I am using. I will try to get rid of that, but I can't find any others. Please let me know where they are so i can erradicate

Thanks for all the help everyone. Ill be back later with version 2.1

Quote: Originally posted by zbose
I sort of assumed most people would have moved on to the latest version, is this not the case?

No way! You should always get it working for version 4 as an awful lot of people still use that!

I'm sorry. It was the News page. http://aardvarkdirect.com/index.php?page=news&lbflag=1
There were 7 of them there. I only see one extra now.

Aardvark Custom Paintball Products

A {
TEXT-DECORATION: none;
color: rgb(213,117,0)
}

A.menu {
TEXT-DECORATION: underline;
Color: rgb(0,0,62)
}

td.contact {
text-align: right
}

<script LANGUAGE="JavaScript">

</script>

News

News :::aardvarkdirect.com v1.0:::

<script language="JavaScript1.2">
function openWinClick( location, width, height ){
popup = window.open( location, 'fotopopup', 'menubar=no,resizable=no,scrollbars=yes,status=0,top=10,left=10,screenX=10,screenY=10,width='+width+',height='+height );
if ( popup == null )
window.location = location;
else popup.focus();
}
</script>

Quote: Busy: I was downloaded the newest opera last night, and aside from some small table layout issues everything seemed to work for me (including the preload), could you please tell me if you had an older version or not? I also know that netscape 4.7 hates my webpage. Not sure what to do about that, I sort of assumed most people would have moved on to the latest version, is this not the case?

The newest version of Opera is version 6, same as I have, but for some strange reason its default preference is set at ie, go to file/quick prefences and click identify as opera, this will display at operas settings, not IE's

As for the NS4.7, there are a few threads around this forum about how many people still use it, schools, cyber cafes, etc.

The NS4.7 issue isnt a big one, for example if you have an extra html tags like DM pointed out, this will mess NS up, it displys the second one, not the first.
If you are including php files, only add the content into the file, dont use any html, head, title or body tags in it

IMHO NS4.7 is better than NS6, Opera and way better than IE as it sticks to the guide lines, (follows the rules of W3C), NS6 and Opera are semi relaxed on bad coding but IE you can get away with murder, if people made their sites with anything other than IE there wouldnt have any help sites cause it would be done proper first time, I personaly blame frontpage and dreamweaver