Review Request: Butterfly Hope

that menu really dominates the rest of the page, it might look nicer if you could get rid of some of the white space on the left.
(does the site really have to be so.. purple?)

Interesting use of white space on left and right,
it does balance in 1024x768, but i do think less on the left would be better.
I love the purple and the different link colors you use at the bottom text links and the sections using said link color for headings and borders along with the rollovers on the side bar.
I like it, it conveys the info in an uncluttered playful way.

dragonsjaw

Thanks folks. I suppose there is too much white space on the left, probably about 50px more than there should be. One thing that I was getting hung up on was trying to keep the English/Spanish transition smooth and not look too "jumpy". You'll notice that the Spanish navigation is much longer in length.

I've received the ok to change "Informacion Aditional" over to "Mas Informacion" (apparently close enough, I'm told ) which will allow me to tighten everything up a bit.

jammin: glad to know I'm not the only one not too keen on purple.

dragonsjaw: "playful" - thanks! exactly what I was shooting for, good to hear you use that word

Front page looks way too text heavy. it would probably help a lot if the explanation text was done in plain black text (rather than purple graphic text). With all that done as a graphic, the explanation text is competing too much with the logo and navigation, which makes the whole thing rather overwhelming.

Otherwise it looks good. I don't really like how the page headers are done in the top right area there. It just doesn't seem right (mixing page-specific information with global header information). I wouldn't mind seeing something in the background just to make things more interesting. At first I was thinking coloured page background (which would just border the site at higher resolutions), but that would take away from the light feeling it's got now. Maybe you could try doing a light grey butterfly really big in the background.

Anyway, nice to see a fresh and inviting site

I like this a lot taff. Very good.

I agree with Meg on the front page. The purple text is a wee bit much. Still not bad though.

Keep the white space to the left of the menu. I think white space on a site gives it a crisp, clean look. I like the use of colors as well except for the color used on the "Our Supporters" page. I sorta clashes with the purple. Other than that....I give you an A+.

The problem with that space on the left is that when the browser window expands for different resolutions it starts to look really lopsided. I think it would be better to just center it (or use a more extreme proportion of white space so it looks deliberately skewed)

Oh, I noticed some kids in wheel chairs on the site. Have you made the site accessible to people with disablilties.

Does the text on the front page have to be an image?

I kind of like the extra white spacing on the pages, only looked at 800x600 but kind of suits it.

Looks good

I have to mostly agree with what's already been said and especially about the front page graphical text - not very accessible to those who copy the text to read in another application. I don't agree about the whitespace though, I think it looks nice the way it is!

Very good job and it does the job well of portraying the subject matter

Thanks again.

I'm in agreement with everyone on the main page. I've come up with a handful of versions and that was simply the "least bad" of the lot. I think I'll try one more time.

Quote: Originally posted by disaster-master
Oh, I noticed some kids in wheel chairs on the site. Have you made the site accessible to people with disablilties.

Probably not sufficiently. I've a long way to go on being up to speed on this issue.

I've yet to make my "alt tag sweep" but I always ensure that text graphics have alt text and that graphic navigation systems in general have a text-based alternative. I'm a little less thorough with "decorative images". What is there for me to say in this site's alt tags, for example, other than "children gardening", "children painting", etc.

Another weakness of mine is to lean on tables a little too much for my layouts.

I wonder, do any of the newer validators check for accessibility conformance?

Not sure of a validator that checks for accessibility but here are 3 sites that I have been using to learn about this. You are probably already aware of them. The first one allows you to check Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and U.S. Section 508 Guidelines. The second one is other resources and the third is another information site.

http://bobby.watchfire.com/bobby/html/en/index.jsp
http://www.w3.org/WAI/
http://diveintoaccessibility.org/

One more:
http://www.webdevelopersjournal.com/articles/accessibility.html

Don't forget the alt tags arent being displayed after the images load, so if you want to continue displaying a message or instructions to use the title in things such as images, links, words (on words use "acronym title=" don't use abbr, doesnt work in IE5)

Sorry to say but in my opinion the site is WAY too purple. I like the way you have encorporated your photos around the page though, that is nice!

I see all the links are at the bottom and although there are a few at the top, maybe move the ones at the bottom to either side and maybe put a dropdown menu on???

Good luck with your site though as it is for a good cause!

A quick point to making the text-images into straight text. You may want to make the images into text because a lot of seach engines, esp Google spider the pages looking for text in order to pick up keywords for searches. They won't pick up the images so they might be missing key points for keywords due the the images. Hope this makes sense.

I like it. And yes the purple is a litle too much, bt its still not too invasive, its not like a giant block of solid color so I can deal with it. Actually now that I think of it, can you make that purple maybe a slightly darker tone. And yes, do you really want all that texts in image format? Seems kind of crazy on the main page at least, I'd thin you'd want to catch some spider traffic on it, and I'm not sure how heavily the alt tags are weighted.

I like it though.

Quote: Originally posted by Timewell
I see all the links are at the bottom and although there are a few at the top, maybe move the ones at the bottom to either side and maybe put a dropdown menu on???

Sorry Timewell, ya lost me here. What's at the bottom that isn't also up top? And a dropdown menu for a 7 page site?

Regarding the main page, I was prepared to attack that again today and then received an email from the client saying that she "loved" it. I think I'll still try something different - she may "love" that too

alt-tag text is indexed as far as I know. What the weighting difference might be is a good question. Anyone know?

I thought they were different links...am I wrong???

If I am then I apologise!

Quote: Originally posted by Timewell
I thought they were different links...am I wrong???

If I am then I apologise!

If you're talking about the main page, they differ in language only. Within the site, I just have the standard text nav duplication at page bottoms.

You guys are making me look at this too much, the purple is getting to me! :freak:

Ok we wont point out the typo

As far as I know not many of the SEs actually use the alt tags as they were so heavily spammed, however I think they do look at what's there but you really cannot swap text for an alt tag it wont help you rank, always got for text for indexing!

Site looks really fun. I love the menu rollovers with the different "crayola colors". I'll forgo comments on the front page, I think many good points have already been made.

I know you mentioned your ALT tag sweep is coming, but one negative that does stand out is the page titles. They all stand out as nav1.

Otherwise, great work!

Quote: Originally posted by proc113
Site looks really fun. I love the menu rollovers with the different "crayola colors". I'll forgo comments on the front page, I think many good points have already been made.

I know you mentioned your ALT tag sweep is coming, but one negative that does stand out is the page titles. They all stand out as nav1.

Otherwise, great work!

Thanks Proc.

Page Titles are another thing I leave til the end, along with metatags. While I don't go out of my way to discourage the SE's from indexing construction projects, I try not to encourage it either

Just as long as you don't forget to do them!!

Quote: Originally posted by The Webmistress
Just as long as you don't forget to do them!!

Never! err, umm... I hope

How's this for an alternative main page?

http://www.sitesunseen.com/clients/bfhope/splash7.html

Ooh yes I like that one

Definitely better

Is the variation in levels along the navbar intentional? "Programs" looks to be a little higher than the other words, for example. Okay, i see what you're doing here. If it isn't intentional to vary the height you should keep the letters on an imaginary line, so that normal lower case letters touch the bottom of this line, but letters with descenders go below it. Remember the lined paper you used to use when learning to print in grade school? like that - one baseline, a line below it for descenders, a line above it for ascenders. It's a little bit different with that font since it doesn't have an absolutely consistent baseline, but it is obvious that "Programs", "Our Supporters", and "Photo Gallery" (the labels with descenders) are higher than the others. They're only about a pixel or two off.

Quote: Originally posted by Megan
Definitely better

Is the variation in levels along the navbar intentional?

Semi-intentional. I figured, given the quirky nature of the font, that I could get away without tweaking the heights of the images. You're right though, a couple of them are riding a little high.

looking good,
am wondering if a little flag next to each blob of text would help of the country they relate