Review Request: HaitiSurf

If I remember correctly this is much better than what you had before. Things don't seem to be lining up quite right in my browser (Opera 7), so you might want to look into that. It's just around the top area, between the header and the navigation. Same problem in Mozilla. The graphics are looking a little fuzzy/jaggedy to me too. It's almost as if they've been resized with HTML or something. Man, that code is a mess!

Once again, what is with the itsy-bitsy font sizes ?!?! No offense to you personally - this has become a very common problem lately and I really am getting sick of seeing it. I think I'm going to start a campaign - Internet Citizens Against Itsy-bitsy Font Sizes.

Overall this would be fine if I didn't have to strain to read the text. Oh, and change that background colour - the grey just makes everything look dingy. Or at least do something different around the logo. Oh, and another thing - you might want to look into something called the Rule of 7 and how it affects navigation. Too many options on your navbar is bad for usability.

Megan,

Thank you so much for these important suggestions.

I will try to clean up the code and to increase these fonts as you suggested to me.

But I am not sure what background color I could use. I will try some kind of blue or can you
suggest one to me?

I wish I could get some help, but. I will try to fix these things tonight. I really enjoy
your comments and analysis.

Someone was supposed to help me clean the site, but I have not head from him lately.

I mostly need to fix the first page. Once I get the first fix the rest will not be any problem.

Can anyone else comment also.

I'm sitting here right now waiting for the site to load.. The html is very messy from what has loaded, I was actually going to fix it up for you until I saw it! Ok it has finally loaded now..

You should only use keywords which relate to your site. Although it may seem like a good idea to add in as many as you can it is not a very good idea. Try to be as specific as possible as to what you are offering.

The header and content tables aren't aligning up and the graphics look all jaggery. I looked at your code and the html dimentions for your image tag were: and then I loaded up the image and it was 700x99. You should make them the same to prevent any bad image quality.

I dont really like the blue links, maybe make them darker or something. The yellow mouseover doesn't suit the blue layout either.

It is much better than I remember but you really must do something about the graphics as they are letting things down. Apart from being fuzzy & jagedy, they aren't lining up properly, the bottom looks as if it's missing and the right hand side looks like it should have a blue section running down it from the top part. I would make the background to the top part white to match in with the rest of the layout.

I would also move that advertising banner from the top as it overpowers the layout and looks like it has just been plonked there.

Getting there

Thanks again I have made most of the changes this morning. I will try to put the advertising banner on the right, below the navigation links. I have removed the keywords etc.

Thanks!

One of the problems that I see right off is that your images need to be manually resized instead of using your image width and height tags to resize them. In particular, on the home page is that image of the castle. You have to resized it to WIDTH="86" HEIGHT="54" when the image is actually WIDTH="1013" HEIGHT="754". This means that it is taking that little image as long to load as it would at its original size. (which is a long long time on my dial up)

Some of the other images are bigger in size than what they appear on your site too but not as bad as the castle one.

You have some coding errors that you can see if you run a HTML Check & Repair at NetMechanic.

I am seeing about a 20 pixel gap between the haitisurf.com image and your nav buttons at the top. (IE 6.0)

Also, the blue back ground for the two columns (left and right) are two different colors of blue. Doesn't look 'that' bad but it is noticable.

I do like this layout better than the other one that you were using a while back if I am remembering correctly.

Hi Haitisurf, Well I am using win 95 and ie5.5 Your header is not correct as already mentioned above. I think it is too big for the table it is set in and that could be why it is showing that gap. I was wondering why the header and nav style change when clicking on your links page. I think you should follow the index page style throughout the site. Load time Load Time by Modem Speed
Modem Speed Download Time
14.4k 126.74 seconds
28.8k 64.37 seconds
56k 33.73 seconds
ISDN (128k) 16.03 seconds
T1 (1.44 MB) 3.25 seconds
Your page is way too big 50k is what most try for max or less than 50k for quicker download time.

81659 IMG http://www.haitisurf.com/immodedia-banner-1.gif
58720 HTML http://www.haitisurf.com/
57163 IMG http://www.haitisurf.com/ppx1.jpg

You have 50k just in text but 1 image is 81k too large.
You really need to address the large sizes with a graphic art program like photoshop. good luck dave

Thank you so much. I was dumb about it, thought by resizing the picture It would make it load much faster, but the case seems to be different> I will work on the graphics tonight. I have a question do you think it is better to use css? Would that make it load faster?

Thanks it advance.

IMO, using CSS will always help but I think in your case, the images are the main problem along with the errors in your tables. Get those fixed and I think you will see a huge difference in load time. Then work on adding CSS and some rollover colors for your links.

I have pretty much ditched using font tags any more. I have font tags in some of the older sites that I have built only because of lack of time to change them or laziness. CSS is the way of the future (and present). This is something that you should work toward learning but also don't forget your regular HTML stuff like properly coded tables. I know it can get confusing. Was for me when I started. But you can do it!!

The site to me seems too plan, no color, the content is good, good topics. I just think that it lacks the wow nice site feel, like it was rushed.
So I'm sorry to say that I think it needs a make over, color the big thing.
Dave

It is slightly untidy. The top still does not line up and is on a dirty white background. This could easyily be made to be white. and look a lot cleaner and tidier.

Good content. Won't take too much work to turn it into a fine site.

Much of what I want to say has already been said.

All except for two things:

1, The text is quite small for content text, what about 10pt(or the old fashioned way)?

2, Absolute width isn't really that good, why not use relative width?

I think you need to study up on image compression. Oddly the header may have looked better as .jpeg. As it is now to my sensibilities it looks like an over compressed .jpeg. It also looks as if you've left out transparentcy on the palette. On further examination I'd guess you've limited the gifs to too small of a palette. This has caused critical colors to dissappear and create the jagged look.

TN_tvice5.jpg looks like you used too much unsharp mask.

You need to bone up on compression.
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The code is not very well laid out and is hard to analyze.

I would suggest you take a look at how other people organize their code to make it more readable.
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I'd also suggest their is too much content on the front page. You might try breaking it up into more managable chunks. You might try visiting useit.com. They are overly concerned with usability but the general message they preach is valid.

I'd say the design needs to be simplified a bit.

Oh, I also noticed that your naming scheme for the images is not advisable.

Although modern servers can handle generally handle spaces and UPPER CASE letters you should avoid them as well as unusual symbols.

For instance:

TN_tvice5.jpg -should be- tn_tvice5.jpg

and especially:

index.3.gif -should be- index_3.gif

The extra dot in the index.3.gif may be confusing certain browsers and causing the slow load times as the browser tries to figure out what kind of media the .3.gif suffix indicates.

Please critque the new site

http://www.haitisurf.com

Help me out what do you think abou this one?

I have merged your new thread with your old one as it'll help people to remember your site and show what an improvement you have made!

This is much better now. You have a small horizontal scrollbar at 800*600 because of the size of the top header part. 770 is really the most you can go to even with 0 margins in place, yours is 778.

Your load times are definately problematic, particularly for the home page. Because you have links to so many external sites and resources, you have a high incident of broken links. Close to 300. You need to be more attentive in that regard.

You've used the same description for many of your pages:

A comprehensive website providing links to Haitian Chat,Forum,Classifieds,calendar, news, sports, free email, celebrating the Haitian American Familys strength

I think you'll get better search engine results if you get rid of "a comprehensive website providing" and structure the rest so it's a sentence, rather than a list of terms. Spend some time in the Search Engine Challenges forum.

Luck.

A few things.

1) Your menu on the left, should line up with the end of your top logo... it's a little off.

2) Your titles ("Welcome to Haitisurf!" and "Site Features") should be a different color, I can barely see them against the table background you chose.

3) The stuff at the bottom is kind of jumbled together... maybe try to make it more orderly or symmetrical or something.

4) There is a big rectangular bar at the bottom of the screen... it could probably go.

I did like your color scheme though, and you had an impressive amount of content. Your forums are rockin! Your logo is pretty nice too.

Well that's all, adios.

Thank you so much for taking you time to reply. I will take those great suggestions into consideration.

If you have more suggestions please let me know. Also could you give me a better description for my site? Question 2) should I place a different description in each page?

Each page should have a different title & meta description, both discribing the content of that particular page.

I like your site! My feed back is..

1. Like the graphic up top.
2. Don't like how the top and bottom section don't line up, it's distracting.
3. I don't care for the bar that continues on to the far right of the screen. Another distracting point.
4. You might want to put a little more padding in your tables on the left. The text really looks crammed in there.

Overall it looks great!

I seem to have tons of white space on the right side of the screen. why smash it against the left side and leave right field open? you just know a long fly is heading out there, triple steal home and you lost the ball game! so maybe try and center it differently? -Josh