REVIEW REQUEST: hampshireshopping.co.uk

That looks great! Funky.

The only two complaints I have is that I can't read the top nav text (white on yellow/orange) and I can't (but not as bad) read the text in the left hand nav bar. Have you tried black?

Other than that, good job!

Wow! Almost perfect I guess!

Some minor things:
-White links on orange bg in the top are a little hard to read.
-Logo doesn't completely match the rest of the site.

Overall impression: great job!

No fuss with the layout.

You should really use more of the blue as a directly visible color, not just for mouseovers. Maybe make the right side headings not orange but blue (?)

Good rule of thumb: break up large navigation lists into smaller groups of seven or less. They get confusing otherwise.
Also, see how the nav looks if the font is 2pt smaller.

Alter the formatting of "Welcome to Hampshire Shopping Directory" and headings ("This months Featured Site is :").
For the first one, a Serif style font would suit it better -- it adds a more emotional/human tone.
For the second one, try keeping it 2pt's larger and maybe in a narrower font like Arial or Helvetica.
Experiment with different styles. Sometimes more contrast is better.

I don't see how the logo relates to the site theme. The cityscape is too generic. If the site is specific to Hampshire then incorporate a symbol associated to the place.

Good work and good luck!

Be gentle? Why, are the critiques here at TWF normally harsh??

I can't fault the general layout of the site, nor the colors (colours if yer Canadian, eh?) but I have 2 small comments:

I guess your text will be proofread later? "This months Featured Site is :"
is missing the apostrophe. (possesive case)

Hyperlinking of Radar Detectors:
This phrase has been hyperlinked with a dark beige bar underneath, when you mouseover it, the background changes to yellow and the cursor changes to the hand setting, indicating a hyperlink. (But when you click on it: nothing!) What causes this? (I looked in the source code and couldn't see anything) I've seen these types of links before, but never investigated. Is this only happening to me? Is it something my kids installed on my PC?

regards,
roland

Thanks, some of the colours (colors if you are not british or canadian) have been changed now. The logo is what the client wanted so that is unlikely to change but I'm working on them!

holzi, there is no hyperlink on the Radar Detectors, sounds to me like you have the Microsoft Smart Tags active on your system but I'm not sure. Nothing to do with the actual website though.

perfect to me now

I have now changed the logo to a more simple one which I think fits in better and isn't so overpowering.

Not so bad, Julia, just a few little tidbits.

Netscape Alert!!! - beware of huge text boxes that change the look of the site.

Navbar - I personally prefer a navbar that is a little more visible. I never really like using punctuation to offset the links(:.

Larger resolutions. The site does look near perfect at 800x600 but it is kind of lonely sitting out there in the middle with all the white around it.

Okay, I guess that you are good enough that we can keep you as a moderator.

Why thank you for that vote of confidence!

Yeah, expanding horrible boxes - only does it for me in NS6 but trying to see why ..................

Nice! I'm doing an "orange site" myself right now - looks like we've even picked the same shades. The "slate-blue" offsets things nicely, I just may have to jot that code down!

I'm not really a fan of these portal sites (fortunately I've yet to have to design one) but you've done a good job of laying out the information and not making things look too busy.

No layout bugs for me in IE6.

Looks good Julia.

The only thing that I can find is the link, Premier Direct UK Ltd, stays underlined on mouseover. The other links in the content area do not have an underline when moused over.

Right I'll fix that right away

I don't really have much to say about this. On the left side buttons you have for "Got to get one!", "Gift Ideas" etc., the light blue text is hard to read against the orange. It should stand out more. The other problem is with the little icons you have for home and go to top down at the bottom of the navbar. They just don't seem to be in the right place for some reason, and don't stand out well there. Maybe if there was a row of the covring the entire width of that orange part it would look better.

Another thing I'm wondering about is the organization of the left side navbar - I mean, what is different about the second group (Business, Corporate Services etc.) as opposed to the first group? If the second group is meant to be services rather than products for sale maybe it should be labelled as such.

Otherwise it looks pretty good.

I really love the overall design of this site - I think you did a very nice job of making the colors go together. Nice layout good color scheme.

very nice and clean, I'm not a big fan of orange and blue but apart from that the only quam would be the center image alignment, the featured sites logo in Opera and NS4.7 seems as if you've used hspace="10" or something, but IE it aligns well., maybe add hpace="0" or 1 or 2 to force it same as IE.

also the bottom banner (you probably have no control over that), the text seems blurry on the left of it

Oh and any reason for doing the info email address like that? not linking the first letter

Thanks all. No reason that the i in info is not linked, I had actually noticed it but haven't re-uploaded yet!

Logo read "Hamshire Shopping."
Guess you need a "p" there.

Well spotted, just testing you all!! Actually I need to get a new keyboard as I have to thump down on the t, p & d to get the to work and if typing quickly and without looking these letters tend to get missed! My fingers ache

I'm still getting expanded main section in NS6 and I can't figure out why. Can anyone see what's wrong???

Very impressive. First time I've viewed source with netscape 6

It has something to do with the images. I viewed the code without them and the width problem vanished.

aligns fine for me in NS6, same as Opera and IE, only thing I can see different is the length of the search and newsletter input boxs

Oh and the hspace thing I mentioned last post, I meant vspace , but adding hspace="3" & vspace="3" (change numbers to suit) would make it universal.