Review Request - idbDeveloper.com

LOL! I'm glad you like what you see. Why don't you stop by the INtroductions forum and let us know a little more about yourself

P.S. I'll assume that you read the posting agreement...

I think you've got a good start here but you really need to refine things. That animated banner for instance - is it an ad or part of the site? It's really distracting. Get rid of those writers guild things - not appropriate for a business site. I'm looking around for a navbar but only see a couple of links in the top corner - shouldn't there be more to see?

The "about" page looks a lot better. It's nice and clean, although I think it would be nice to see a little more colour in the design. You're also missing a logo, which should appear on every page. I like what you've done with the graphic along the bottom and on the left side - it would be nice to repeat that at the top of the design maybe, or do something similar up there. That top part looks really bare.. You could also try to introduce some colour there too.

Most of this information should be presented as lists. That would make it much easier for people to do a quick scan and see what you do exactly.

This might be just me, but I think that a contact link should go to a page with a form or more information (address, phone, fax etc.).

Hi MioTEK,

Nice design and layout. However, I didn't know where to go from here. I eventually found the text navigation at the bottom of the page.

Vince

You've got some horizontal scroll issues at 800x600. Given that your navigation is right-aligned, this becomes a big problem.

Ummm... that's it? A 2 page site or am I missing something? You're going to need more substance than that, I'm afraid.

Where's your portfolio? A description of your services, better suited towards laymen, might be helpful. The current page reads like a list of keywords for the search engines.

not a bad start, but...

the content is jarbled, its hard to tell whats going on. I would prefer a more lengthy description on exactly what your site does, and what the user should do to continue. For me, you've also got serious layout issues, it just doesnt work, the only navigation links are pushed into a corner on the header, and in fine print on the bottom. You should strive to make it a little more user friendly. Also animated gifs can get very annoying, try rationing how much you use animated gifs....

besides that not bad....

OK, I have made MANY MANY mods to my new site, lemme know whutchyathink!

www.idbDeveloper.com

Thanks,
and Have a Nice Day

What exactly have you changed? I can't see any real differences?? Still got a horizontal scrollbar, still too texty, still hard to navigate and text is running hard up against the edges. This could be a great site if it's tweeked quite a bit.

First impressions, how does the site work, where is the navigation?
ok navigation is under the banners at the very bottom - not a good place for it to be. If I had just surfed to your site I would of left without looking down there.

The comptia image doesnt sit right in opera6 or mozilla, it over laps of grey image. Nice images btw. Also the date thing doesnt work in mozilla (not that its a biggy)

On the Certifications page the image of man and lady are at different places on different browsers, ie has it hard left, NS4.7 has it about an inch off the border and opera6 has it about 3 inches away.

Out of 4 browsers (IE5, NS4.7, mozilla and Opera6) its actually best viewed in NS4.7 - congrats and worst in Opera

If your going to use things like 'The HTML Writers Guild' you should at least use valid up todate code, looks like your still using html3.2 you also might want to change your meta tags (not that they are used by many seach engines, they still get used) but having two off everything (in different case) can be seen as spamming, search engines arent case sensitive.

Quote: Wow, finally a REAL forum for website enthusiasts ;^)

I noticed you're a member at Ian's forum. I hope that wasn't meant to knock his site.
I like the site layout you've got there. Looks really professional.

@Busy, how many browsers you use?

Edward07 - I use 6 browsers, others use more. You never know what browser someone will have so is good to check on several

I used to use Netscape, IE, and Opera to check my pages, but found that too time consuming. I stick to IE -- primarily -- since most of the webstats pkgs I've used report that 95%+ are IE.

I remember the old days when I used to say, "Man, I'll NEVER! use IE!", but those are long gone since 90% of the development I do is in IE, IIS, M$ intranets.

Web designs can really get complex when you design for cross-browser compatibility, and JavaScript is a real treat for such occassions. If I use specialized DHTML, then I script [it] in there; otherwise, IE only

The middle/late 1990's saw a lot of change in the internet, especially, Microsoft's zapping of the internet (Read: forced browser installation / forced popup 'make IE default browser'), and, the flux of new products hitting the market.

If, over night, every one of my existing clients switch to 100% Java, on Unix's, running 100% Linux, then, yes, I'll make the move -- dumb-a$$ if I don't ;^); but, until then, I'll stick with what works

When I first started using the Internet, we used TeleType machines, and everything you typed had to be formatted perfectly (or as close to hand typed perfect as possible), and your results were printed on the same machine you used to type on! ...Okay, I'm dating myself, but, the truth is, I am getting lazy in my old age

In a perfect world, I would have a staff large enough to develop for 6 browsers, everything would be written in Java, Oracle 9i would be my db of choice, and (because of the cost and market penetration of) Unix serving Apache would be my server. Unfortunately, our foggy dreams of a perfect world are so far form reality that you just "give what their taking."

MioTEK, if you code for, say Netscape it will probably work first time in IE, but this wont work the other way around. Opera, mozilla etc are way ahead of IE on standards etc.
If I was you, I wouldn't rely on JavaScript and DHTML menus etc to much these days, with pop ups and forced homepages etc becoming more and more in your face people are turning JavaScript off. I get asked (from my site) how to get rid of the pop ups or what program to use, I tell them to just turn JavaScript off, a whole lot easier.
If you used CSS to control your layouts (one style sheet for new and one for old) you can have your site displaying pretty much the same in all browsers.
I even have java turned off as I use a auction site (local) that uses java but it locks up my browser so have no choice if I want to buy and sell there.
I think you'll find IE is the choice of newbies (it's on their pc's) and as they learn more they will switch to another browser. This isn't meant to be a browser debate, just passing on some helpful information that you can take or leave.

ok so no clue what to do on our site, no ideas of navigation, is this just an ad page? No real clue as to what the site is about and too many adverts on the front page, no real substance to it, we need info, people will get impatient if they cant find anything fairly quickly. Not particularly pleasing to the eye and not user friendly, a reshuffle perhaps?

1) Don't reinvent the wheel. This is primarily an info site, secondarily a site that should project a business image. Conservative. Logo/Home button top left and a Nav Bar.

2) The dual animations work against each other. What is the purpose of the animation on the left? To draw attention? Don't think it needs it. The flash animation on the right should be toned down a bit and more delicate.

3) Again tell us what your site does. Get rid of "Core specialization in" and make the rest larger.

4) The certifications and Guild stuff should be at the bottom. Not hidden but smaller.