REVIEW REQUEST: myTechAid.com

Your front page looks really nice. I am enjoying the bright, energetic shade of blue you've used and graphics with a coordinating style. There does seem to be a little problem with things not lining up properly in Opera though.

Now that I'm on the inside I'm a little disappointed. The colours are still eye-catching, but the graphics quality is lacking here. The logo definitely needs to be changed to match what is on the front page a little more (the simplified style here is not nearly as attractive). YOu may also want to consider adding a 3D border like you have on the front page, or something else to spice it up a little. I also feel that the navbar could stand to be a tad bit bigger.

Another thing to watch is the fonts. The sans font for the nav buttons doesn't match the sans you're using on the body, which really makes the navbar look out of place. I'm also seeing the two links under the navbar in default Times.

P.S. Thanks for doing some reviews here! We appreciate it And Welcome to TWF!

Thanks for the comments, Megan!

I have *not* tested my website in Opera, due to the very, very small portion of people using that browser. However that slice of the graph seems to be growing and I should probably start testing with it.

I've had trouble getting the logo to look good at the size I'm using on the "interior" but I'll work on it more. I'll also work with the fonts as well.

It's funny, I actually just thought of adding a 3D effect to the nav bar a couple days ago, but haven't had time to work with it.

BTW, I actually joined TWF a while ago but "lost" it when you had some server trouble and then with the domain hijaking. Webmistress just recently sent me feedback that my link on the site to TWF.com needed to be changed. That's when I found the forums again.

I agree with Megan. However, the first thing that catched my eyes was the quality of the logo..

Hiya & welcome back to TWF, thanks for sorting out the link.

I obviously had a sneek preview when I came to the site the other day! I agree that the 'inside' needs a bit of work to get it looking as smooth as the first page but I think by tidying up the logo and sorting out the fonts this will help straight away.

I love that blue color on the front page. The graphics on the front page are taking a while to load but I am on my old worn out computer due to lightning striking my other one. So that may just be me. On the other hand, you may want to consider users of older machines. An interesting effect to consider would be to add a bright color to the rollover on the front page. (the little dot that appears when you mouse over the links.)

I also think you should use the same color blue for all of the pages for consistency.

The rounded corner at the bottom of your pages isn't lining up correctly. And it is also a wee bit lighter shade of blue.

You should place your style sheet above the closing head tag and some of your tags are not compliant with XHTML. Examples:
Should have a space and / before the >

needs space and / before the >

space and / before the > and also always enclose values in ""
for example;
height="90" border="0" />

You have a link to the NYPL Style Guide on your site. That is a good resource for XHTML.

Sonia

I assume your comments regarding the XHTML noncompliance are caused by the XHTML button on the home page. Currently only that page alone is XHTML compliant (the W3C compliance checker approves it).

I wish to make the rest of my site XHTML compliant at some point, but as it is currently hard coded HTML, site-wide changes are not easy. The rest of the site currently has doctype tags for HTML 4 Transitional. I hope to write a Perl based dynamic backend for my site soon, but I haven't yet found the time to do it.

The idea for the colored rollover on the homepage sounds good. I'll try it and see how it looks.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by using the same color blue throughout the site. I am using the same color for the menu and home page throughout the site, as far as I know. If there's a discrepancy somewhere I would appreciate a heads-up, otherwise maybe I'm just misunderstanding you.

BTW, what browser are you using? Just so I can work on the home page graphics.

Thanks for you suggestions!

I have just gone back to look at the site again and for some reason it is taking forever to load the graphics on the index page and I'm on a cable connection! In opera it stops loading and brings up this error "Error: name: ReferenceError message: Reference to undefined variable: No such variable 'menuImg'"

In NS4.7 the top part doesn't meet up with the left part and there is a white line between them and the bottom left rounded corner isn't lining up. The only one for me that the rollovers work in is IE

Opps!! My bad. I assumed that the whole site was XHTML. My appoligies.

BTW, I am using IE 6.0.

As for the color blue background, I see now that you are using a lighter blue for the home page background but the rest of the sites backgrounds match the image on the home page. Not a problem I suppose. Just something that caught my attention.

Seems like there is something going on with that scrip that you are using that is causing your images to be slow to load. Not sure what it is though.

Just a note on the Opera not displaying in your websats, opera6's default option is set to IE for some strange reason so you'd see more hits from IE instead of Opera

The page didnt load for me so I'll have a look tomorrow