REVIEW REQUEST: samcolebatch.com

Firstly I would say that others will always appreciate a fresh pair of eyes on their site, it doesn't matter how many others have already replied, your views will always be be welcome.

I'm a bit confused by your site - is it a personal site or business site? It seems to be a bit of the two. I like the colours and the logo at the top and it certainly is simple in design and layout but it's just a bunch of text really. You need something else there (IMO) to break it up a bit.

You site, although simple, needs just that bit more to spice it up. A pic or 2 on each page should help, especially in 10 x 7 resolution. Also think about increasing the font size for the main information. Although its the norm now for tech companys to have the smallest readable text (which i hate), i don't think your site would lose anything from increasing the size. Also i would kill the backgroud color, just doesn't seem to fit properly. Make your tables autostrech the whole page?

thanks for your comments so far.
so here is what you've told me

1. Enlarge the font a little just to make it easier so you don't have to squint?

2. Add a few images mabye to the navigation or instead of using text for the sub headings of each different page?

3. make the tables the full width of the browser (that has something to do with css but I am not sure? can anyone help me out there?)

And the answer to your last question it is a mixture a personal site for me to do whatever I want and add whatever I want to it and a business type site.

As I like to design websites I havn't designed many and probably won't design as many as I want (if you get me) that is why the site is a mixture

thanks for the comments

I like it, its clean, clear and organized. it wouldnt hurt adding an image in the top section thou.
I'm not sure if you have changed the font size and changed table width, but font size is fine to me, the table width is done by adding width="100%" in the table tag as you have done, they might of meant use zero body margins, but my opinion would be to leave it as is.
thats the good stuff, now the bad - browser issues.

layout in IE is fine, Opera6 (as Opera6) is the same as IE except your login logout ahover is white, not yellow and green as in IE.
NS4.7 has some problems, the login and logout is actually partly on the white section and the logo is sitting down to far, bottom edge is just in the white section and gap between left and right sections is about 4 pixels, give or take
try take out the width="100%" in your td tag that holds the logo, also use width, height and alt tags for all your images.
dont use css in font tags, you have use the span tag ...
you also need to fix your first tags, you have ... also found this:

Hi killmaster and welcome to TWF.

Looks like you might need to work on your code a bit. Your .... tags should come after the and before the . There is something going on with your tables too. Looks like there are some extra or out of place code for your tables.

The page looks a bit plain and needs some visual stimulation. The others have already mentioned adding a few images. This would help a great deal.

You should really do a spell check on all of your pages. You have a few misspellings. (wether, ment) Grammar needs some work too. It always helps me to get someone else to read over my pages to catch things that I missed and to help with the grammar.

Quote: maybe validate your code as well, you can use webmechanic.com or w3c.org among others which are free online ones

Hey busy did you mean NETMECHANIC.COM intead of webmechanic.com?

The site looks pretty good at 800x600 but a little stretched at higher res. It really changes the look to me by altering the shape of the table. It is okay to stretch to fit the screen but I would keep the content in a fixed table.

Hey busy did you mean NETMECHANIC.COM intead of webmechanic.com?
ummm which is the one you can validate your pages at? thats the one I meant.

I mentioned one of those sites the other day as well, I hope i got that one right lol, Thanks for picking that up DM

just letting you know I am recoding my site again from scratch same design and all just a more justified code.
EG: no errors
css should work as well this time I don't know why i din't work before

ok tell me guys is this any better?
does this work for everyone?

as you can see I changed the width and a little but of the style?
http://157.238.47.212/pw/preview/finaldesign.htm

Also the logo should work and stay in the middle up the top in between the two white lines

thanks

You might want to look at this http://www.virtualgraphiti.net/WMF/colebatch.gif and rethink that. This is looking at it on 800X600.

hmm sorr disaster-master the image doesn't load for me give me another link can you?

thanks

I couldn't get it open either but if it's what I think it is, there is a massive horizontal scrollbar at any resolution!

ahh bullsye.
I went through my site and picked out the mistake.

You guys are talking about the black are next to the login and logout text links aren't you?

LOL how could I have missed out on that
"kicks me self in the but"

anyhoo will have a look at that soon.
I think it is because of this code -

mabye I just change it to this -

?? or should I have some width in it?

thanks

hmm just wondering did all the css coding
work for you with the links?

EG: in all or most browsers did they turn yellow? and underline when you put the mouse over them?

Thanks

Quote: hmm sorr disaster-master the image doesn't load for me give me another link can you?

Sorry bout that. Just after I put that screen shot up my site went down. It's back up now and your page still looks the same. See if this helps. http://www.virtualgraphiti.net/WMF/colebatch.gif

This design looks rather dull to me. Text navigation, boring logo (do you know how many times the swoosh thing has been done? Way too often). Try to be a little more creative. One easy method is to find a dingbat or a little character of some kind to use as sort of a personal theme. That's what I did with mine Also try something more interesting with the colours.

Something needs to be done about this contact page here. You present three e-mail address there, so my first thought would be "Which one am I supposed to use?" Then you go on to explain that, which sort of defeats the purpose of listing all of them. Just post the address you want to use.

I seem to be getting a lot of 404 errors in here - when I click on the home link on the left as well as most of the links in your portfolio section. Your writing style could stand to be improved a little bit - some things are a little bit on the wordy side. Take that e-mail example above - why couldn't you just create a link to one e-mail address and leave it at that? No need to post links to addresses you don't want people to use. Watch your spelling and grammar as well:

Quote: Computers
My main interests here are software, hardware.
Helping out computer tech websites which are listed in my resume.
I also like to help websites out such as Leading Interactive and review there software

This should be presented as a list, since that's what it is. In the first sentence you should have an "and" in between "software" and "hardware". Since that is a list of only two items you don't need a comma. The second sentence is okay (well, it would be if it was presented as a list item). The third sentence should be phrased in the same way as the second just for consistency's sake. You've also misspelled "there" (it should be "their" in this case). This is just an example.

This doesn't make sense to me:

"msn address: [email protected]

the msn email address is only ment for chatting via msn messanger
other wise I do not check it for emails so don't try and email me there. (sic) Other wise my main email address to email me is [email protected]"

It's your main address but we shouldn't use it because you don't check it?

The css is working for me IE5.5 as they turn yellow but I'm still getting the huge scrollbar at all resolutions! Why have login & logout both showing???

I'm not getting any scrolling in Opera 6 but the links are turning red not yellow (?!?!)

lol thanks for pointing this out

Quote:
PLEASE NOTE: the msn email address is only ment for chatting via msn messanger
other wise I do not check it for emails so don't try and email me there.
For my optus email address that is only used for people who wish to send me large attachments.
Other wise my main email address to email me is [email protected]

should be [email protected] thanks for that

as for the css hmm not sure whats wrong with that I will show you the code hold on.

wait I see now probably because I have 990000 in the body TAG

WILL FIX IT LATER ON

THANKS FOR THAT

yoh fixed the code havn't uploaded it yet but it is fixed, thanks for letting me know about it.

I had if your wondering unneccessary attributes and I had a fully closing table with out it even opening.

so thanks for letting me know about the problem,
I will let you know when the site is fully up and running