Review Request: stevegh.com

Hey, Steve, welcome to TWF! Thanks for doing some other reviews first Nice Canadian pictures on your site there - do you live here or were you just visiting?

The site looks good for a start. I like the colour scheme a lot. The first thing I noticed is that the logo and header area are really, really small. It's hard to see the logo squished up in the corner like that. Make that section take up more space. Othwerwise that area looks pretty good. Nice unique graphic style. Another problem is that links don't look like links, so it's hard to know what to click on.

A few problems in Opera 7. The layout isn't filling the screen like it does in IE. It's stopping at about 850 pixels. Also, the little star graphic thing on the line under the navigation bar isn't lining up with the rest of the line, it's bumped down a little bit.

Not Too Shabby... Not A Huge Fan Of The Colors, And The Page Doesn't Scroll, But The Layout Is Ok...

Thanks guys, I've also noticed many problems with especially mac users dealing with the tables I'm using. Is there like a universal rule for tables or something? Designing for both mac and pc and all these different browsers is starting to be a pain =)

Looks okay, like the navigation. Colours are fine, not much else to say.

hmm, there are some funky bugs on your site. If you click on NEXT from the Canadian Pics page, you go to another page with no header, then it just stays that way, even if you use the back button. Wierd.
I think its still too early to give any real criticism on this page, perhaps a little more content and I'll be able to give a more concise critique. For now, I agree with the rest about the colors - then again, it looks like you have a certain design in your mind, so see what you can do with it. G'luck.

what specifically about the colors? are they boring?

I like the colours but agree with Megan that the top section seems far too small and where the links don't act like links (ie cursor changes to a hand) people may think there is nowhere to go!

I also get an error, when first going to the site:
Line: 15
Char: 1
Error: Object doesn't support this property or method

I personally wouldn't use frames and there are so many drawbacks to them.

well what would you suggest instead of frames?

-s

Hi, Steve,

There are a number of display issues in Safari -- the small text already noted, and also you have errors in your CSS that affect display:

Should be:

As it is, it shows as white and the pale yellow text and links don't show up on that.

The colours don't bother me at all!

Instead of frames/iframes, using server-side technologies (shtml or php includes, et cetera) would make your management even easier and would help with load time as well (parts of pages in the includes, v. whole pages using frames and iframes). It would also allow people to bookmark specific areas of your site for future visits!

The CSS Validator and the HTML/XHTML Validator will help you catch minor typographical errors in your code and CSS that cause display problems and are highly recommended as a first step before getting a critique. Get the problems out of the way so people can focus on the function and look of your site.

The movies are very cool. I enjoyed the shock of the cable one especially and the feeling of movement on the walking guy. It would be nice to know more about these projects, perhaps you already have that and I can't see it.

hth,

i like the colours of the site, the nav bar at the top is quite small. i would consider adding some different fonts and possibly a different image for each page. possibly improving on your banner.

thanks all!

is this better? I'm still playin with a banner but does it look ok in opera and everything? thanks! http://stevegh.com

Nope. The hotel photo entirely obscures the text in Safari. It's on the left instead of on the right.

any idea why?

You know, Steve, I could probably figure it out easily, however the code just makes my eyes glaze over. You're using empty table cells for the layout and iframes and such and it just really really makes it hard to troubleshoot.

looking at it further this afternoon, I'd guess that it's to do with a) your use of an xml declaration, then using an HTML doctype coupled with b) having a table set to 100%, then having the cells in that table total to 100% + 855 pixels (BAD idea and totally not needed).

You've started using CSS and background images within it, I'd recommend you go all the way. This whole site could *easily* be done in CSS without tables at all, or with a table to hold the iframes only.

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/slidingdoors/ for the navigation

The little icon could be in a div with the background image of that div being the striple (way less code than the tables option!).

The logo and navigation don't need to be in a table, they can be in a div (less code, more control).

yes this is true suzanne, i think at one point i just wanted to be fancy and not use any pictures at all and just use tables but then i sorta copped out so there is no reason to do all those again. thanks for takin the time to look at it, ill update it soon.

Let us know when you have updated it. Use the validators, too -- they help a lot with troubleshooting what the human eye can't focus on!

the validators got everything, so it should be fine.

ok there was a javascript error somewhere, so does it work in safari now? both the wc3 and css are valid as html 4.0 transitional. I dont know what else to do?

aha now it works =)

Scroll at 800 wide, but working in Safari! Whoo!