schillerstudent.co.uk - review

Quote: Originally posted by dragon007
i would appreciate any critics or comments from you guys.
here is the website schillerstudent.co.uk
thanks again.

You better watch out with the guys thing. Two of the moderators of this forum are not guys. You should also know from reading posts in this forum that we really like for people that ask for a site critique to help us by reviewing other sites.

So a review. Overall the site was okay, nothing remarkable, nothing particularly annoying.

• Resolution - I have said it before so I will say it again. Design a site to look well in 800x600 but consider what it looks like a higher resolutions. Yours looks like it is just cut off. To do this you will use a % in your tables to stretch it. You don't need to stretch everything but at least stretch the top and the bottom to fill the screen. Also you do have a slight horizontal scroll @ 800x600.
• Color scheme - I will probably let Megan comment on this one but I didn't particularly like the colors. The colors kind of reminded me of an Excel Spreadsheet where someone went highlight color crazy. I would cut down on the number of colors. I would also get rid of the purple on the top and the bottom.
• Layout - there is a lot of stuff to layout on your site. It is presented in an okay way. A couple of things were awkward. When I click on a link on left navbar, to return I have to click the Home link on the top navbar. I would make sure that Home is also in your left navbar. Your bottom purple bar is misplaced from the rest of page, being aligned on the right side.
• Code - the code is a little bit bulky with all the js there. Also you need to learn how to keep your text from 'hugging the rail'. In the left navbar, you used & nbsp; to achieve this. In the middle tables, you didn't use anything so that the text is right on the edge. Use cellpadding to prevent this. Keep in mind that if you use cellpadding, then your table will expand a bit. You should also consider using stylesheets instead of all the font tags. Font tags cause an unneccessary drag on the server. Plus you can build one stylesheet and use it for all of your pages.
• Logo - a better logo would help out.

Like I said it is okay but I would strive for more than okay.

Quote: Originally posted by mairving
You better watch out with the guys thing. Two of the moderators of this forum are not guys.

Glad you have noticed we are female mairving but I would also use guys to include a group of both sexes.

I have to agree that this isn't the worst site in this genre I have seen but it could be improved upon. The colour scheme for one. It's nice to have a colourful site but yours don't go together well, eg. orange & red next to each other. Choose say three or four that work well together and stick to them. With all the banners there is plenty to brighten the page up.

Don't like the page at higher resolutions either because of the stripy background, very distracting and hard on the eyes.

I agree that the logo needs to be better/stronger to stand out more.

Good start.

Quote: Originally posted by The Webmistress

Glad you have noticed we are female mairving but I would also use guys to include a group of both sexes.

Yeah, it's the constant nagging that you and Megan do that gave away the female part. I'm kidding really. Please don't hurt me. I am also kidding about the guys thing.

Here is the etymology of the word:
1 often capitalized : a grotesque effigy of Guy Fawkes traditionally displayed and burned in England on Guy Fawkes Day

2 chiefly British : a person of grotesque appearance

3 a : MAN, FELLOW b : PERSON -- used in plural to refer to the members of a group regardless of sex

LOL at number 2 especially!! Just as well we don't suffer from PMT on here isn't it!

Hello fellow neighbor!

Since I actually suck at webdesign I'm just going to comment as a normal web tourist.

1 - One has to exercise his imagination to see a double-s on the logo! To me, it seems more like the letter "m"...

2 - Colorwise, there is a conflit: the left side looks really professional (I mean, I would pay for your services) but the central part looks a bit "childish" if you know what I mean. Not all looks bad, because the tables "Jobs, Tax, Travel,..." look really good. Just those above and below...

3 - Contentwise, it is amazing how you crammed all that information in that space!

Layout organization and space-usage is great!

This is only if I have to be REALLY picky about it. Indeed, I did buy stuff from webplaces that looked really bad and I've also used services from sites that sucked (and there are loads of them in the UK)
It's not the case with yours

hope that helps

cheers

I'm begining to wonder if I am looking at the same site, purple top and bottom, stripes, tables aligned to the right, maybe they changed it before I looked at it.

I think Joba is on the right track here, especially 2 and 3.

The site took a while to load, on both Netscape 4.7 and IE5

On 800x600 using Netscape4.7 I have lots of grey space (background color) the table cells are mutli length which makes all the different tables look like they were cut from a book and stuck to the page. The changing of table cell background color doesnt work on Netscape, has to be images for it to work. The "tell a friend" part is very big, take out the "nowrap" in that table code as you dont need it, no scroll bar by the way.

om IE5 i have a small sideways scrollbar, the layout is tighter but still a lot of grey background showing, eitehr change the bgcolor to white or extend all your table cells to each other so it looks like its one big table.

As Mairving mentioned about your font tags, you can also do the same with your div's and p align's, since they arent being used to hold a class (CSS) you should use align= in the td cell,

to center a whole table (table not contents) add align=center in the table tag.
to align contents in a table either add align=center to either the tr or td cell

I agree with the colours. YOu need to have more of a balance. Right now it's strange because the middle part is so colourful but the navbar and logo area are more muted. Decide on a set of 3-4 colours (including white) and go with that. I would go for a more colourful look for a student site - thinking of http://www.chickclick.com which is also geared towards young people.

thanks guys (i mean both sexes)
i really appreciate your critics. i think the colors and the logo were the main concern here. i definitly will have a look at them again.

"but the central part looks a bit "childish" if you know what I mean."

the website is attended to be for young people, so this is why you can see that childish colors, but still i will try to change the colors and have just 3 to 4 colors.

for the code as i said before, i am just a newbie in webdesign. i wouldn't call my self a webdesigner, as i am using frontpage (that most of the people in this forum hate). so my work is not really structured, and i am sure there is a lot of stuff in the code that i don't need.

for the CSS i am using one, but it's not covering everything. so this is why there is a lot of font tags(i am a newbie)

"I have lots of grey space (background color) the table cells are mutli length which makes all the different tables look like they were cut from a book and stuck to the page."

for the grey space, my intention was not to have a boring traditional normal table with everything lined up. i wanted something a bit diferent, as Megan said " look like they were cut from a book and stuck to the page" but maybe it wasn't a good idea after all, as most of you here don't like it.

thanks very much for the help

I said that, not Megan

You dont wanna get on Megans bad side or she'll dress you in tights and make you do the parallel bars or something at her gymnasium

How young is young? if we are talking younger than 14 the maybe your table layout could be the key, maybe use different colors per table (soft pastels) but use a white background on the page. Over 14, kids think they know best (or at least I did at that age) and think a more mature approach would work better.

There are no set rules to right and wrong, look at Disaster-Master's site she posted for critique a few days ago, naviagation on the right where as over 90% on the web would be on the left.
Its more what you do than how you do it.

good luck

sorry busy, it was your quote not megan.

I'm running up against serious layout/alignment issues with IE4.0 and NS4.6 on a Mac.

Why does it seem every site out there feels compelled to tell me what day it is? I have a calendar and I go to CNN regularly. Honest, I don't need your site to tell me what day it is. Besides, whatever script a lot of people are running just doesn't work in IE4.0. Or is it really Thursday, February 4th, 2106?

I am sorry, I should have mentioned that the site is not optimized yet for MAC.
for the time thing, the reason why you see Thursday, February 4th, 2106 it's because the date in your MAC is Thursday, February 4th, 2106. the script only takes the time from your machine. sorry.

Hi dragon,

Considering how much you have on this site I think you have presented the material very well.

Your text is going all the way to the right hand side of the page when viewing at 800 X 600. This has probably been mentioned but it was one thing that was a little annoying for these "not so young eyes". I kept wanting to look beyond the scrollbar. Kinda like a cat looking behind a TV for something on TV. LOL

The banner at the top overpowers your logo. The small text in you logo is a bit hard to read.

I was especially impressed at the section on drug awareness. Way to go! Here is a good link that I recommend including in all drug awareness sections. http://www.projectghb.org/while_sleeping/ The text in this presentation is in graphic format but if you will be patient it really is an eye opener.

I think I will check back later at your recipes. Gosh, I could plan meals forever with those.

The dark colored table at the bottom of the page (the one with copyright in it.)needs to be flush with the left and side too.

That is all that I really wanted to comment on as it is getting late. Nice info site. Good luck. For a newbie who just does web design as a hobbie I think you have done well.

dragon007 did you know your poll results arent in the same order as when you take it?

TheGizmoid while your in the future can you grab the lotto numbers please, would make a great present for the great great great grand kids

Quote: Originally posted by Busy

TheGizmoid while your in the future can you grab the lotto numbers please, would make a great present for the great
great great grand kids

LOL, Busy! If I could do that I'd grab a few for myself and not worry about still being unemployed after 8 months.

Quote: Originally posted by dragon007
I am sorry, I should have mentioned that the site is not optimized yet for MAC.
for the time thing, the reason why you see Thursday, February 4th, 2106 it's because the date in your MAC is Thursday, February 4th, 2106. the script only takes the time from your machine. sorry.

dragon007, there really isn't such a thing as "optimizing for the Mac". You optimize for browsers. While there may be a few quirks between the build of a particular browser version on different platforms, I think the problem here is that you haven't optimized for v4.x browsers. The biggest difference I've found between Mac and PC is gamma. Things are lighter on Macs, darker on PCs.

As for the script taking the date from my machine, you are wrong. Here's a screenshot in IE4.0 with my date/time control panel open to show you that it's set correctly. (It was taken at 800x600, I just sized it down a tad to make the file size smaller.)

And note the alignment on the column that says "It's fun, easy and free".

Quote: Originally posted by disaster-master

Your text is going all the way to the right hand side of the page when viewing at 800 X 600. This has probably been mentioned but it was one thing that was a little annoying for these "not so young eyes". .

thanks disaster-master for your comments. I will definitely put a margin on the right side of the screen to make the text appear clearer.

TheGizmoid, you are definitely wright about the date. I should either get rid of that script or at least fix the bug.
for that table, I tried before to fix it when I saw it the first time on a MAC, but I don't know what I should do. that part is working on PC just fine. though I didn't try it on a v4.x browsers. I would be very grateful if you can give me any advice on how to fix it. thanks for your time.

I believe that your problem is going to be with the spacer image that you have in between the cloumns that contain
Find your love/free e mail and Free homepages and Discussions. I copied the page and played around with it in Dreamweaver and it looks fine after moving things around a tad and probably would for Giz too. Not sure exactly what to tell you to do but I believe that will point you in the general direction.

Oh, you have several misplaced font tags that do not have a closing tag or either they are out of order. (there is a word for this but i can't remember it) and some center tags also.

Change the width of that bottom brown table (or purple) to 100%. You have it at width="780" now. That will solve that problem really easy.

You have two titles in the head tag. The second one is kind of hidden becuase it is at the end of your keywords.

LOL...ok I'll go away now. I recommend that you go to netmechanic.com and do a html check. You will be surprised at what you will find there.
Good luck!!!

thanks disaster-master
i did the html check at netmechanic.com, and you were right. i have a lot of html stuff to repair. thanks very much for the link.