Some new coding comments appreciated

They have: 2 posts

Joined: Oct 2001

Have been playing around with some scalable image and scalable font code for an invironmental site. Would greatly appreciate your comments, It should be screen resolution independant. Only works in Internet Explorer or Netscape 6.
The address is

http://www.chi.com.au/planet

Thanks Arconin

The Webmistress's picture

She has: 5,586 posts

Joined: Feb 2001

Well I have IE5.5 so don't know what didn't work. Everything stretched for me Wink

I found the text very hard to read, not helped by the strong background. Some people may miss the scroll up & down as they are so far apart and when you do scroll and the other lines of text (very hard to read in the font chosen) they detract from the other text. I still like to control the scrolling of a page by use of my mouse wheel.

Julia - if life was meant to be easy Michael Angelo would have painted the floor....

disaster-master's picture

She has: 2,154 posts

Joined: May 2001

You wouldn't happen to be a Guru fan would ya? Wink

I kinda like it but then again I like most anything done in dhtml. It just amazes the heck out of me. The background pic is pretty. The italic font (i suppose it is italic) is very hard to read though and the font that you are using for the 'inspiration', innovation', 'creativity' and 'perception' are too.

The links in the bottom right corner are disappearing when I mouse over them. No link to home page but I see the site isn't finished yet.

Oh, and I am using IE5.0.

mairving's picture

They have: 2,256 posts

Joined: Feb 2001

This statement tells me something about your web design ability when I tried to access the site using a fairly current browser

Quote: Sorry this site no longer supports crap browsers like Netscape 4 because it doesn't comply to W3C standards. Please use either NS6 or IE5+.

and the page goes no further. There are certainly other, better ways to design a website than the way you have. I think personally that it is one of the worst thought out designs that I have seen in quite a while. By that I mean that I have certainly seen worse designs. But not ones that were thought out so poorly. Here are some problems:

  • Page loading - I have to go through the Phasing in Menu Options, every time that I resize the page, which gets very old.
  • What is up with a sideways arrow when I hover on a link. Not exactly user friendly. Usually that indicates resizing not hovering.
  • Have you perchance checked your page in Opera. I didn't receive the same crap browser like Netscape but everything on the page loaded on top of each other in the top left corner.
  • Scroll up/down - Now that is intuitive, take away a scoll bar that everyone is used to and make them use your own non-intuitive scrolling.

Not really much else to review since there was no content. I could think of several ways just of the top of my head that you could make a site similar to yours that would have cross browser compatibility. I think that the worst thing is that you are trying to force the viewer to jump through your hoops. First they are told which browser that they have to use. Then they have no scrollbar to use, they have to scroll the way that you force them to. People really don't like to be forced into doing things.

Mark Irving
I have a mind like a steel trap; it is rusty and illegal in 47 states

Megan's picture

She has: 11,421 posts

Joined: Jun 1999

At first I thought that it wasn't working properly in my browser (mozilla 0.94), which it partially isn't, but the part I was wondering about is the right side layout which looks the same in IE6. Those headers there aren't arranged well - the top two are scattered sort of, but the bottom two align with each other. Either align them or don't.

I also feel that the scroll up and down buttons should be more noticable, and the scroll up should appear at the top of the text part not at the top of the page. Also don't change the cursor to those arrows - that's a usability problem because people expect to see the hand when they mouseover a link. I also don't like that animation you have on the text - every time I bring up the window (since I'm switching between this one and that one) I have to wait for it to come up again.

In mozilla I'm getting a big vertical scrollbar and a smaller horizontal one. The font styling for the body text and the links to the other pages are also not working.

You also need a logo and a better explanation of what this site is about.

Busy's picture

He has: 6,151 posts

Joined: May 2001

OK, where is the instruction manual for this site?

I clicked on gallery and a small blank box appeared (guess there are no images to view) then I went to read the text, hmm not in english, or is it, I go to scroll down, uh oh, wont scroll (im on ie5) I have to scroll up before I can scroll down. those links, when not hidden are really hard to make work.

very frustrating site to work around, I agree with Mairving, you have made me use the browser I didnt want to, you made me not able to use my mouse wheel, you made me try to read the text on the background that clashes. thats not the way to do it, think "user friendly"

just because you can, doesnt mean you should ...

how about making a netscape or non dhtml version for the other people? you can use javascript redirect for version and make.

you have

Quote: The graphical interface has loaded.
Data controls and assembly specifacations initiating.
This site should be viewed in IE 5+ or NS 6 for best results.
If you are using Netscape 4+ I feel sorry for you.

I for one love the Netscape 4.7 browser, the title bar for one is a lot easier to use than Net6. and viewing sites with javascript and java turned off is a lot easier so you dont have to view all the pop ups and lake applets etc, if the site is designed badly it wont show up, so I know not to waste my time, I mean if a company cant take a little extra effort to make a cross-browser site then why should I bother - to way street.

TheGizmoid's picture

They have: 168 posts

Joined: Apr 2001

In addition to the fact that you've insulted every visitor using NS4.x (surely there are more subtle ways to suggest a browser upgrade than to insult the visitor's choice - that sure makes me want to love ya, ya know? not!) your site doesn't even load in IE4.0 on my Mac. Yeah, it says it loaded, I get a page title and can view source, but it's 100% a blank page.

I think you're just too damn clever for your own good. I'm with Busy on this one. Do you deliberately *want* to alienate everyone except those who meet your select criteria? Why bother with you then?

Megan's picture

She has: 11,421 posts

Joined: Jun 1999

Quote: Originally posted by Busy
just because you can, doesnt mean you should ...

That's my motto!

Quote: The graphical interface has loaded.
Data controls and assembly specifacations initiating.

Quote: Through a top-down, proactive approach we can remain customer focused and goal-directed, innovate and be an inside-out organization which facilitates sticky web-readiness transforming turnkey eyeballs

Huh???

Another thing I'm finding here is that a lot of the copy is very technical-jargon ish. "Data controls and assembly specifications..." - what's that supposed to mean? Most of what I can read on this site is like that.

Quote: This site should be viewed in IE 5+ or NS 6 for best results.
If you are using Netscape 4+ I feel sorry for you.

The thing with NS 4.x is that I don't think it's a bad browser from a user's perspective. It works, some people seem to like it and really, why switch if what you have seems to work just fine. Non-developers don't know how hard it is for us to make sites work for them. They don't know that they're missing things like a:hovers if they've never seen them. From a regular user's perspective there really isn't much of a difference.

I think that what we'll start to see now is even slower tranformations between popular browser versions. I mean, it's going to take a looong time for v.6 browsers to become the norm.

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