Valley411.com critique wanted

There seems to be some problems with your coding in Opera. The red navigation menu is going all the way across the page, bumping the content area down. I'm also seeing default blue links, and that can't be right. In Firefox I see the same thing, and there I also notice that the text is all displaying in Times New Roman, which also can't be right.

Checking in IE - I guess this must be what it's supposed to look like. None of your text formatting is showing up in Opera or Firefox at all.

Looking at the code - this is very strange. An xhtml 1.1 doctype, then you're using conditional comments to serve stylesheets only to IE 6 and IE 7 and no CSS to other browsers at all???? That's bizarre. And all the spacing in between the code too. That's very strange.

Thanks Megan, I guess I should have warned first. We are still workin on the CSS for Mozilla based browsers. The system is built on a custom CMS, so we still have work to do for other browsers. Thanks. The site only works in IE at the moment. We are almost done with the new css.

But other then that, what do you think?

So, you are building separate CSS for Mozilla-based and IE, but what about other browsers? Standards are really meant to be inter-operable actross browsers and devices. If you build specifically for certain clients you will be automatically excluding some. Authoring to the standard first, then building in for other browsers. Really, you should not have to write completely separate CSS for each browser. It's a lot of unnecessary work. What should happen is you have a base stylesheet, do everything you can to make it work in most browsers (according to the standard - this is very do-able for the newest versions of most browsers - especially when you're not using CSS for layout), then add in extra filters *if necessary*, preferably for older browsers. It's much easier to develop and maintain.

But I'll get off my soapbox now I also tried to validate the site (suspecitng that it wouldn't come close under an xHTML 1.1 doctype). Why xHTML 1.1 anyway? I actually don't know much about that spec, except that most people aren't using it yet for I forget what reason. The code is a mess - so many nested tables. Ooh, and get those commented keywords out of your header.

The site sort of looks okay for me. I think there are too many things competing for attention, and sometimes garish design choices. That might work in your favour though. I wrote an aritlce on my blog not too long ago about the relationship between design quality and the type of audience you want to attract.

I think it would be good to make the main navigation a little more prominent. Some space underneath it would help. Those graphic ads on the right side are very big. It's taking up a lot of screen space, distracting people from content, and probably annoying them. The bikini ad in the middle looks stretched, like it was resized with HTML. The headlines in the news listings should have more explaination. 2 words is not enough for a headline. Check out most newspaper headlines - they use a few more words, but you need to be able to tell from reading that what the article is about.

You mentioned the profile area so I went there first. When I click on that link I just get a registration screen. So I don't know what this is about, if there are other people in the system, and why I would want to join. I think most people would probably turn away from this screen very quickly. It's also unclear as to whether this is free or not. The free trial says 60 days, so what happens after that? I think lack of clarity in an interface is a big turn off for people. That green colour needs to be changed too. It doesn't fit with the rest of the design.

The video part looks okay. The interface is much cleaner and there aren't any extra bits competing for attention. The home pages shows a little lack of attention to detail. Again there is that green colour that doesn't fit (and I'm sure I've seen that Watch - Upload - Share bit before.) The part in the sidebar with the read header looks like it should have a background on it. That sidebar and the ad above look like they were thrown in after the fact.

Overall this is okay. It might work alright for your audience. It does looks sort of haphazardly put together without enough attention to the relationship between elements and design consistency. I think more attention should be given to what is featured on the home page and how you expect people to use this site.

So, you are building separate CSS for Mozilla-based and IE, but what about other browsers? Standards are really meant to be inter-operable actross browsers and devices. If you build specifically for certain clients you will be automatically excluding some. Authoring to the standard first, then building in for other browsers. Really, you should not have to write completely separate CSS for each browser. It's a lot of unnecessary work. What should happen is you have a base stylesheet, do everything you can to make it work in most browsers (according to the standard - this is very do-able for the newest versions of most browsers - especially when you're not using CSS for layout), then add in extra filters *if necessary*, preferably for older browsers. It's much easier to develop and maintain.

But I'll get off my soapbox now I also tried to validate the site (suspecitng that it wouldn't come close under an xHTML 1.1 doctype). Why xHTML 1.1 anyway? I actually don't know much about that spec, except that most people aren't using it yet for I forget what reason. The code is a mess - so many nested tables. Ooh, and get those commented keywords out of your header.

The site sort of looks okay for me. I think there are too many things competing for attention, and sometimes garish design choices. That might work in your favour though. I wrote an aritlce on my blog not too long ago about the relationship between design quality and the type of audience you want to attract.

I think it would be good to make the main navigation a little more prominent. Some space underneath it would help. Those graphic ads on the right side are very big. It's taking up a lot of screen space, distracting people from content, and probably annoying them. The bikini ad in the middle looks stretched, like it was resized with HTML. The headlines in the news listings should have more explaination. 2 words is not enough for a headline. Check out most newspaper headlines - they use a few more words, but you need to be able to tell from reading that what the article is about.

You mentioned the profile area so I went there first. When I click on that link I just get a registration screen. So I don't know what this is about, if there are other people in the system, and why I would want to join. I think most people would probably turn away from this screen very quickly. It's also unclear as to whether this is free or not. The free trial says 60 days, so what happens after that? I think lack of clarity in an interface is a big turn off for people. That green colour needs to be changed too. It doesn't fit with the rest of the design.

The video part looks okay. The interface is much cleaner and there aren't any extra bits competing for attention. The home pages shows a little lack of attention to detail. Again there is that green colour that doesn't fit (and I'm sure I've seen that Watch - Upload - Share bit before.) The part in the sidebar with the read header looks like it should have a background on it. That sidebar and the ad above look like they were thrown in after the fact.

Overall this is okay. It might work alright for your audience. It does looks sort of haphazardly put together without enough attention to the relationship between elements and design consistency. I think more attention should be given to what is featured on the home page and how you expect people to use this site.

Megan, I think you are my best friend. Your critique is honest and extremely helpful. I really appreciate that. I will read your blog, talk to my coders and get back to you. I think you have opened my eyes to a few things that can make this site much better.

As far as my market goes, the ides was to develop a site that is aesthetically completely different from anything else around in our area. We are basically a newspaper site, but focusing on entertainment. I wanted to stay clear of anything that remotely looked like a news paper with the black text on white, and I really appreciate your comment, "garish design choice." Excellent word choices. Our site used to have a more standard left column navigation and use blue tones and have a white background. Before the redesign, we were getting about 700 unique visitors a day and roughly 2500 page views. Since the redesign, we lost some traffic, which is expected from the complete change, but we are getting a much higher page per visit ratio, about 10 to 1 now, which i think is good. So perhaps the layout and color do work, or at least better then it did before. Do you know what is considered good for pages per visitor ratio?

The style sheet system is the biggest obstacle. I will let you know later today after I go through everything with a fine tooth comb and read your blog...

Mucahs Gracias Senorita!

GR -- My Tech News Blog!

10 to 1 is a good ratio I think, although they could just be wandering around trying to find something of interest. It's hard to tell. I think you're right about the design choices in terms of avoiding a traditional newspaper layout. You'd definitely want something less boring than that.

I'm glad you appreciated my critique!

Quick question, rather then XHTML, what standard would you recommend for a php / mySql CMS based system?

xHTML 1.0 transitional for what you've got there. Maybe down to HTML 4.0 transitional until you can get it to validate. Eventually you'll want to get it into a strict doctype instead of transitional.

I'm going to have to do some research now to remember what exactly the problems are with xhtml 1.1. I think it has somethig to do with IE not being able to deliver it properly...

Please tell me what you find out. I work with several developers in the US, where I am located, and also in Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands, and they all tell me that the standard is XHTML. Check this site here and tell me what you think: http://www.webstandards.org.

But I have read some arguments about where the standards are going. Our new CMS system is creating a layout structure that is acceptable cross platform and is also based on the XHTML standard.

We finally completed the fist website utilizing the new cms and are in the process of converting Valley411.com to the new system, which should be cross browser compatible.

Thanks again for your input. Like your blog.

Greg