Would love all feedback on TechRemedies.com

pteglia's picture

He has: 13 posts

Joined: Sep 2004

Hi All, I am back with another of my sites (I have far too many Smile )

Please visit http://techremedies.temp.powweb.com and let me know what you all think.

This site is a total CSS layout, and I think I have checked every page for validation on XHTML 1.0 Trans and CSS.

It is built on top of Mambo, the new version, which actually outputs good XHTML now Smile

Thanks a bundle,

Pat Teglia
http://ptwebdev.com
http://techremedies.com
http://dragonroasted.comTechRemedies.com

PTWebDev.com
Great logos and web design from Port Townsend, WA

Megan's picture

She has: 11,421 posts

Joined: Jun 1999

Not a whole lot to say here, it looks really nice, businesslike and professional without being totally unoriginal. There is something wrong with the navbar on Opera. It looks like the buttons are cut off on the left side.

You've also got problems with horizontal scrolling here. Use flexible widths so it will scale to fit the screen width. What's the point of having two navbars with the same items? There's also something wrong with the drop-down sub navigation In IE the text is bright red and there are some weird things going on with borders in all three browsers I checked. I think that font is also too small to look good.

From a business perspective, I think the whole first half of the site is way too generic. This could be 50 million other sites. The reader doesn't find out what you actually DO until the bullet points under the photo. If they've got a lot of browser chrome at 800 x 600 they won't see that at all.

Your designs are really good, Pat, but I don't understand why you feel the need to go with a three-column layout even when you don't have anything to PUT IN the third column.

pteglia's picture

He has: 13 posts

Joined: Sep 2004

Hi Megan,

Thanks for your review. Yeah, the nav bar looks funky in Opera, I knew that one. I am considering removing it altogether and using a spicier menu on the left.

On the drop-down in IE, I was trying to use the :before css with content: "<< " to indicate a submenu, but aparently IE doesn't understand either the :before, or the content tag, not sure which, I just know it comes out looking crappy in that browser.

I can't use flexible width and have my design look formatted. It just doesn't work when I use a headliner graphic, which I really like. What I am considering is a way to utilize Flash to make my header graphic scale with the screen width. I was trying to do that before, and it seemed to be working, however it wouldn't scale vertically correctly and let the text flow below it. I think I just got an answer to that one on another forum however, so I might put it back to flexible.

I have looked at my site on Mac and Windows on IE, Firefox, Moz, and Opera, and I see no "weird things" going on with borders. Could you explain what you are seeing so I can fix it?

I think the "What I do" part will be addressed with the Flash intro as well. Aside from that I wouldn't know of a better place to put what I do. And it is there, boldly stated in bullets what I do, even if it is below the image, it is the first text they come to after the headline. I think that is pretty standard, isn't it?

About making it look less generic, boy, I don't know. I didn't think I was going generic, I thought I was going elegant/simple (another reason I am considering removing the nav.)

I do have my NewsFlash in the third column. Does that not appear in your browser?

Pat

PTWebDev.com
Great logos and web design from Port Townsend, WA

QiSoftware's picture

They have: 20 posts

Joined: Sep 2004

Hi --

Tested on Mac IE and Opera. Mac IE client ok -- the problem overall is the font looks weak. Mac Opera looks great, except for the menu as the other review indicated.

Q...

They have: 16 posts

Joined: Jan 2004

you did a good job.. clean easy to follow

He has: 1,758 posts

Joined: Jul 2002

Change your favicon.ico It's currently showing the Mambo logo!

Theres a brilliant tool at the URL that will convert any square image into a favicon!

http://www.html-kit.com/e/favicon.cgi

Andy

Busy's picture

He has: 6,151 posts

Joined: May 2001

The horz scroll at 800x600 is a bit of a pain. I'd loose the 3rd column as already suggested.

Hard to work out where your links are, your using different colour and styles (bold etc) of fonts so is very hard to make out. You only have the one text link on the index page, oops 2 links, just found another one. Maybe underline them and no underline on hover. The services page is a good example, the bottom list item isn't a link yet looks like the others.

I was looking for an actual drop down (mention previously) but couldn't find any.
Since you have the side navigation the top one isn't needed.
Site looks way better in mozilla than IE, in IE (6) the fonts are big and side sub navigation is red links (as already mentioned).

The bottom of every page looks cut off, maybe add a footer - copyright notice, contact details or something to show it's the end of the page

If you can do the changes without the flash I think you'd be better off for it. IMO flash shouldn't be used where your target is newbies. Puters don't come with flash installed and most people that don't know much about the web (people your targeting) wont download plugins etc, so to them they see a broken site. I'm not a newbie but I don't have flash, I'm a dial-up users and since flash has been abused so much (500kb slash screens), I like many others choose not to enable flash. As the story goes, if they can't find it on your site, millions of others out there ...

Overall nice design

They have: 4 posts

Joined: Oct 2004

i find the site straightforward .

i would like to see more ex of how you can help improve site .

chad

http://www.freelancewell.com

arwld's picture

They have: 6 posts

Joined: Oct 2004

Looks good.
I think your piggie on the services page could be a tad smaller and
your area for text a liitle wider.
So you dont have to move the page down to finish reading :eek:

Wish you had more traffic?
Try Traffic Genie

reciprocal_link's picture

He has: 13 posts

Joined: Oct 2004

the site looks great.. Easy to navigate.. The pictures loaded good.. My only thing I would have to say is that its not optimized 800x600 pixels. Dsl here so the load time was real fast.. For dial up cant answer that lol..

reciprocal_link's picture

He has: 13 posts

Joined: Oct 2004

I can not figure out why people are so stuck on these other browsers.. I check server logs all the time and find that the majority of the users that go to my websites use the following:
I.E. 5.5. & 6
Netscape 6 -7.2
Opera has very small %
web tv " would have thought people would have thrown that away a long time ago" very small %

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