need an advice ( new site )

U

uriel

First I would like you to check the site I need help with...

its on Croatian, but since I am concerned with the design that should
not be a problem :)

link: www.spreha.net


now.... the site is about nightlife in my city, and some topics for
young people... nothing fancy :)

my question is... is the design a bit to static or boring?

i was thinking, maybe it is a bit too static and that I should make
some changes...

would a width of 1024 pixels be to much? ( 800 now) I want to get some
space for one column on the right, so I can put some more stuff.
i was also thinking to put some suptile flash animation in it to make
it a bit less static. For example, animate the logo to burn (the
burning smiley with horns :) ).

Thanks in advance to anyone who helps.
 
B

Barbara de Zoete


That page has some problems:

1. It is nearly a 100kB whithout the external images that is. Just the text and
markup. That is waaaaaayy too much, believe me. Anyone on dial-up could have
told you so.
2. It relies heavily on javascript. An increasingly large amount of people does
not have javascript active while browsing. One of the important visitors
whithout it is Google BTW.
3. It has a fixed width design. See
<http://www.google.com/search?q=fluid+OR+liquid+design>
4. It abused tables for lay out. See
<http://www.google.com/search?q=tablesless+design>
5. When opened whithout images, all the visitor gets to see it a viewport with
many images that don't mean a thing because there is no alt text. Presuming the
visitor waited for the entire large page to load, s/he has to scroll down to
find out what it's all about.
6. It also fails to valid, but with only two exceptions that's because of all
the missing als texts.

Now, deal with these first. Only then spice up the page a bit. If you do it the
other way around, chance is that any visitors you might attract in the mean
time, will never come back because of usability problems, accessibility problems
and too long a download time.

--
,-- --<--@ -- PretLetters: 'woest wyf', met vele interesses: ----------.
| weblog | http://home.wanadoo.nl/b.de.zoete/_private/weblog.html |
| webontwerp | http://home.wanadoo.nl/b.de.zoete/html/webontwerp.html |
|zweefvliegen | http://home.wanadoo.nl/b.de.zoete/html/vliegen.html |
`-------------------------------------------------- --<--@ ------------'
 
B

Barbara de Zoete

What's wrong with fixed-width design?!?!

Plenty of good sites use it, and some designs will only work well with a
fixed width design

Did you check any of the links from the Google SERP that comes with the above
search query? Read them and you'll have your answer.







(Hint: my screen has a resolution of 1024x768, but the viewport I use to browse
in is 655x436. What does that do to your design you think? It means a large part
of your page is hidden and can only be reached by using the scrollbar for
horizontal scroll. I hate that. And with me, many others will not stay with your
pages unless that _have_ to. They'll find a page that adapts to their viewport
in stead of them having to adapt their viewport to yout page.)

--
,-- --<--@ -- PretLetters: 'woest wyf', met vele interesses: ----------.
| weblog | http://home.wanadoo.nl/b.de.zoete/_private/weblog.html |
| webontwerp | http://home.wanadoo.nl/b.de.zoete/html/webontwerp.html |
|zweefvliegen | http://home.wanadoo.nl/b.de.zoete/html/vliegen.html |
`-------------------------------------------------- --<--@ ------------'
 
S

Stimp

Did you check any of the links from the Google SERP that comes with the above
search query? Read them and you'll have your answer.

(Hint: my screen has a resolution of 1024x768, but the viewport I use to browse
in is 655x436. What does that do to your design you think? It means a large part
of your page is hidden and can only be reached by using the scrollbar for
horizontal scroll. I hate that. And with me, many others will not stay with your
pages unless that _have_ to. They'll find a page that adapts to their viewport
in stead of them having to adapt their viewport to yout page.)

to be honest, you're in a tiny minority of net users.

Most people can use the 800 x 600 layouts without a problem.
 
E

Els

Stimp said:
to be honest, you're in a tiny minority of net users.

Most people can use the 800 x 600 layouts without a problem.

How do you know that? Does your access log tell you how wide the
window is that people use to look at your site? Does it tell you what
it was that made the visitor give up after a short while? Do you have
a script on your page that magically tells you which of your visitors
went to visit a different site after spending a short time on yours?

Have you also thought about the people with bad eyesight who need to
increase the font size, and get really short sentences cause your page
doesn't wanna go wider than 800px, even though they have bought a
large 23inch monitor set to 1600x1200?
 
H

Hywel Jenkins

That page has some problems:

1. It is nearly a 100kB whithout the external images that is. Just the text and
markup. That is waaaaaayy too much, believe me. Anyone on dial-up could have
told you so.

Hmmm. I suspect the creators of Doom 3 were thinking along similar
lines when they were working, too. "See, boyo, we've got to think about
shitty old PCs that are still running at 100mHz. Can't make use of
newer technologies because there's someone out in Back'o'beyond that
hasn't upgraded from Windows 3.0 yet."

2. It relies heavily on javascript. An increasingly large amount of people does
not have javascript active while browsing.

Statistics? Lies? Evidence?

One of the important visitors
whithout it is Google BTW.

It uses JS for image rollovers. I tried it with Firefox, JS-disabled,
and it seemed fine.


Yawn.
 
B

Barbara de Zoete


So? 'Sinning' against a good principle doesn't make the principle less good. It
just means I'm a 'sinner'.

--
,-- --<--@ -- PretLetters: 'woest wyf', met vele interesses: ----------.
| weblog | http://home.wanadoo.nl/b.de.zoete/_private/weblog.html |
| webontwerp | http://home.wanadoo.nl/b.de.zoete/html/webontwerp.html |
|zweefvliegen | http://home.wanadoo.nl/b.de.zoete/html/vliegen.html |
`-------------------------------------------------- --<--@ ------------'
 
L

Leif K-Brooks

Stimp said:
Most people can use the 800 x 600 layouts without a problem.

Do you think I have a 1280px-wide browser window because I want to have
480px of wasted space?
 
A

Arne

Once said:
That page has some problems:

1. It is nearly a 100kB whithout the external images that is. Just the text and
markup. That is waaaaaayy too much, believe me. Anyone on dial-up could have
told you so.

Where do you see those 100kB for text and markup? I see only 10,49kB
(10741 bytes) but the total of images is 107kB and that makes the
total for the page way to much. :)

2. It relies heavily on javascript. An increasingly large amount of people does
not have javascript active while browsing. One of the important visitors
whithout it is Google BTW.

Works just fine with JS disabled (as I could see) and that makes me
wonder why all that JS is there? I could not see anything change when
I enabled JS. Apparently the page is done with Dremviewer that seams
to put in the "mouseover" script, whenever it's needed or not.
 
A

Arne

Once said:
It uses JS for image rollovers. I tried it with Firefox, JS-disabled,
and it seemed fine.

Did you see any rollovers on the page? I don't and I wonder what the
JS is there for? Dremviewer seams to put in a lot of script, whenever
it's needed or not.
 
B

Barbara de Zoete

Where do you see those 100kB for text and markup? I see only 10,49kB
(10741 bytes) but the total of images is 107kB and that makes the
total for the page way to much. :)

Really? Makes me wounder. I get a page that is 91901kB on its own.
Works just fine with JS disabled (as I could see)

Hmm. Perhaps only if the images are there. I browse without them too. Without js
or images enabled, it's anyones guess where the links or the menu are at.


--
,-- --<--@ -- PretLetters: 'woest wyf', met vele interesses: ----------.
| weblog | http://home.wanadoo.nl/b.de.zoete/_private/weblog.html |
| webontwerp | http://home.wanadoo.nl/b.de.zoete/html/webontwerp.html |
|zweefvliegen | http://home.wanadoo.nl/b.de.zoete/html/vliegen.html |
`-------------------------------------------------- --<--@ ------------'
 
J

Joel Shepherd

Barbara de Zoete said:
So? 'Sinning' against a good principle doesn't make the principle less good.
It just means I'm a 'sinner'.

It also tends to make both you and the principle seem less
authoritative. Why should a newbie think they have a decent chance of
pulling off a truly fluid design -- or think that it's even of value to
do so -- if the person they look to for advice can't do it?

Something is amiss. Maybe fluid design is not as easy as just saying
"make your design fluid", in which case people having discouraged from
it deserve a bit of sympathy.

Incidentally, that page has some real width problems when viewed in
Safari: fully half the page is off the right edge of my browser window
(which is roughly 700px wide at the moment). It appears the search
(Zoek?) box may be responsible, as it's hanging out by its lonesome on
the right, floating in a rather wide sea of blue.
 
M

Michael Winter

Once upon a time *Barbara de Zoete* wrote:
[snip]
1. It is nearly a 100kB whithout the external images that is. Just
the text and markup. That is waaaaaayy too much, believe me. Anyone
on dial-up could have told you so.

As a dial-up user, I'd say that 100kB is fine, but that would be
everything, including images. As it is, the site is exceeding 200kB. Of
course, that's only if the document renders incrementally. Sitting
there, seeing only the start of a header for thirty seconds isn't
acceptable to me.
Where do you see those 100kB for text and markup? I see only 10,49kB
(10741 bytes) [...]

Mozilla isn't reporting the size correctly. Copy the source code, save
it, then look at the file size. It's 90kB.

[snip]

Mike
 
M

Michael Winter

1. It is nearly a 100kB whithout the external images that is. [...]

Hmmm. I suspect the creators of Doom 3 were thinking along similar
lines when they were working, too.

What is the OP using that justifies that file size, though?

It's Dreamweaver code bloat. Nothing more.

[snip]

Mike
 
B

Barbara de Zoete

It also tends to make both you and the principle seem less
authoritative.

Well, I wasn't the one bringing that page up. I merely pointed to a Google SERP
on the subject, because over there the whys and do's and don'ts can be found.
Why should a newbie think they have a decent chance of
pulling off a truly fluid design

What is a truly fluid design? You mean no restrictions (max or min width) what
so ever?
Mine flows between a min and a max width. The max is there because I don't want
the lines with text to get too long in a wide viewport (or should I say: some of
my visitors like it better this way; at least this is what they asked for when
it wasn't there). The min is there because, hmm. I don't know. Because I
experimented with it. My site is always an ongoing experiment. At least, the
styles are.
-- or think that it's even of value to
do so -- if the person they look to for advice can't do it?

Well, 'can't'? It's not that I can't, although my pages don't show that at the
moment. It's something I didn't. Besides that: I didn't refer to my site. I
referred to a less involved party: Google. Through a search query I intended to
let others speak.
Something is amiss. Maybe fluid design is not as easy as just saying
"make your design fluid",

I agree if it involves more than (almost) pure text as content. If some
eleborate graphical content is prominently in the viewport and needs to be shown
in one explicite and exclusive way, well... That's a whole different world
alltogether. Probably best resolve to broadcasting it on TV in that case, or
print a book.
in which case people having discouraged from
it deserve a bit of sympathy.

No, not really. All depends on the whys, hows. I really believe that creating
liquid pages should be the goal, especially if text is the main content and
graphics are just there for decoration and looks. In experimenting I created a
design for my private homepage that is only partially fluid, mainly because some
users asked me to do so (at least the max width). It isn't said I agree with
this or that I'll stick to it. :)

I always get some responses to my site and to the design too, not just the
content. Not from here, but from actual visitors.
Before I had the response: The text is running too wide (in my full screen
100px wide viewport, which never got mentioned). When I got that twice, I
responded by setting a max width. Since then I got no user complaints.
Incidentally, that page has some real width problems when viewed in
Safari:

Thanks for mentioning that. I'll look into it. You're probably right about that
search box. When I get some real complaints from real visitors that come there
for the content, I'll act on it too. :)

No, really. It's likely I will create some new look pretty soon (because I like
to do that every once in a while). Then this problem is (hopefully) resolved.
Also some new problems are likely to emerge with that new design. They always
do. Isn't life fun :)

--
,-- --<--@ -- PretLetters: 'woest wyf', met vele interesses: ----------.
| weblog | http://home.wanadoo.nl/b.de.zoete/_private/weblog.html |
| webontwerp | http://home.wanadoo.nl/b.de.zoete/html/webontwerp.html |
|zweefvliegen | http://home.wanadoo.nl/b.de.zoete/html/vliegen.html |
`-------------------------------------------------- --<--@ ------------'
 
A

Arne

Once said:
Once upon a time *Barbara de Zoete* wrote:
[snip]
1. It is nearly a 100kB whithout the external images that is. Just
the text and markup. That is waaaaaayy too much, believe me. Anyone
on dial-up could have told you so.

As a dial-up user, I'd say that 100kB is fine, but that would be
everything, including images. As it is, the site is exceeding 200kB. Of
course, that's only if the document renders incrementally. Sitting
there, seeing only the start of a header for thirty seconds isn't
acceptable to me.
Where do you see those 100kB for text and markup? I see only 10,49kB
(10741 bytes) [...]

Mozilla isn't reporting the size correctly. Copy the source code, save
it, then look at the file size. It's 90kB.

You are absolutely right! Strange, not even the Web Page Analyzer
report correctly and Mozilla report the same size as WPA. What's
causing this?
 
B

Beauregard T. Shagnasty

Michael said:
Once upon a time *Barbara de Zoete* wrote: [snip]
1. It is nearly a 100kB whithout the external images that is. Just
the text and markup. That is waaaaaayy too much, believe me. Anyone
on dial-up could have told you so.

As a dial-up user, I'd say that 100kB is fine, but that would be
everything, including images. As it is, the site is exceeding 200kB. ...
Where do you see those 100kB for text and markup? I see only 10,49kB
(10741 bytes) [...]

Mozilla isn't reporting the size correctly. Copy the source code, save
it, then look at the file size. It's 90kB.

This should settle it, eh? <g>

http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/

Global Statistics
Total HTTP Requests: 61
Total Size: 118613 bytes

Object Size Totals
Object type Size (bytes)
HTML: 10740
HTML Images: 107873
CSS Images: 0
Total Images: 107873
 

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