You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an alternative browser.
You should upgrade or use an alternative browser.
I revamped my website. Please tell me what you think.
- Thread starter Allen_Raiford
- Start date
Allen_Raiford
New member
I get over 100 hits in two hours, and no one has a comment to make? Hmmm.
Miss Demeanors
New member
Allen, I saw your site and think its very well done! Sadly my computer is java challenged, it froze up my computer and I had to reboot. When I am on my sisters computer then I can go back and see the rest of it. Looks great from what I saw!
------------------
Sandys' Homepage
RKBA forums
We are as one as we all are the same fighting for one cause -Metallica
------------------
Sandys' Homepage
RKBA forums
We are as one as we all are the same fighting for one cause -Metallica
Well, do you want an information architect's analysis?
The content is great -- I can see the purpose and I read it and educated myself a little about what happened (but I don't know what role the Pathfinder performed -- ?) I have no problem with the site and its design/layout.
Honestly, I feel bad criticizing the web design of someone who protected my country, but you asked. I hope you were looking for a straightforward answer. This is part of what I do for a living.
Let me apologise in advance if I tread on any toes, please.
So, here goes.
WARNING: Below lies a critical reading -- very nitpicky. If you don't like nitpicky stuff, don't read it.
------
1) Content-rich -- a lot of information! Needs to be split up a little bit.
2) Java loads and displays too slowly, even
on this PIII/500/128M. Don't need the java, could replace with static images. Doesn't add too much to presentation.
3) pageone.html (Home) is not the same as the menu.html, confusing viewers -- redundant? Why not just return to the home for the menu?
4) Hard to read blue-on-black -- for colourblind people (or contrast-sensitive people -- it even hurts my eyes after a while) it might be difficult to read.
Black background itself is a little difficult to read. Black and white is good; white on black is ok, too.
5) History page is hard to read and scan. Put in headings for each sub-section, preferably 10-words or so long with a brief description of what happens.
Also, have a chronological submenu at the top to let people jump ahead to whichever section they want. Could help by putting in context -- events that were happening in the US during those dates.
Break down those pages into some logical sequence: ("Stage I: The beginning, Stage II: Marilyn Monroe...")
6) Image section is fine, you might want to add "Page 1 of 4...2 of 4..." or something just to make it clear where the user is and how many pages remain.
Also, add a link to let the user return to the main menu during any of the images.
Finally, subheadings at the top of the first section might be helpful in communicating just how many images there are.
7) For the contacts section, put the email addresses of each contact in parentheses, just to make it obvious you aren't going to those people's pages.
i.e. "Joe Schmoe (jschmoe@wonderfuddy.com)"
Hope this was helpful.
-Jon
The content is great -- I can see the purpose and I read it and educated myself a little about what happened (but I don't know what role the Pathfinder performed -- ?) I have no problem with the site and its design/layout.
Honestly, I feel bad criticizing the web design of someone who protected my country, but you asked. I hope you were looking for a straightforward answer. This is part of what I do for a living.
Let me apologise in advance if I tread on any toes, please.
So, here goes.
WARNING: Below lies a critical reading -- very nitpicky. If you don't like nitpicky stuff, don't read it.
------
1) Content-rich -- a lot of information! Needs to be split up a little bit.
2) Java loads and displays too slowly, even
on this PIII/500/128M. Don't need the java, could replace with static images. Doesn't add too much to presentation.
3) pageone.html (Home) is not the same as the menu.html, confusing viewers -- redundant? Why not just return to the home for the menu?
4) Hard to read blue-on-black -- for colourblind people (or contrast-sensitive people -- it even hurts my eyes after a while) it might be difficult to read.
Black background itself is a little difficult to read. Black and white is good; white on black is ok, too.
5) History page is hard to read and scan. Put in headings for each sub-section, preferably 10-words or so long with a brief description of what happens.
Also, have a chronological submenu at the top to let people jump ahead to whichever section they want. Could help by putting in context -- events that were happening in the US during those dates.
Break down those pages into some logical sequence: ("Stage I: The beginning, Stage II: Marilyn Monroe...")
6) Image section is fine, you might want to add "Page 1 of 4...2 of 4..." or something just to make it clear where the user is and how many pages remain.
Also, add a link to let the user return to the main menu during any of the images.
Finally, subheadings at the top of the first section might be helpful in communicating just how many images there are.
7) For the contacts section, put the email addresses of each contact in parentheses, just to make it obvious you aren't going to those people's pages.
i.e. "Joe Schmoe (jschmoe@wonderfuddy.com)"
Hope this was helpful.
-Jon
Allen_Raiford
New member
Thanks Halogen. I'll look into your proposals.
Allen_Raiford
New member
I cleaned out some of the java crap, so it should load better now.
Ed Brunner
New member
I'm certainly not qualified to critique your site. Besides I really enjoyed it.
------------------
Better days to be,
Ed
------------------
Better days to be,
Ed
Your website contains superb content, stuff that I wish I would find more often in most Geocities pages.
The following are merely web design critiques. If you decide to never follow through any of these suggestions, that would be perfectly fine. However, if you do, I feel that you will experience a modest performance increase from both your site as well as any future web authoring endeavors you may have.
Actually, there's not too much I can say about it. Everything seems ship-shape.
For starters, my knee jerk reaction to seeing a geocities site usually induces a twitch in my right eye. To me, Geocities is the Hi-Point pistols of the free web server world: Cumbersome and slow, though reliable enough.
In this case however, I don't see any need to switch to another server since Geocities gets the job done just fine. If you ever get the inclination to switch, I recommend checking out the following URL: http://www.akolson.com/free/web.html . The best part is they are all free servers.
In any case, a generally slow server places additional pressure to design a website that is streamlined to be simple yet agile. This is especially true considering the target audience is most likely regular computer folks with modems rather than technocrats with either cable or DSL.
The first thing that hit me is the Home.html name. The default home pages are generally set to 'index.html'. In other words, if someone were to type in, 'http://www.geocities.com/teambravo/', the server would automatically load up index.html. Right now, if I were to type in the same thing, I would get a generic Geocities error message stating that the author has yet to begin building. From a design point of view, that might produce some confusion.
The patch image in the Home.html is frighteningly large. I recommend to crop it as small as you can without trimming the image and clean up the blackened area to make sure that the it is a single-colored solid black background. Then, recompress the image as .jpg again and, given the inherent texture of the image, it would be safe to take a 10% to 25% quality degradation and the image would still look just fine. You may or may not want to tweak with the quality setting for the rest of your photos. Sometimes I've managed to cut the size of an image to 1/4 of its original size through cropping and taking a small quality hit without any distinguishable qualty degradation to the naked eye.
From a pragmatic perspective, it would more efficient to combine pageone.html with menu.html. However, from a design perspective, you may disagree and that would be totally fine. If so, at least make it so the both the slogan and perhaps the images will also serve as a link to your menu page. As it currently stands, the menu link is small and dim by contrast, so I had to fish around for it. Perhaps that is the intended goal, but linking the slogan and image would be equally unobtrustive but much more intuitive.
Again, due to bandwidth and target audience considerations, I do not recommend using the plug-ins and java. And again, if you feel strongly about including it, then that's fine. However, if you feel they are indeed expendable, then ditch it. Being a slight bit of a purist, I am against using certin plug-ins and keep java use at a minimum. At this time, I get some java error messages on some pages (lost which ones), but I'm not positive as to the source of the error.
Finally, some of the links (particularly the Next page===> links) are not very intuitive or flexible. I don't have an immediate feel of where I am or where I'm headed when I click these. Also, I am not able to readily click to the previous page or head straight back to the menu page. Several suggestions can be made to quickly and easily alleviate this problem.
For one, you can duplicate the same format as your menu page, giving each page the entire list of relevant links in a column. Or, you can present a row of the same on the top and bottom of the page if you prefer. Given the relatively long length of these pages, perhaps the latter option would serve you better?
Incidentally, I highly recommend the use of anchors if your pages become more than 2 screens long. I know the convention is to split the pages. However, in my own personal experience, I have found that splitting pages can cause its own brand of problems, such as where to cut it and what to do if they end up too long or too short, not to mention having to organize all these pages. Anchors provide the same basic service as separate pages, but without of these design dilemmas. Of course, this is just my opinion.
Mr. Raiford, please forgive my overzealous ranting. Your website is exemplary; far superior to the typical sites I have gotten used to see and loathe on Geocities. If anything, I feel that such quality content deserve quality attention. My only intention is to help serve you in any capacity that I am able. Thank you.
The following are merely web design critiques. If you decide to never follow through any of these suggestions, that would be perfectly fine. However, if you do, I feel that you will experience a modest performance increase from both your site as well as any future web authoring endeavors you may have.
Actually, there's not too much I can say about it. Everything seems ship-shape.
For starters, my knee jerk reaction to seeing a geocities site usually induces a twitch in my right eye. To me, Geocities is the Hi-Point pistols of the free web server world: Cumbersome and slow, though reliable enough.
In this case however, I don't see any need to switch to another server since Geocities gets the job done just fine. If you ever get the inclination to switch, I recommend checking out the following URL: http://www.akolson.com/free/web.html . The best part is they are all free servers.
In any case, a generally slow server places additional pressure to design a website that is streamlined to be simple yet agile. This is especially true considering the target audience is most likely regular computer folks with modems rather than technocrats with either cable or DSL.
The first thing that hit me is the Home.html name. The default home pages are generally set to 'index.html'. In other words, if someone were to type in, 'http://www.geocities.com/teambravo/', the server would automatically load up index.html. Right now, if I were to type in the same thing, I would get a generic Geocities error message stating that the author has yet to begin building. From a design point of view, that might produce some confusion.
The patch image in the Home.html is frighteningly large. I recommend to crop it as small as you can without trimming the image and clean up the blackened area to make sure that the it is a single-colored solid black background. Then, recompress the image as .jpg again and, given the inherent texture of the image, it would be safe to take a 10% to 25% quality degradation and the image would still look just fine. You may or may not want to tweak with the quality setting for the rest of your photos. Sometimes I've managed to cut the size of an image to 1/4 of its original size through cropping and taking a small quality hit without any distinguishable qualty degradation to the naked eye.
From a pragmatic perspective, it would more efficient to combine pageone.html with menu.html. However, from a design perspective, you may disagree and that would be totally fine. If so, at least make it so the both the slogan and perhaps the images will also serve as a link to your menu page. As it currently stands, the menu link is small and dim by contrast, so I had to fish around for it. Perhaps that is the intended goal, but linking the slogan and image would be equally unobtrustive but much more intuitive.
Again, due to bandwidth and target audience considerations, I do not recommend using the plug-ins and java. And again, if you feel strongly about including it, then that's fine. However, if you feel they are indeed expendable, then ditch it. Being a slight bit of a purist, I am against using certin plug-ins and keep java use at a minimum. At this time, I get some java error messages on some pages (lost which ones), but I'm not positive as to the source of the error.
Finally, some of the links (particularly the Next page===> links) are not very intuitive or flexible. I don't have an immediate feel of where I am or where I'm headed when I click these. Also, I am not able to readily click to the previous page or head straight back to the menu page. Several suggestions can be made to quickly and easily alleviate this problem.
For one, you can duplicate the same format as your menu page, giving each page the entire list of relevant links in a column. Or, you can present a row of the same on the top and bottom of the page if you prefer. Given the relatively long length of these pages, perhaps the latter option would serve you better?
Incidentally, I highly recommend the use of anchors if your pages become more than 2 screens long. I know the convention is to split the pages. However, in my own personal experience, I have found that splitting pages can cause its own brand of problems, such as where to cut it and what to do if they end up too long or too short, not to mention having to organize all these pages. Anchors provide the same basic service as separate pages, but without of these design dilemmas. Of course, this is just my opinion.
Mr. Raiford, please forgive my overzealous ranting. Your website is exemplary; far superior to the typical sites I have gotten used to see and loathe on Geocities. If anything, I feel that such quality content deserve quality attention. My only intention is to help serve you in any capacity that I am able. Thank you.
Allen_Raiford
New member
Great suggestions. Thank you all for the help.