Web site I am working on...

Community Forums/Graphic Chat/Web site I am working on...

Picklesworth(Posted 2006) [#1]
I think it's a bit more pretty now, I have full IE support, and the site passed the w3 validator!
<Here it is>

The web site viewing end of things has been finished for the most part, with the only bit remaining being the now much more complicated admin segment and a bit of cleaning up / behind the scenes continuity.
Some pages' content is a bit bland looking because they haven't yet had their html changed over to match the new CSS. This won't be done until the admin section is working so I can just redo all the content from there both as a final test and to get the file permissions right.
I'm thinking of adding bullets to the sidebar News list, and filtering items by date in that section will be a final touch once the admin portion is changed to name items by date. I am trying to decide if I should sort news items by date or just in pages numbered from 1, since some of them aren't really time sensitive.

Two new banners have been added, giving me a nice round total of 6. Only one banner image I don't like (the one with a grayish background), which I may remove even though I didn't make it.
Other than that, all the banner images are made by me. (Though I wish I could say the really grainy one with light brown wasn't).
I'm a disappointed about the compression, especially on the parrot banners. Any tips for either getting transparent images other than GIFs working in IE or making a nice background that I can trust to always look the same around the banner? Does that Transparent image attribute in HTML still work, perhaps? I looked for it on Google and couldn't find it, and even if I did, I would need to find some kind of mask colour setting to go along with it.


Enough rambling.
What do you think of it?
Anything I should add, fix, remove, or be be yelled at for?


Thanks in advance!


WendellM(Posted 2006) [#2]
It looks good to me. Contact Us and Links don't work, though?


N(Posted 2006) [#3]
What kind of parrot is that with the red beak and orange feathers? I was thinking it was a sun conure at first, but the beaks don't match at all..

Site looks ok, only gripe I have is the use of the P-whatsitcalled font for the menu items. However, that's not really a problem, just a matter of personal taste.


WendellM(Posted 2006) [#4]
Just out of curiosity (I have this thing about fonts), what P-something menu font do you mean, Noel? For me, most everything shows up as MS Sans/Arial with Trebuchet headers, except for the bitmap art at top (Tempus Sans and Avant Garde) and bitmap "Donate Now" at left (Optima). Browsers do vary, though (for me, the big links at the top are Times in Mozilla, while they're Arial in IE):

Mozilla:


Internet Explorer:



Picklesworth(Posted 2006) [#5]
Thanks for the font comments.
I guess I should start looking for another one... or use image maps :/
I was thinking it would be a bit dangerous to be using that font since it's a bit obscure and not everyone has it.

The parrot in that image is a wet lovebird drying itself in the sun.


mrtricks(Posted 2006) [#6]
Looks nice!


Red Ocktober(Posted 2006) [#7]
yeah... the site is inviting, seems easily navigable, and well laid out...

--Mike


N(Posted 2006) [#8]
The parrot in that image is a wet lovebird drying itself in the sun.

Doesn't look like any lovebird I've seen. O.o

WendellM: I found it, it's called Papyrus. I have a particular hatred of it.


xlsior(Posted 2006) [#9]
I have full IE support, and the site passed the w3 validator!


You'd be surprised how often those two things are mutually exclusive...


Genexi2(Posted 2006) [#10]
You'd be surprised how often those two things are mutually exclusive...


Tell me about it....everything looks fine in the good browsers, on IE, all horridly broken until you toss in a few little tweaks that doesn't affect the other browsers, but fixes it all in IE (well, sort of), and still passes validation.
(I use XHTML1.0 Strict here, so more of a PITA for me getting it right in IE)

Site looks fine here in Firefox, I'm also in the same boat as Noel regarding fonts, possibly use 1bit-transparent PNG/GIFs instead?

Also, one thing that's a bit of a niggle to me, is the right-column, the way you did the links, just, ugh, see here to find out why I do. It just looks less professional with the way it currently is imo.


Picklesworth(Posted 2006) [#11]
Also, one thing that's a bit of a niggle to me, is the right-column, the way you did the links, just, ugh, see here to find out why I do.
Got it :)
I guess I could provide more information if I remove "click here", anyhow.
I didn't know web sites had their own grammar rules :P


VP(Posted 2006) [#12]
Instead of the "click here" you could make it obvious that that particular area of the page is for articles. You could then make the article title a hyperlink to the rest of the article, or you could break the article text with ellipses and provide a "read more" link to the article.

A heading of "Articles" for that section might be a good way of delineating that area from the rest of the page. Perhaps making it a hyperlink to the page containing more articles.

If there are going to be a fairly large number of articles, consider adding a hyperlink from the top menu, i.e. "Home Contact Us Links Articles".

BTW, I like the site ;)