page critique

[Larry D]

I have a page at https://www.ccmeonline.org/online_application.shtml the
looks OK in most browsers, tho a little sloppy in Opera 8.5 but someone sent
me a screenshot at https://www.ccmeonline.org/images/screenshot.bmp which
shows text overtop some prices. I checked with the user and she also has XP
with IE6 SP1, same resolution, text size on medium. Any ideas what is wrong?
And a critique of the site would be good also.

Larry

[Beauregard T. Shagnasty]

Larry D wrote:

I have a page at https://www.ccmeonline.org/online_application.shtml
the looks OK in most browsers, tho a little sloppy in Opera 8.5 but
someone sent me a screenshot at https://www.ccmeonline.org/images/screenshot.bmp
which shows text overtop some prices. I checked with the user and she
also has XP with IE6 SP1, same resolution, text size on medium. Any
ideas what is wrong? And a critique of the site would be good also.

Does the same as your .bmp for me, in Firefox, when I increase the text
size a click or two. I'm not sure how to tell you to fix it in a few
sentences.

I'll add this, regarding the form:

The "Sponsorship/Exhibitor Opportunities". Do you want all four price
levels to be selectable? Or should that be a radio button?

I'd rather see some white space between fields. I would also make the
radio buttons at the mid-right default blank, and then check to see if
one or the other is ticked. My experience is that people frequently
don't change default settings, but will pick something if it's blank.

I'd use a textbox for the street address.
I'd use a larger comment box.
I'd make the whole page float to fit the browser window (giving you the
white space that I prefer, eh?).

I might even do it in just one column, so users don't have to scroll
back up to continue.

--
-bts
-Warning: I brake for lawn deer

[Jim Moe]

Larry D wrote:

I have a page at https://www.ccmeonline.org/online_application.shtml the
looks OK in most browsers, tho a little sloppy in Opera 8.5 but someone sent
me a screenshot at https://www.ccmeonline.org/images/screenshot.bmp which
shows text overtop some prices. I checked with the user and she also has XP
with IE6 SP1, same resolution, text size on medium. Any ideas what is wrong?
And a critique of the site would be good also.

Looking at the screen shot, I'd say there is a font rendering problem.
While the browser settings are the same, I doubt the monitor, video
adapter and video driver are the same as yours. Font smoothing may be
disabled. All of these have an effect on how text is displayed.
You use px, pt, em and % to specify font-size. Such lack of consistency
has obscure side effects. % works best for IE.

You use 13px for the body font. That is 72% of my preferred font size
of 18px. To offset such designer gaffes, I set my browser's minimum font
size to 15px so I have only have to squint a little to read the text. The
side effect of this is that many sites, such as yours, looks rather poorly
laid out because the text flows outside the inflexible bounds you imposed.
There is no reason for your site to have a fixed width. You should
correct the validation errors, they are relatively minor. Only a few style
changes are needed to remove the rigid structure (#frame width, #center
width).

--
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