Site finished, comments appreciated

[Florian Brucker]

Hi!

With the help of this group I finally managed to transfer my website
from table layout to CSS layout. The site is now online and I would
really appreciate comments about it.

I'm interested in things like
- usability
- accessibility
- CSS coding style
- overall style

I'm not interested in comments like "This will not work in browser XY"
or any other, non-standard specific, platform/browser-related problems,
though.

The page can be found at http://torfbold.com
CSS: http://torfbold.com/style.css
Thanks in advance & have a nice weekend,
Florian

[Neal]

On Fri, 05 Nov 2004 18:54:33 +0100, Florian Brucker <to**@torfbold.com>
wrote:

The page can be found at http://torfbold.com
CSS: http://torfbold.com/style.css

Right off the bat - horizontal scrollbar at viewport widths below 1000px.
Lose the fixed width, allow it to go down to at least 600px. When I do
scroll right, the fixed menu on the left covers some of the content.

Really need to prevent these issues.

In IE, the content is awfully low, doesn't match what it does in Opera and
Firefox. (Yeah, yeah.)

Aside from that, the design is attractive, except for the burp in IE.

[jmm-list-gn]

Florian Brucker wrote:

I'm interested in things like
- usability

The link hover background color on the left menu makes the menu item
text impossible to read. Maybe change the foreground color to a light blue?
Very attractive design!

--
jmm dash list (at) sohnen-moe (dot) com
(Remove .AXSPAMGN for email)

[Florian Brucker]

Hi!

The link hover background color on the left menu makes the menu item
text impossible to read. Maybe change the foreground color to a light blue? I changed it to white :)
Very attractive design!

Thanks, and thank you for the color tip!

Florian
--
Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.
Unless he doesn't like sushi-then you also have to
teach him to cook. (Auren Hoffman, Herald Philosopher)
[------------ http://www.torfbold.com - POV-Ray gallery ------------]

[Florian Brucker]

>> The page can be found at http://torfbold.com

CSS: http://torfbold.com/style.css

Right off the bat - horizontal scrollbar at viewport widths below 1000px.
Lose the fixed width, allow it to go down to at least 600px. When I do
scroll right, the fixed menu on the left covers some of the content.
Ouch, you're right. Didn't even test that once :(

I found a fix for the fixed width, but it behaves very different in
Mozilla and Opera: In Mozilla the content section gets smaller when you
resize the viewport. Opera however won't resize it at all.

For the second issue (scrolling right makes content cover the menu) I
could not find a fix, though. What I need is a method to apply the
position:fixed attribute for y-movement, only (so that the menu will
scroll in x-direction together with the viewport). Is there a way to
achieve such behaviour?
Aside from that, the design is attractive, except for the burp in IE.

Thanks!
Thanks a lot for your tips,
Florian
--
Give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day. Give a man religion, and
he'll starve to death while praying for a fish. (Author unkown)
[------------ http://www.torfbold.com - POV-Ray gallery ------------]

[PDannyD]

on Friday 05 November 2004 17:54, Florian Brucker <to**@torfbold.com> wrote
in message <2v*************@uni-berlin.de>

Hi!

With the help of this group I finally managed to transfer my website
from table layout to CSS layout. The site is now online and I would
really appreciate comments about it.

I'm interested in things like
- usability
- accessibility
- CSS coding style
- overall style

I've not tested it thoroughly but it looks nice on Opera7.54 running on
Mandrake9.2

I'd make that large leaf paler though. It's nice but too brash for a
background with overlying text.

--
FZS600 - Silver/Black
GS125 - Black/Rust
Ford 100E Prefect - Black, naturally
Whisky - Aberlour Cask Strength

[Brian]

Florian Brucker wrote:

The site is now online and I would really appreciate comments
about it.

The page can be found at http://torfbold.com

Your site also uses
http://torfbold.com/index.php?main=Home
when the user selects the "home" link, which brings up two complaints:
you should avoid using 2 urls for the same document, and there should
not be a link on the home page to the home page.

Nitpicks: lose the "valid" buttons on the bottom. They are out of place.

The visuals are nice. You might want to bump that leaf over a few
pixels; the top doesn't seem to match up between the content and nav parts.

--
Brian (remove "invalid" to email me)

[Florian Brucker]

> Your site also uses

http://torfbold.com/index.php?main=Home
when the user selects the "home" link, which brings up two complaints:
you should avoid using 2 urls for the same document, and there should
not be a link on the home page to the home page. I fixed both issues and also removed the circular links on the other pages.
Nitpicks: lose the "valid" buttons on the bottom. They are out of place. Could you explain why? I see them as a service to my visitors (in
combination with http://torfbold.com/index.php?main=About&sub=Website),
especially the ones which don't know about valid html/css and the
existance of the W3C validator.
The visuals are nice. Thanks!
You might want to bump that leaf over a few pixels;
the top doesn't seem to match up between the content and nav parts.

I'm not sure I understood you correctly, but I made the top of the nav
list match the top of the content header. Is that what you suggested?
Thanks for your comments!
Florian
--
Better to rule in Hell than to serve in Heaven. (Milton)
[------------ http://www.torfbold.com - POV-Ray gallery ------------]

[Florian Brucker]

> I've not tested it thoroughly but it looks nice on Opera7.54 running on

Mandrake9.2 Thanks!
I'd make that large leaf paler though. It's nice but too brash for a
background with overlying text.

He, I thought everybody would complain about the text being hard to read
due to the leaf, but you're the first :) But of course you're right, and
I hope it's easier now to read the text.
Thanks for your comments!
Florian
--
Minimum Requirement #1: You get up with Userfriendly.Org
(WEB.DE help-wanted ad: Linux Guru)
[------------ http://www.torfbold.com - POV-Ray gallery ------------]

[Neal]

On Sun, 07 Nov 2004 11:49:33 +0100, Florian Brucker <to**@torfbold.com>
wrote:

Nitpicks: lose the "valid" buttons on the bottom. They are out of place.

Could you explain why? I see them as a service to my visitors (in
combination with http://torfbold.com/index.php?main=About&sub=Website),
especially the ones which don't know about valid html/css and the
existance of the W3C validator.

Consider a sign on the back of someone's car reading "My brakes work!" Now
either it's true or not. If it is, you exercise normal caution and keep a
safe distance. If not, it's meaningless to those behind that car; it's the
car in front who needs to know!

Saying your code is valid is like wearing a button that says "I brushed my
teeth today" - unless you're involved in oral health awareness, there's no
good reason to wear the button.

The W3C icons are meaningless to someone who doesn't know about validation
and why it's important - your visitors especially. It's not relevant to
the content of your site. If you want to tell the world about how much you
follow the recommendations, have an "about this site' page where this is
mentioned.

[Stephen Poley]

On Sun, 07 Nov 2004 12:33:05 -0500, Neal <ne*****@yahoo.com> wrote:

On Sun, 07 Nov 2004 11:49:33 +0100, Florian Brucker <to**@torfbold.com>
wrote:

Nitpicks: lose the "valid" buttons on the bottom. They are out of place.

Could you explain why? I see them as a service to my visitors (in
combination with http://torfbold.com/index.php?main=About&sub=Website),
especially the ones which don't know about valid html/css and the
existance of the W3C validator.

Saying your code is valid is like wearing a button that says "I brushed my
teeth today" - unless you're involved in oral health awareness, there's no
good reason to wear the button.

Maybe, but everyone who produces a website is involved with valid
markup, whether it be in the breach or in the observance.

There's room for more than one opinion on this. I don't see why people
shouldn't put a bit of advertising for valid markup on their personal
sites. It's less obnoxious then most of the advertising I come across,
and may just prod a few people involved in making sites (a steadily
growing proportion of the population) to investigate what it's all
about.

Just my 5c (allowing for inflation).

--
Stephen Poley

http://www.xs4all.nl/~sbpoley/webmatters/

[Tony]

Florian Brucker <to**@torfbold.com> wrote in message news:<2v*************@uni-berlin.de>...

- overall style
Very nice, 9 on design. But I would make the "<strong>" color
different from the "<a>" one. On several occassions I moved my mouse
over <strong>-marked text jest to see whether this is a link or not...
I'm not interested in comments like "This will not work in browser XY"
or any other, non-standard specific, platform/browser-related problems,
though.

I hate the IE bugs too, but hey, can you tell me about one browser
that implements all w3c recommendations correctly. I'd like to install
it. They all have bugs, dont they. And those 90% of the users (which
this year rapidly reduced to about 75% now) that you're talking about
http://torfbold.com/index.php?main=About&sub=Website), most of them do
not have any idea about how buggy their browser is... So, on
accessibility I wouldnt give you more than 2-3 on any scale...

[Brian]

Stephen Poley wrote:

[attribute reinserted] Brian wrote:

lose the "valid" buttons on the bottom. They are out of place.

There's room for more than one opinion on this. I don't see why
people shouldn't put a bit of advertising for valid markup on their
personal sites.

Whether the site is personal or professional, I'd give the same advice:
if the site is not about validation or html, there is no need for a
"valid html" icon. It is no great sin to include one, but if someone
asks my advice, I offer it. On a web page, as in other media, less is more.
It's less obnoxious then most of the advertising I come across
Well, that's true. At least, the advertising message is short. But why
would you put advertising on a site when you're not being paid for it?
Focus on your message, to the exclusion of clutter.
and may just prod a few people involved in making sites (a steadily
growing proportion of the population) to investigate what it's all
about.

That might be nice, but I rather doubt it has that effect.

--
Brian (remove "invalid" to email me)

[Florian Brucker]

> Saying your code is valid is like wearing a button that says "I
brushed my

teeth today" - unless you're involved in oral health awareness, there's no good reason to wear the button. Yeah, but that's because everybody (well mostly everybody) knows one
should brush your teeth and that brushing your teeth is a good thing.
This is not the case with valid markup IMHO. There are many people,
including web-site authors, who do not know about the W3C at all. This
is a main problem of the whole standardization process IMO, as it allows
companies like MS to produce bugged to death browsers without a majority
of people noticing. If DirectX was an open standard, and DirectX games
would not run on WinXP, people would cry out.

That's why I'm writing browser-independant markup. Everybody who
introduces browser-specific hacks into his HTML/CSS does nothing but
undermine the standards. I see that writing totally browser-independant
pages may not be possible for some people for financial reasons (online
shops etc.), but many people could bring up the courage to say "My page
is worth visiting with a real browser, I'm not object to the work of bad
programmers".
You can compare the whole discussion with environmental protection: As
long as only few people request eco friendly wrapped food, nobody will
care. But once the majority of people notices that this is something
important, even the big supermarkets will have to supply eco friendly
packages. If nobody advertises eco friendly wrapping, however, nobody
will care.
The W3C icons are meaningless to someone who doesn't know about validation and why it's important - your visitors especially. It's not relevant to
the content of your site. If you want to tell the world about how much you follow the recommendations, have an "about this site' page where this is
mentioned.

Beside the fact that I got such a page, I think it's a nice thing to
have these buttons on each site, because

1. Everybody can verify that my markup is correct by simply clicking one
link

2. Not everybody will check my "About this site" page

It's true that instead of the images I should perhaps use links saying
"This page contains valid HTML and CSS. Click here to verify that and
click here to know why valid markup is important". But that is kind of
long, isn't it?
Florian (who did find out about HTML/CSS validation by clicking one of
these evil buttons :)
--
Minimum Requirement #1: You get up with Userfriendly.Org
(WEB.DE help-wanted ad: Linux Guru)
[------------ http://www.torfbold.com - POV-Ray gallery ------------]

[Florian Brucker]

> Very nice, 9 on design. But I would make the "<strong>" color

different from the "<a>" one. On several occassions I moved my mouse
over <strong>-marked text jest to see whether this is a link or not... Thanks for the 9 and thanks for the tip, I'll change it.
I hate the IE bugs too, but hey, can you tell me about one browser
that implements all w3c recommendations correctly. I'd like to install
it. They all have bugs, dont they. There is of course no browser which does support all the CSS
specifications without bugs (and there will perhaps never be one). But
there is a difference between "This browser supports 90% of all CSS" and
"This browser supports 30% of all CSS, and 10% without bugs" :)
And those 90% of the users (which
this year rapidly reduced to about 75% now) that you're talking about
http://torfbold.com/index.php?main=About&sub=Website), most of them do
not have any idea about how buggy their browser is... That's right, but think about it why that is the case. It's like that
because of many web designers trying to please everybody, and therefore
try to put countermeasures into their code to get rid off browser bugs.
I don't do web design professionally, but I'd be interested in the
amount of time a professional web designer invests into this bug-countering.
Now if everybody would write pages and stylesheets for the standard
(instead of writing them for the browsers), browser-programmers would
have to care about the standards, too.
That goes for any open standard, BTW. Imagine how people would react if
IE's HTTP implementation would be seriously flawed and no
server-programmer would care about reparing the bad work MS' programmers
did.
So, on accessibility I wouldnt give you more than 2-3 on any scale...

That's fine for me, because I decided to go the way of
standard-conformance, while you seem to like a more practical approach
to the matter.
Florian

[Brian]

Florian Brucker wrote:

Saying your code is valid is like wearing a button that says "I
brushed my teeth today" - unless you're involved in oral health
awareness, there's no good reason to wear the button.
Yeah, but that's because everybody (well mostly everybody) knows one
should brush your teeth and that brushing your teeth is a good thing.
This is not the case with valid markup IMHO.

Fair enough. Here's a closer analogy: a U.S. radio station that
announces every hour, "We do not overmodulate our signal above FCC
imposed limits". Or "We keep our audio signals at or near 0vu to avoid
audio clipping". That would only be of interest to radio people;
everyone else would be confused by such announcements.
There are many people, including web-site authors, who do not know
about the W3C at all.
If you're not a web author, the W3C is probably not worth spending much
time learning about.
This is a main problem of the whole standardization process IMO, as
it allows companies like MS to produce bugged to death browsers
without a majority of people noticing.
You won't find many people championing MS' "de-facto" standards in these
groups. But that doesn't change the issue.
That's why I'm writing browser-independant markup. Everybody who
introduces browser-specific hacks into his HTML/CSS does nothing but
undermine the standards.
That's lovely. I do the same. But "valid HTML" or www standards are only
of interest to web authors. The only reason why people in the ciwa*
groups argue that "valid" icons are appropriate on any web page is
because the regulars are web authors who are interested in such
technical matters.

The W3C icons are meaningless to someone who doesn't know about
validation and why it's important - your visitors especially. It's
not relevant to the content of your site. If you want to tell the
world about how much you follow the recommendations, have an "about
this site' page where this is mentioned.

Not everybody will check my "About this site" page

That should tell you something: that they are not interested in
technical "about this site" stuff. All the more reason not to put it on
your home page.
It's true that instead of the images I should perhaps use links
saying "This page contains valid HTML and CSS. Click here to verify

Ugh, no. In addition to polluting your page with messages that most
users will not understand, "click here" is very bad link text.

--
Brian (remove "invalid" to email me)

[Nairb]

RE: W3c Validty links etc. &
comments such as:

I hate the IE bugs too, but hey, can you tell me about one browser

This site looks very nice. I use Firefox. Based on the op comments
it's as if his site would serve as a tool to motivate others to dump
IE, but then just doesn't go far enough. If you dare (gasp) approach
that dreaded "best viewed by" conundrum. How about including a screen
shot from a good browser and a link to http://getfirefox.com (or
whatever other appropriate browser you prefer), along with those valid
markup links so as to illustrate exactly what you are missing with IE?

Otherwise, though I know you indicated you weren't looking for
comments in this area, your site "appears" somewhat broken to IE
users. It seems to need the above Firefox (or other suitable browser)
screen shot and expanation OR some sort of (gasp) IE specific work
around. Seeing as such a high percentage of web browsers, of the human
type, use broken apps, there has to be some sort of notice in the very
least, doesn't there?

[Nairb]

_c*******@wanadoo.nl (Tony) wrote in message news:<70**************************@posting.google. com>...

Florian Brucker <to**@torfbold.com> wrote in message news:<2v*************@uni-berlin.de>...

- overall style

Very nice, 9 on design.

==> You know I posted before I saw your "about :: website" page. You
pretty much covered everything I was thinking except the screen shot.

Nice...

[Barbara de Zoete]

On 8 Nov 2004 12:06:54 -0800, Nairb <bg***@yahoo.com> wrote:

RE: W3c Validty links etc. &
comments such as:

I hate the IE bugs too, but hey, can you tell me about one browser

This site looks very nice. I use Firefox. Based on the op comments
it's as if his site would serve as a tool to motivate others to dump
IE, but then just doesn't go far enough. If you dare (gasp) approach
that dreaded "best viewed by" conundrum. How about including a screen
shot from a good browser and a link to http://getfirefox.com (or
whatever other appropriate browser you prefer), along with those valid
markup links so as to illustrate exactly what you are missing with IE?

Otherwise, though I know you indicated you weren't looking for
comments in this area, your site "appears" somewhat broken to IE
users. It seems to need the above Firefox (or other suitable browser)
screen shot and expanation OR some sort of (gasp) IE specific work
around. Seeing as such a high percentage of web browsers, of the human
type, use broken apps, there has to be some sort of notice in the very
least, doesn't there?

Why not add some 'goodies' (not essential) to your site which are only
available to modern graphical browsers, like generated content with CSS
for example? Works fine in the newest graphical browsers (for Windows that
is; don't know about other operating systems) but failes hopelessly in IE.
Serve your IE-using visitors a good looking page (why shouldn't you, if
you know how to). Just 'nag' them by letting them know 'you could have had
*all *this*too* had you had a modern browser, like FireFox'. That is how I
approach it anyway. Just an idea.

--
PretLetters <http://home.wanadoo.nl/b.de.zoete/>
Webontwerp <http://home.wanadoo.nl/b.de.zoete/html/webontwerp.html>
Zweefvliegen <http://home.wanadoo.nl/b.de.zoete/html/vliegen.html>
DTD <http://home.wanadoo.nl/b.de.zoete/dtd/not_so_strict.dtd>

[Florian Brucker]

> This site looks very nice.
Thanks!

How about including a screen shot from a good browser Nice idea :)
Otherwise, though I know you indicated you weren't looking for
comments in this area, your site "appears" somewhat broken to IE
users. It seems to need the above Firefox (or other suitable browser)
screen shot and expanation OR some sort of (gasp) IE specific work
around. Seeing as such a high percentage of web browsers, of the human
type, use broken apps, there has to be some sort of notice in the very
least, doesn't there?

You're right, I didn't look for those comments, but hey, now you wrote
them, so there's nothing wrong in answering them :)
Aside from my anti-standard problem with browser-specific hacks, I'm
also too lazy to care about different browsers. If I code for the
standard, that's one thing to get right. If I code for browsers, that's
more than 3x times the work (at least IE, Mozilla/Firebird, Opera).
Perhaps one day, when I'm old and retired and got too much time ;)
And after all, if IE users are not annoyed by "broken" webpages, why
should they switch browsers for some graphical goodies?

Florian

[Florian Brucker]

> ==> You know I posted before I saw your "about :: website" page. You

pretty much covered everything I was thinking except the screen shot. Working on that shot right now :)
Nice...

Thanks!
Florian

[Florian Brucker]

[explanations why "valid HTML/CSS" buttons are evil snipped]

I do see your point and right now you got me to that point where I'm
thinking of removing the buttons. Give me one night to think about it
again, because the whole thing around "standardization" is more than a
practical thing to me, I'd even go as far as to call the buttons
politically motivated ;)
Florian