New Website Design for crits comments

[Dodge]

Hey all Newbie here.
Ive just redesigned my site, feel free to take a look around and any constructive feeback, optimisation would be appreiciated.

My website


Dodge

[splufdaddy]

Not a bad start, here are some of my thoughts...

1. The banner is cool, but it's a little tall. It could be cut down in height without losing any of the info you have on it.

2. The rollovers in the nav should be preloaded.

3. I'm not a fan of the scrolling text box you have, because it makes the page have two scrollbars.

4. The "Home" button's mouseover seems kind of random, as does it's placement. I feel like there's alot of wasted space under the "Gallery" and "About" buttons.

It's a good start, those are just some of the areas I see that could use improvement, take it for what it's worth.

[bluntknife]

First thing I'd say is that when you click a link, it moves to a totally new page. The only thing that(at least to my eye) has changed is the content in the iframe (apart from the gallery page).

Why not just make the links change the iframe and not to redraw the whole page?

To do that, you'd need to add a name variable inside your iframe tage (eg <iframe name=content...> and then set 'content' as the target for all your links. (eg <a href="indextext.htm" target="content">)

Also, the mouseovers take ages to load for me.

On the gallery page, some of your images are trying to load from a local file:

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/Roger%20Bush/My%20Documents/Roger/adumpvalve/imagenavbar/finished/leftarrowblank.png

Other than the little technical bits, it's definately got a nice layout and i like the colour scheme!

Ollie

[bluntknife]

PS Welcome To The Forums!

[Dodge]

wow more great points than i expected. Thanks for your replies.

Spluffdaddy: yeh the title image is pretty big i agree but when i tested my site in various resolution i decided on this size, but i see what you mean it was bigger than it is now 1 day ago.

Bluntknife: Yeh what you described with the iframe was somthing i would have implemented but i dont know how. Some great comments mind i think all your points are valid and what i actually wanted to acheive.

preloading images i found this on google and guess i need to add it in the head and adapt
<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript">
<!-- hide from none JavaScript Browsers

Image1= new Image(175,50)
Image1.src = "image1.gif"?? is this the only name i need to change?

Image2 = new Image(25,30)
Image2.src = "image2.gif"

Image3 = new Image(125,80)
Image3.src = "image3.gif"

// End Hiding -->
</SCRIPT>

And for the iframe bit i see what your hinting at but how and where do i need to enter that code. i realise the code for adding to the link so that it just changes the iframe box.

This is what i have in my iframe text
<IFRAME src="indextext.htm" width="494" height="250" scrolling="auto" frameborder="0">
Message for frame-disabled browsers goes here. </IFRAME > &nbsp;</td>

i can see the link but how would i incorporte the target name into this code?

Any help would be well appreciated

[bluntknife]

To give the iframe a 'name':

<IFRAME name="content" src="indextext.htm" width="494" height="250" scrolling="auto" frameborder="0"> 
Message for frame-disabled browsers goes here. </IFRAME >

Then change all your links to this FORMAT (eg not literal ):

<a href='pageurl.htm' target="content"><image tag goes here></a>

Where pageurl.htm is the file that is used as source for iframe eg indextext.htm. and not index.htm

Hope that helps - im not very good at explaining this!

[Dodge]

Bluntknife: Thanks for that, it worked perfectly, i decided to iframe the gallery as well now.

You peeps are great cheers

Dodger

[bluntknife]

No Probs

[bluntknife]

Just been taking another look at the site and spotted something else

Now that you're using iframes, make sure you <title> your iframe documents, as when you use the back button menu, it shows 'Untitled Document' - only a minor niggle, and something I'm constantly doing myself, but important none the less.

Good luck with it all.

Ollie