Site Ratings & Reviews - site critique please

Author

site critique please

Darrell

2005-07-15, 10:16 am

http:\\www.darrellgoodman.com

Thanks so much for doing this.

Darrell

David Dorward

2005-07-15, 10:16 am

Darrell wrote:

> http:\\www.darrellgoodman.com

* Slashes in URL are backwards
* Uses HTML 4.01 Transitional - but this is 2005
* Abuses tables for layout [1]
* CSS is invalid
* CSS using point units on screen [2]
* Uses tiny font sizes
* Alt text is silly [3]
* Centres everything [4]

[1] http://www.allmyfaqs.com/faq.pl?Tableless_layouts

[2] http://css-discuss.incutio.com/?page=UsingPoints

[3] Darrell Goodman - Bass Guitar - Toronto
Darrell Goodman - Bio
Darrell Goodman - Audio samples
Darrell Goodman - Testimonials
Darrell Goodman - Contact

[4]
Darrell Goodman is a professional Toronto-area bassist available for
recording, shows, and jingles, bringing over 25 years of experience to
your project.

If you want a solid, professional bass for a demo, album, showcase, or
any other musical project, or if you just want to jam out some ideas,
contact Darrell here.

--
David Dorward <http://blog.dorward.me.uk/> <http://dorward.me.uk/>
Home is where the ~/.bashrc is

Darrell

2005-07-15, 11:28 pm

Thanks very much David.

Could you expand on the "silliness" of the alt. text? Also, why do you
frown on the centered-ness of my site?

Cheers,
Darrell

David Dorward wrote:

> Darrell wrote:
>
>
>
>
> * Slashes in URL are backwards
> * Uses HTML 4.01 Transitional - but this is 2005
> * Abuses tables for layout [1]
> * CSS is invalid
> * CSS using point units on screen [2]
> * Uses tiny font sizes
> * Alt text is silly [3]
> * Centres everything [4]
>
> [1] http://www.allmyfaqs.com/faq.pl?Tableless_layouts
>
> [2] http://css-discuss.incutio.com/?page=UsingPoints
>
> [3] Darrell Goodman - Bass Guitar - Toronto
> Darrell Goodman - Bio
> Darrell Goodman - Audio samples
> Darrell Goodman - Testimonials
> Darrell Goodman - Contact
>
> [4]
> Darrell Goodman is a professional Toronto-area bassist available for
> recording, shows, and jingles, bringing over 25 years of experience to
> your project.
>
> If you want a solid, professional bass for a demo, album, showcase, or
> any other musical project, or if you just want to jam out some ideas,
> contact Darrell here.
>
>
>

DJ Craig

2005-07-15, 11:28 pm

Alt texts should be able to replace the image for people who can't view
them. This site looks good in a graphic browser, but try viewing it in
a command line browser. For example, the Bio image contains the text
"Bio". So the best substitute text for that image would be just "Bio"
not "Darrel Goodman - Bio". Same for the other menu options. Also the
big image that says "Darrell Goodman - Bass Guitar" at the top left
corner has the alt text "Darrell Goodman - Bass Guitar - Toronto". Why
should people with text browsers see the " - Toronto" and people with
graphical browsers shouldn't? For extra information like that, you
could put it in the title attribute of the image. For example, give
that image the alt text "Darrell Goodman - Bass Guitar" and the title
"Toronto". This will give the image a "Toronto" tooltip. Not quite
sure what the use of that would be, but that would be a much better way
to embed the information into that image.
The photo of you playing the guitar on the right side is mainly a
decoration. The alt attribute should just look like this:
alt=" "
You should still include this though, don't just leave the alt out.
Otherwise the people with text browsers will think they are missing
something important to the site, when they aren't.

The javascript that highlights the menu options is a bit buggy. In
Firefox, the Home button likes to flash randomly as you move your mouse
around the screen.

On your audio page, you should put a table around the photo of you, and
the text that is beside it, instead of just using the align atribute of
the img tag. Resize your window to a 640x480 or 800x600 and you'll see
why. The "Siamese soldiers" wraps down and ends up in a different
place to the rest of the clips.

But overall, this is a well designed site. To an average user who
visits this site with IE with default settings, this will look good.
Perhaps it would look better if you put a <br /> above the table that
contains most of the site content, so that you could see a bit of the
striped background above the table.

Leonard Blaisdell

2005-07-17, 7:16 am

In article <1121440478.067574.211530@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
"DJ Craig" <spit@djtricities.com> wrote:

> But overall, this is a well designed site. To an average user who
> visits this site with IE with default settings, this will look good.
> Perhaps it would look better if you put a <br /> above the table that
> contains most of the site content, so that you could see a bit of the
> striped background above the table.

Doesn't look bad on a Mac with Safari either. It's well organized enough
to ditch table layout quite easily. And to the original poster, try free
Lynx to appreciate what Mr. Dorward said about alt text. You get the
benefit of seeing what search engines see.
Then use Lynx for the fun of seeing what search engines see on your
favorite sites!

leo

--
<http://web0.greatbasin.net/~leo/

Greg Nickoloff

2005-07-18, 4:49 am

Leonard Blaisdell wrote:

> In article <1121440478.067574.211530@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
> "DJ Craig" <spit@djtricities.com> wrote:
>
>
> Doesn't look bad on a Mac with Safari either. It's well organized enough
> to ditch table layout quite easily. And to the original poster, try free
> Lynx to appreciate what Mr. Dorward said about alt text. You get the
> benefit of seeing what search engines see.
> Then use Lynx for the fun of seeing what search engines see on your
> favorite sites!
>
> leo
>
Looks pretty decent in FireFox on Mandrake, too. All that other talk about
"abusing tables" and the wrong DOC type for 2005 are a little extreme. In
the "real world" I wouldn't worry too much about that kind of critique....