Webmaster forum - Critique my new website please

Author

Critique my new website please

Steven J. Sobol

2007-04-24, 6:19 pm

Been working on this thing on and off for a few months, tinkering and
adding stuff here and there.

http://stevesobol.com/blogged/

Was looking for constructive criticism. Also, the weather link is slow
to pull up - it takes a local copy of an XML file I grab from
Weather.com, and parses it, and it's a PHP class that I use for
parsing. I was wondering if maybe PHP has a built-in extension that
provides for XPath queries. I'm using PHP 4.3.11 and do not want to
upgrade to PHP 5 at this time.

I'm also using SWFobject for auto Flash detection. If you have flash
or Javascript turned off you'll see the non-Flash menu.

--
Steve Sobol, Professional Geek ** Java/VB/VC/PHP/Perl ** Linux/*BSD/Windows
Victorville, California PGP:0xE3AE35ED

It's all fun and games until someone starts a bonfire in the living room.

Paul Watt

2007-04-24, 10:17 pm

"Steven J. Sobol" <sjsobol@JustThe.net> wrote in message
news:slrnf2sk6e.hlu.sjsobol@amethyst.justthe.net...
> Been working on this thing on and off for a few months, tinkering and
> adding stuff here and there.
>
> http://stevesobol.com/blogged/
>
> Was looking for constructive criticism. Also, the weather link is slow
> to pull up - it takes a local copy of an XML file I grab from
> Weather.com, and parses it, and it's a PHP class that I use for
> parsing. I was wondering if maybe PHP has a built-in extension that
> provides for XPath queries. I'm using PHP 4.3.11 and do not want to
> upgrade to PHP 5 at this time.
>
> I'm also using SWFobject for auto Flash detection. If you have flash
> or Javascript turned off you'll see the non-Flash menu.
>

http://www.paulwatt.info/sobol.png

not the effect you was after i'd say! also i find the rotating flash thingy
anoying

--
Cheers

Paul watt
http://www.paulwattdesigns.com
http://www.amnesty.org

Baho Utot

2007-04-24, 10:17 pm

Steven J. Sobol wrote:

> Been working on this thing on and off for a few months, tinkering and
> adding stuff here and there.
>
> http://stevesobol.com/blogged/
>
> Was looking for constructive criticism. Also, the weather link is slow
> to pull up - it takes a local copy of an XML file I grab from
> Weather.com, and parses it, and it's a PHP class that I use for
> parsing. I was wondering if maybe PHP has a built-in extension that
> provides for XPath queries. I'm using PHP 4.3.11 and do not want to
> upgrade to PHP 5 at this time.
>
> I'm also using SWFobject for auto Flash detection. If you have flash
> or Javascript turned off you'll see the non-Flash menu.
>

Borked, doesn't display properly on the browser of my choice.

Fails XHTML validation:
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=h...om%2Fblogged%2F

Fails CSS validation:
http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/...ol.com/blogged/

--
Dancin in the ruins tonight
Tayo'y Mga Pinoy

Steven J. Sobol

2007-04-25, 3:16 am

In article <597f82F2jeo87U1@mid.individual.net>, Paul Watt wrote:

> http://www.paulwatt.info/sobol.png
>
> not the effect you was after i'd say! also i find the rotating flash thingy
> anoying

I think I'm going to include a switch to turn that off... set a cookie
or something for people who don't want to see it animate. Frankly,
that was my first use of Swift3D on an actual website... :) if you
browse the site with Javascsript or Flash turned off, you see a static
logo instead of the animation. I will probably just use that.

Regarding the screenshot, thanks... that looks like IE 7 on WinXP,
maybe? I'll definitely need to fix that.

--
Steve Sobol, Professional Geek ** Java/VB/VC/PHP/Perl ** Linux/*BSD/Windows
Victorville, California PGP:0xE3AE35ED

It's all fun and games until someone starts a bonfire in the living room.

freemont

2007-04-25, 6:18 pm

On Wed, 25 Apr 2007 04:45:32 +0000, Steven J. Sobol writ:

> Regarding the screenshot, thanks... that looks like IE 7 on WinXP,
> maybe? I'll definitely need to fix that.

Looks more like Vista to me. ;-)

Note the start button and that dashboard whatever thingy.

--
"Because all you of Earth are idiots!"
¯`·..·¯`·-> freemont© <-·¯`·..·¯

Steven J. Sobol

2007-04-25, 6:18 pm

In article <8a480$462f3779$4b75bb59$28360@ALLTEL.NET>, freemont wrote:
> On Wed, 25 Apr 2007 04:45:32 +0000, Steven J. Sobol writ:
>
>
> Looks more like Vista to me. ;-)
>
> Note the start button and that dashboard whatever thingy.

Yeah, yerright. I was focusing on the task bar which was set to Luna
blue, not Aero 3-d black (Luna being the default visual theme for XP).

--
Steve Sobol, Professional Geek ** Java/VB/VC/PHP/Perl ** Linux/*BSD/Windows
Victorville, California PGP:0xE3AE35ED

It's all fun and games until someone starts a bonfire in the living room.

paul watt

2007-04-25, 6:18 pm

"Steven J. Sobol" <sjsobol@JustThe.net> wrote in message
news:slrnf2uo1f.4d6.sjsobol@amethyst.justthe.net...
> In article <8a480$462f3779$4b75bb59$28360@ALLTEL.NET>, freemont wrote:
>
> Yeah, yerright. I was focusing on the task bar which was set to Luna
> blue, not Aero 3-d black (Luna being the default visual theme for XP).
>
>

actualy XP with window blinds installed. and google desktop.

Paul

GreyWyvern

2007-04-25, 6:18 pm

And lo, Steven J. Sobol didst speak in alt.www.webmaster:

> Been working on this thing on and off for a few months, tinkering and
> adding stuff here and there.
>
> http://stevesobol.com/blogged/

The animated title is a huge, time-consuming distraction. I did not
consider the rest of the site worth a look. And I'm not just being
pompous about it.

Grey

--
The technical axiom that nothing is impossible sinisterly implies the
pitfall corollary that nothing is ridiculous.
- http://www.greywyvern.com/orca#search - Orca Search: Full-featured
spider and site-search engine

Karl Groves

2007-04-25, 6:18 pm

GreyWyvern <spam@greywyvern.com> wrote in
news:op.trckldjwsl6xfd@news.nas.net:

> And lo, Steven J. Sobol didst speak in alt.www.webmaster:
>
>
> The animated title is a huge, time-consuming distraction. I did not
> consider the rest of the site worth a look. And I'm not just being
> pompous about it.

Wow. I'm not sure if it was my ADHD or what but Grey's right. *Really*
distracting.

--
Karl Groves
http://www.thehotrodclassifieds.com
http://www.grayscalecms.com
http://www.karlcore.com

mbstevens

2007-04-25, 6:18 pm

On Wed, 25 Apr 2007 16:42:01 +0000, Karl Groves wrote:

> GreyWyvern <spam@greywyvern.com> wrote in
> news:op.trckldjwsl6xfd@news.nas.net:
>
>
> Wow. I'm not sure if it was my ADHD or what but Grey's right. *Really*
> distracting.

Ubuntu does not have the required version of Flash installed, so I have
no opportunity to be distracted. ...something to be said for that.

Steven J. Sobol

2007-04-25, 6:18 pm

In article <Xns991D80E42687karlkarlcorecom@199.45.49.11>, Karl Groves wrote:

> Wow. I'm not sure if it was my ADHD or what but Grey's right. *Really*
> distracting.

As I mentioned, that thing is just the result of my playing with
Swift3D. I'm going to keep it, but dump the animation.

--
Steve Sobol, Professional Geek ** Java/VB/VC/PHP/Perl ** Linux/*BSD/Windows
Victorville, California PGP:0xE3AE35ED

It's all fun and games until someone starts a bonfire in the living room.

Defranco

2007-04-25, 10:16 pm

- I would not use the rotating logo forever: do 2 spins and stop it

- I didn't like the links (Home, Blog, etcc.) format on top, I think
that you should change the format (font, size)

- The colors of background and the header are too similar.

- place links on bottom too

- avoid the thumbs on the right (nucleous, etc) like it is now - it
is killing the professional layout of your page.

hope this helps

Orkut AdWords Community:
http://www.orkut.com/Community.aspx?cmm=8674507

Steven J. Sobol

2007-04-26, 6:19 pm

In article <1177551181.272913.306790@n35g2000prd.googlegroups.com>, Defranco wrote:

> - I would not use the rotating logo forever: do 2 spins and stop it

Yeah, I'm just going to get rid of the animation altogether and use a
static 3-D extruded logo.

> - I didn't like the links (Home, Blog, etcc.) format on top, I think
> that you should change the format (font, size)

Y'know, I had something else that I thought looked completely gaudy
before I set up the links the way you see them now. I'm ok with the
way they are now, but would be willing to entertain suggestions as
to font and size changes.

> - The colors of background and the header are too similar.

maybe a darker shade of grey in the background, or lighter on the
header and footer...?

> - place links on bottom too

Good idea.

> - avoid the thumbs on the right (nucleous, etc) like it is now - it
> is killing the professional layout of your page.

So what are you thinking, maybe on the left? I need the links there,
especially the Weather Channel link which is required according to the
license agreement that allows me to use their data.

I guess I could put the weather/nucleus/adobe links across the top.
Maybe replace the blog selection links, which, now that I'm
re-visiting the site, I don't like too much.

> hope this helps

Absolutely. I love being able to bounce ideas off of you guys...
you're all quite helpful.

Thanks,
Steve

--
Steve Sobol, Professional Geek ** Java/VB/VC/PHP/Perl ** Linux/*BSD/Windows
Victorville, California PGP:0xE3AE35ED

It's all fun and games until someone starts a bonfire in the living room.

andrew

2007-04-28, 10:19 pm

On Wed, 25 Apr 2007 16:57:58 GMT
mbstevens <NOXwebmasterx@xmbstevensx.com> wrote:

[....]
>
> Ubuntu does not have the required version of Flash installed, so I
> have no opportunity to be distracted. ...something to be said for
> that.

{OT] : I will admit to having a deep loathing for Flash as well :-)
But I am running Ubuntu 7.04 and I seem to have the correct version of
Flash installed. I have 9,0,31,0.

Are you running an older version of Ubuntu? Not sure which
repository it came from but I installed flashplugin-nonfree.

Andrew

--
Andrew's Corner
http://people.aapt.net.au/~adjlstrong/