My Karate website

[James Glasheen]

Hi all,

Just to let you know I've re-styled my local Karate (http://www.twkk.co.uk) website.

Comments please...................

Cheers

[Tom]

1) Nice shade of blue and I like the microgrid background texture.

2) The white blocks look like lables on a cake tin (ie not integrated with the page design)

3) the gap between the 2 'labels' is plain ugly

4) Why doesn't the photo extend across the full width of the 'label'?

5) The dotted line round BKK Newsletters etc looks as though one was supposed to cut it out with sissors

6) I look forward to hearing how you get on with Goooooooooooooooooogle.


PS you can't expect me to like everything!

[James Glasheen]

Thanks Tom.

What do you mean by white blocks? Do you mean the Karate block, the Sitering and the Google Ads? If so, I wanted to seperate the ads and sitering from the rest of the site. Perhaps different colours would help, what do you think?

Fair point about the photo, that's why I've got it fading into white, because I wanted the image to always appear on the right at any resolution. I'll fix that.

Dotted line - you are supposed to try and cut it out.

Cheers

[francis]

Layout is different in Moz, FF and Opera - the banner image is wider than the rest of the content. Why do 2/3rds of it in divs and then switch to a table further down - especially when it's just a single div with writing in?!

[David]

James - my turn to have a pop ;)

General impression is very good. The "look and feel" is fresh and appropriate. Naturally, though, I have some comments.

1. It would make more sense to have the global navigation above the banner. There is nothing wrong with the depth of the banner and the image is good (I don't agree with Tom about it not going the full width) - but the result is that the nav bar and style changer end up half way down the page.

2. You need some padding to the left and more to the bottom of "BKK newsletters".

3. You need more padding to the left of all the body text - it's far too close to the border.

4. The heirarchy of your titles needs beefing up. Start by increasing the text size of the main title and then work down through <h2> and <h3>. This will give the page more weight, which it needs because there is a lot of whitespace.

5. The two lower divs are narrower than the main one. The main one should be narrowed to match since the lower divs seem to have a better visual balance of margin to body.

6. Remove the border from the AdSense panel (make it white). Having one box rattling around inside another doesn't look so good.

7. I'd be tempted to add some margin at the bottom of the page to reveal a bit more of the background tile.

8. Mixing centre and left-hand justified text is always problematic. For example, the title "Results" is just floating in the middle of nowhere and it's difficult to see what it relates to. I would experiment with changing the section titles to left justified.

9. If you're going to use an a:hover colour change for navigation, make it worthwhile. Yours is far too subtle - most people will not even notice it.

10. Your newsletter archive looks rather labour intensive. Consider implementing a PHP script that scans a folder and builds a list of links for you. That way you need only upload the file and it's available from your web page. I did just that for the Bentley School site. See the letters page (http://www.bentleyschool.co.uk/information/letters.php) for an example. I can let you have the script if you're interested.

11. Similarly, your calendar will require constant updating and it might be easier to have a nice web-based interface that members can use to add dates as and when required. Again I did such a thing for Bentley. See the calendar page (http://www.bentleyschool.co.uk/information/calendar.php) - script available if you want it.

12. You have 8 links on your global nav and yet there is very little content on many of the pages. I think you could get that down to 5. Try combining Training, Competitions and Grading and call it simply "Information"

13. The main title should probably be a link to "Home".

14. The images page is a great idea and some of the images are excellent but the layout is a bit of a mess. Try working with a grid to ensure that images modulate and give a good overall regular matrix to the page. Personally, I would use some of these images on the other pages as well - fill some of that whitespace and add interest.

15. The members slideshow is a neat trick but having it at the top of the page means you lose the impact of better images below it. Also, one would expect to see names against the faces.

16. I assume that you intend to do some styling of the Guestbook to make it visually match the rest of the site. Also, you need to add global nav.

17. I don't have a problem with the "labels" at Tom calls them. Although I think it will work better when the main label is deeper with more content.

Ooh, I think that's enough for now. Did I mention that I quite like it?

Well done James!

[James Glasheen]

Brilliant chaps, great feedback, just what I was after.

JG

[David]

James - just had another look at your Karate website. It's really comming together now and looking a whole lot better than before. Just a few things to think about.

1. The main nav bar at the top needs more weight - consider a background colour - possibly pale grey or grey/blue - nothing too much.

2. The position of the "newsletters" box is a little annoying - causes the top left of the pages to look cluttered. Try moving it to the right. I realise that won't easily work because of the banner image but at the moment, the composition isn't right.

3. Links in body text aren't obvious enough. Consider using [b] for links or a more obvious colour.

There are a couple of other places where the page layout needs a bit of a tidy but other than that - excellent work.

[francis]

Originally posted by David@Oct 24 2004, 9:27 pm
[b]3. Links in body text aren't obvious enough. Consider using for links or a more obvious colour.
No, don't - unless you want to add semantic emphasis to the link. Otherwise use CSS to add the weight.

[David]

Sorry, of course I meant use text-weight:bold in CSS, not [b] in HTML. :">