willstorr.co.uk

[francis]

Because I haven't got enough to do at the moment as it is...

This is still beta (http://willstorr.co.uk/book/) but, as far as I'm concerned, is pretty much done apart from tweaks and home page content.

Some things that I didn't have any say on (but have taken some licence with):

1: black body background
2: white text/content background
3: the font for the logo

The design is pretty-much the same as a load of other sites, including a couple I've done before myself. I quite like the arial black for the <hn> tags (something I saw on another site and nicked), the Lucida Grande body text (not on the PC, sorry). I'm most pleased with the icons on the form when you submit it with an error - they're the smallest icons I've ever produced and, after much fiddling in Illustrator, turned out well.

This is the first fixed-width site I've done and, I've got to say, it's a breeze compared with liquid designs - now I know why people like them so much.

So, I'm open for comments; good, bad or otherwise. Note: I haven't tested this in IE yet, so if anyone spots any CSS bugs, please let me know :)

[James]

I like:

- The dark grey background with diagonal hatching
- The blue nav bar
- The shadow on the book image
- The silhouettes at the bottom of the book page (why aren't they on the other pages?)
- The little "quote box" on the book page

I don't like:

- Arial black because
. it looks chunky / amateurish
. on Firefox the letters join sometimes (eg the r and i in "Ordering details") - it doesn't do it in IE though!
. on IE only, the phrase "The form has been completed incorrectly!" wraps and looks poor as the line spacing is too low
- The long first paragraph on the book page (the content is good, it's just a little long)

[francis]

Cheers. Yeah, weird about FF and Ariel Black - it's the only browser that does it. Have you got XP's font smoothing on? AB looks nice all smoothed out (well, I think it does). I'll have a play with it.

I'll have a play with the long body of text on the book page - it's actually the blurb from the book page on Amazon and that was something my brother wanted. I'll see if it can be broken up.

I didn't put the silllouettes on the other pages as I'm not sure he'll want outlines of dead trees and churches on there (they're actually taken from the book cover). However, if he does I'll bung them in.

[James]

One more thing:

Middlesbrough not MiddlesbOrough

[francis]

Cheers - wouldn't have spotted that. Any idea what Arena maga's URL is - it's not easy to find anywhere.

[David]

A simple and professional solution - good job.

I'm not personally fond of Arial Black but neither do I have anything against it. I would agree with most of what James has said. The only thing that caught my eye was the line break before the red asterisk on the form. I can see why the silhouette footer is only on the book page but it looks good and you probably ought to use it on the other pages too. It just adds a little bit of interest to the pages.

I couldn't find Arena Mag either. I guess you'll have to trot down to Smiths at lunchtime and have a look - then write to them offering an SEO service ;)

[francis]

Fixed that line break, thanks. Also added some CSS "progressive enhancements". All external links (those starting with http) have a little arrow next to them. I've done that previously by adding XHTML to the document, but now there's no extra code. The blockquote now has rounded corners and the form fields are highlighted when the receive focus from the user. These all work in Gecko, Opera and Safari browsers - IE users won't notice any difference.

I think Arena's URL might be arenamagazine.co.uk, but all there is is a signup form for some e-magazine. Very strange that a magazine owned by the massive EMAP either doesn't have a site or has one that has appalling SEO.

[David]

Just took another look, fine in Firefox :) but well and truly broken in IE :(

I guess you're still working on this but I thought I'd mention it.

[francis]

Home page, yeah? Hopefully just that one - I haven't changed anything else that IE can pick up on, I don' think (hope). Too many floats on the home page, I guess. Also, I guess, Holly Hack to the rescue (it seems to be a panacea for most IE bugs).

Later: yep, the holly hack fixed it. The only thing I'm not happy about now is on the index page. It's 2 columns but the 'will storr vs the supernatural' spans about 1.5 columns and looks odd to me. It is a heading for both columns but don't look right (and wraps) if I put it over just the left one.

[James]

In the investigative mode of Jon Ronson and Louis Theroux, Storr makes the perfect companion for travels in the paranormal – highly amusing, thought-provoking and downright scary in equal measure.

Zoo magazine



Remind me Francis, which magazine does Will work for again? :lol:

[francis]

Mmmm, yes! Although you'll notice that 'that magazine' is conspicuous by its absense on the biog page. I believe there's a quote from Jon Ronson himself (something my brother's quite chuffed about) coming at some point, so hopefully we can remove that.

Can anyone find the 'submit a site' link anywhere on MSN? I'm assuming they've got one these days and aren't just taking content from DMOZ, Google etc. I spent 10 minutes searching for it, and nothing!

[James]

http://search.msn.co.uk/docs/submit.aspx?FORM=WSDD2

[francis]

Cheers. And to think I could have ended up paying £30 per month to get listed on search engines (http://www.smallbusinesswebsolutions.co.uk/search-engine-registration.htm)!