Feedback appreciated

To have some professional feedback on this site would be useful. I have had to learn website design 'from the ground up' and am totally self-taught. (This may or not be apparent when you look at the site!)
The site has been up and running now for 9 months but I am continually 'tweeking' the site and some radical ideas wouldn't go amiss. Bear in mind, as I have to, that a broad range of visitors view this site (not just age range but also PC spec / browser versions etc.)there is the issue of accessability (ie visual impairments etc.) which many of you are lucky enough not to have to consider. (That wasn't meant to be patronising by the way)

Anyway I'll leave you to take a peek...look forward to your comments

http://www.st-austell.ac.uk

Jock...St Austell College Webmaster

Hi there,

I'm also maintaining a site that needs to consider "talking" browsers. In December I went to all CSS. There is a small table at the top of each page with a graphic and some navigation elements, but the entire remainder is handled without resorting to frames and tables.

I am not a professional web developer, but while I was doing the site, I got smart about several accessibility issues. I list them here in case they might be of some use:

1) Avoid using tables for layout if at all possible. Some browsers "parse" them by reading straight across. If you absolutely can't live without them, include a "summary" attribute within the table tag -- like an "alt" attribute. It can either summarize the table or point to another HTML file that contains the summary. More info on how to do it at www.w3.org.

2) Avoid frames for much the same reasons. A lot of "special needs" browsers are baffled by them.

3) Sigh. Now that's just removed two of the major aids to making attractive web pages. What's left? Well, there's css. Your site looks like it would adapt very nicely, and as though you're about 80% there.

I found a lot of stuff Out There that helped me enormously in getting accessible without being too ugly. First of all is the w3, whose URL I mentioned. Get a free copy of HTML-Tidy there, and run your pages through it. It'll give you warnings of what's "Kosher" and what's not. They also have a validation service, and if you can get your pages validating to HTML 4.01, transitional, you've won most of the battle. Finally, a wonderful organization called CAST runs a validation service called "Bobby." They are at http://www.cast.org. They will validate specifically on accessibility issues and will return you a report (all online!!) with exhaustive references, hints, suggestions, and links. You can even display their logo on your validated pages.

I hope you won't understand all of this as a critique, but I hope there will be some bit of info here that will be useful to you. This is a subject close to my heart, as I maintain a site for a mailing-list group, and one of our members has developed some pretty severe vision problems.

If you would like to visit my little experiment and labor of love, you can find it at
http://members.tripod.com/josephine_march

Serious-minded folk will want to skip over the content.

Anne

Hi Jock,

I think your site looks really good. Possibly because accessibility is a priority, the site is really easy to read and navigate, and very pleasing on the eye. The design is also clean and modern.

Your use of colour is good too - variations on two basic colours, blue and yellow. This helps to create a consistent style for the site, and makes it easy on the eye and uncluttered.

Navigation is excellent - your top navigation frame makes it really easy to find your way around the site, and the blue back arrows on every page are a great way to aid navigation.

The site also looks really good on my Netscape 4.7(Linux) browser, which is a good yardstick by which to judge browser compatibility! I also notice you have a noframes version of your page, which is good.

To be honest, I can't think of any radical way to improve your site, as I reckon it is excellent as it it. I think Anne has some interesting ideas regarding CSS. I note you are already using some styles in your pages. I also noticed you use Freeway to produce your pages - is this an HTML editor? Any good?

The only criticism I can make (and it's a very minor one) is that some of your images don't have ALT text, which will make the site a bit harder to follow for users of text-based browsers.

Overall, an excellent site - nice clean design, and extremely well laid out.

Matt
Elated


--
Matt Doyle, Elated
3rd Edition of my jQuery Mobile book out now! Learn to build mobile web apps. Free sample chapter: http://store.elated.com/

Firstly, Anne, thanks for your comments. I have heard of the CAST organisation and have looked at their site before (in fact I even downloaded the 'Bobby' software)

However, to truly expect to reach their standards on accessability, I think I would almost have to 'start over' and have a rethink on the design.

I'm considering creating a text only version of the site with no frames or tables but this would require me to work with 2 computers/2 keyboards/2 mice simultaneously!!!

something I havn't quite mastered...yet

I took a look at your site and I can see you have thought much about acessability issues, however maintaining a certain amount of style...well done.
One teeny weeny bit of critisism, the page is too wide for my piddly 14' monitor. (I only use this for browsing purposes as it forces me to constantly think about page widths! I actually do all the serious stuff on a 17' monitor)
Can you not design the page to fit in a 14' monitor spadce (640 pixels wide, I think) and set the html to grow to fit width of browser?)

Just a thought.



Anyway...Matt

Thanks for the glowing report, I feel all refreshed and raring to go on Monday morning!

To answer your question about FREEWAY, It is a Mac based WYSIWYG authoring package that I consider to be "without equal"

I have been using it seriously now for about a year. It uses a box-based building system (similar but much easier than Dreamweaver) and is modelled on QuarkXPress. Those that know this programme should convert immediately to FREEWAY and stop giving yourselves headaches trying to learn something alien! (You will also require a MAC, sorry)

I'm surprised you havn't heard of it as it gets a '5 x mice' rating in MACUSER magazine and is 'up there' with Dreamweaver and Adobe GoLive, but if you do everthing on a PC then you could be forgiven I suppose.

Anyway, back to the grindstone, and if any of you get the chance to try out FREEWAY, I guarantee you won't be disappointed (no I don't work for them!) They tell me they are working on a PC version, so keep your eyes peeled,

Happy site building...Jock

Jock,

That was very nice of you to actually have a look at my site.

In answer to your suggestion, I would love to consider moving this conversation to the "authoring" forum. What you can't see on the site is the bloodstains and tear-smudges that went into getting it to display similarly in IE and Netscape. Having done that on a 17" monitor, I'm really shy of tackling the necessary arrangements that would permit it to re-size with any degree of grace at all. Those DIV's are nailed down, screwed into place, and secured with glue, Scotch tape, and string. As I'm getting ready to update, I will probably make the columns a bit narrower. This is what people mean when they talk about the browser wars, I suppose, and I don't know how people who do this for a living survive with their sanity. (Another question for the authoring forum...)

Thanks very much!

Anne

Dear Anne,

There is a myth that web designing is an 'easy option', well I think we can both dispell that theory and if anyone argues otherwise just ask them what they know about W3C and laugh at their blank expression!

If I knew half the answers to your questions I still would consider myself an amatuer but I'm learning (fast!).

Just out of interest, what programme are you using to create your site? Not that I can help you out but maybe someone who uses this package can throw some light on your dilemma.

Anyway, good luck...

Jock

I'm an engineer, and at least 2/3 of what they're talking about at the W3C goes right over my head. I'd rather program the VCR... But I'm getting (with the aid of HTML-Tidy) so that I can check there for references to a specific problem.

What am I using to create in? Promise you won't laugh. Notepad and the above-mentioned Tidy. I have a lovely copy of Go Live that came as an inexpensive upgrade to an old copy of Page Mill. But I seldom use it. I have sunk a lot of my monetary eggs into the Photoshop basket. It is pricey, but I find I can do an awful lot with it, including drawing pictures of how I want finished pages to look. Image Ready seems (to me anyway) to generate very clean JavaScript for the few special effects I want, and it also slices up images very easily.

When I want a table or frameset, I'm likely to fire up that old, cranky copy of Page Mill, lay out my basic table, save it, and go in to do my coding with Notepad. It might be that if I'd sit down and master Go Live or Front Page, some of these things that are difficult might become easier for me.

When my sons were in school, they were irritated that their teachers made them learn to do the actual math before they were allowed to use calculators. I guess I want to know how to do the actual math before I fire up anything that would make it too much easier. It's a luxury I'm allowed because at this stage, I do this as a hobby.

Cheers,
Anne

I'm almost ashamed to say I know more about cooking an egg than I do about writing code. Every time I read something about website design there always seems to be the supplementary phrase " a working knowledge of writing HTML would be an asset" (or something along those lines).

Well I seem to be getting along fairly well without getting tied up in mathmatical knots, (by the way I was lying, I can interpret code and 'cut & paste' things within it), I had presumed that the majority of website designers had made the transition to WYSIWYG editors, just for the non-headache factor, if nothing else.

I suppose that's why my sites will never truly be 'clean' of unwanted extra code (which inevitably creates incompatability problems amongst others, I guess)

Anyway, coming from a design background I think I'm a little too long in the tooth to start 'getting my hands dirty' as they say, so I'll just plod on and stick to viewing source code and trying to make some sense of it when things go wrong (as they often do!)

I don't envy you but I take my hat off (at least I would if I had one) to anyone who understands all that gobbledygook!

Cheers...Jock