Rusty Festa

Hello

A few of us in Cumbria have put together a website about our cars (no pictures yet ) but also we are trying to make it informative about our region so should any of you wish to take a holiday, etc in our area you will have somewhere to go to get a Scooby perspective

www.cumbrianscoobs.co.uk

Can I have some feedback/suggestions please? - anyone who posts "it's crap" should then follow this pointless statement by a sensible reasoning to why it's crap (i.e. criticism is always welcome as long as it is constructive)

Cheers, Jon

edit because I forgot the URL

[Edited by Rusty Festa - 12/28/2002 10:31:53 AM]

ianfergus0n

So far so good

Rusty Festa

Thanks Ian and Thanks for the email Ken - will put you a link in today

53 views in three hours and only one reply and one email Come on peeps - what do you think please?

philgr

YHM

S.B.

Looking good....

Rusty Festa

Cheers S.B. anything inparticular you like or dislike?

Philgr, got your mail(s)...can you check my replies as I had a prob with one of them

Ta muchly, Jon

S.B.

Well laid out and easy to use and find what you are looking for..

philgr

i have replied to your yahoo mail, and i got the other one regarding the regarding the Messenger suggestion

bigJoe

Nice, but loose the frames(yuk) and nav buttons - wasted space

look at corporate sites for nav/layout ideas and tips, they spend millions so use them 4 insp

Design a structure (and color scheme) and stick to it- it'll help keep it consistent when it gets bigger and more complex!


most importantly - have fun

MattW

Okay here's some feedback

I don't like:

When you hover over your menu, home etc, it does n't underline or change colour.
The menu fonts are also too small, maybe increase them a couple of points.

I do like:

The simplicity. You've resisted the temptation for crappy flashing graphics etc.
I like the mustard yellow and blue. Not too sure about the brighter yellow, but that's just my personal choice.

Rusty Festa

Thanks Guys...very valid points

Frames: I have bought NT Space and am learning .asp so until I can have scripts render all my menus I will have to stick with frames as I find it less work. You are dead right about the wasted space though (wish I had a budget of millions then there would be an STi 7 outside my house instead of my Sport )

I have deliberately turned off the hover/change colour on the links as I think it looks cleaner without. This seems ok where buttons are clear but not where links are in regular text...still looking for a compromise as the script is all or none.

Colour: that yukky mustard is actually gold! - was trying to go for SWRT colours

Cheers for all your suggestions as they are helping. One final point no-one has got back to me on - Screen Resolution! Does anyone still use 800x600??? I doubt it so I would like to loose the naff first page menu...

Cheers, Jon

bigJoe

Try this JavaScript for resolution detection: http://developer.irt.org/script/screen.htm

How come you find frames easier are you coding it yourself?

Rusty Festa

I used to use notepad only now I use a freeware called 1st page 2000. I don'r like Front Page as it fills your code full of crap [img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img]

Dave_A

I like it.

I've always used notepad for my sites, as it means you know exactly what you've put in there, and more importantly, how to change it when you need to.

The colours are very vibrant, and I'd not heard of topsubarusites before. Keep up the hard work.

How about a link swap - I'll add your site to my link list, if you add mine!

Cheers
Dave

===========================
website :: www.scoobyphotos.com
email ::::: dave@scoobyphotos.com
===========================

Rusty Festa

Wow Dave! - you did all that using notepad how long have you been working on that

Dave_A

I've spent about a month working on the bits and pieces of the site. The concept was something I did about 12 months ago, but never used.

I never managed to get the hang of the wysiwyg editors.

Rusty Festa

true - I like messing with cell padding, etc when using tables to position stuff...just pasting an image onto the screen and letting dream weaver do the rest would be just too easy

paul w

Rusty,

The site is fine,works well,easy on the eyes,nice and simple.

What are people going on about lose the frames,not being into web design it means nothing to me,please explain as all looks well to me.

Cheers Paul

Foot_Tapper

Hi Rusty, looks like your going down the hard road, but good on yer for it.
As a Personal preference i hate text on a white background.
Praps your working on a layer to fill the white void, i dont know.
I know this may go against your idealism for this site; but i
like rollovers.
I also like flash menus.Doesnt have to be too flash (excuse pun).
But i suppose you dont want to bulk it up too much.

any way good start m8.

Foot_Tapper

PS.... I do have some "evaluation" software for web development if your interested...freebee of course

Rusty Festa

Hi Paul,

Frames is a simple way to build sections of a website. In my site, I have one html page (the index.htm file) which "declares" that the page you actually see consists of three seperate files....namely the header banner with my adverts and title, a second file which is on the left containing the menu and the third file which is the 'content' or the white one.

Keeping up

I like frames as it allows me to add new 'white' pages without having to replicate all the menu code on each page as it is a seperate component . Some folks say frames are not very good because of search engines but that is just guff, not that I want mine top, I just find it easier to code with frames.

Down sides to frames are if you are using a lower resolution screen than it was designed in as you get scroll bars on each of the frame - project: reset your monitor to 800v600 then choose the 1024x728 option

The way to go would be to use server side includes where the web server writes the menu onto each page for you, which is why I am learning Active Server Pages

hope that was moderately clearer than mud

Rusty Festa

Oooh!, corner

paul w

Yep got all that.

Cheers Paul

Rusty Festa

Cheers FT - white is clean, putting another colour in there my be overkill but then I may drop the yello or mustard...it's all in the air at the mo but then that's part of the development process

Ninnybobs

Jon,
Site looks excellent, keep up the good work.
I have linked your site to ours.
Speak soon

Martin

Dave_A

Rusty, easy way to get around your frames issue is to use some javascript includes.

I've used these to make updating the links as easy as possible, and it avoids the problems you get with frames (namely, search engines fall over and cannot index your site properly, meaning that you cannot get ranked).

As an example, in your normal html index page, you can call the javascripts -

<SCRIPT language="JavaScript1.1" src="js/sitetitle.js"></SCRIPT>

this can go anywhere on your site, either in between the head tags, or between the body tags etc. The above call to the javascript is the title of my site. In the sitetitle.js is the following -

document.write("<TITLE>www.scoobyphotos.com / Dave Adams</TITLE>");

This means that I just put the call to the sitetitle.js in all my pages, and if I want to change the title of the site I just change it in one place, and don't have to change everypage. This is effectively allowing me to utilise the functionality of frames without using frames.

The above is a pretty basic example, I use that style of coding for the navigation etc, as its easier to update one file than all the pages in your site. I'm looking at some server-side stuff to get around the issues, but this was the easiest way to get going...

Of course, when someone comes along withut javascript enabled, my site looks crap, but looking at the stats, 99% of the visitors are using version6 browsers, and hopefully haven't disable java.

Let me know if you have any queries, we can always take it off line to stop boring the good folks of scoobynet

Cheers
Dave Adams

===========================
website :: www.scoobyphotos.com
email ::::: dave@scoobyphotos.com
===========================


[Edited by Dave_A - 12/28/2002 6:41:02 PM]

Rusty Festa

Thanks Dave, I am in the middle of helping Phil G with ftp via MSN so will take you up on your offer later...

Seems to be very popular at the mo, designing websites!

Cheers, Jon

mark@wrx

Well done Rusty!! Keep up the excellent work.

Rusty Festa

Cheers Mark - can I make it up to you and your red WRX by offering you car of the month for February?

It looked orange, honest!

Rusty Festa

Afternoon

Been hard at it all morning robbing scripts from all over the place

Could you spare me five minutes to let me know how user freindly the gallery section is please? Only the link to the "Wales Run" pictures is live at the moment and I would like to know how fast it is for users on ADSL, cable modems and good old fashioned modem dialup.

Cheers, Jon

www.CumbrianScoobs.co.uk

Edit to say: click on "Portmerion - Sept 2002"

[Edited by Rusty Festa - 12/29/2002 12:23:15 PM]