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Doing a website, the standards way


Guest Adriano
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Guest Adriano

I just finished (for certain values of "finished") working on a project for my uncle's architecture studio: City Centre Concepts. It's all correct XHTML 1.0 strict, CSS 1 and some of 2, and it's accessible as far as I know; but you can test all that on every page anyway.

 

I wanted some constructive criticism about it, and also to point out a way to do things "the standard's way", instead of with tables (I know, it sounds pretentious...). I learnt a lot from The Daily Report's Jeffrey Zeldman and his book "Designing with Web Standards". Eric Meyer of Meyerweb and his CSS experience also helped a lot.

 

I tested it on most major browsers (IE 5.0, IE 5.1, IE 5.5, IE 6, Opera 7.51, Mozilla 1.6, Firefox 0.9) on Windows and Linux, and it seems to work.

 

Caveats: the site works best on a resolution of 1024x768, and some things do not show in IE < 6. Some images aren't the best I could find. I'm not exactly an expert in photo/image editing, so I had to make do with my experience, Learning a lot in the process.

 

EDIT: added the "pretentious" comment

Edited by Adrianovaroli
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Looks very cool so Ill stick with criticism for now!

All this is viewed in Opera 7.5

 

Contact page: Could be clearer ... its kinda weird to have to type in the boxes white on black but esp since the boxes are too subtle perhaps.

 

Initial page: loads quickly but cant you add something in the meantime? I got a delay of 1/2 sec but then it all appeared... is it possible to give at least some feedback ???

 

Tube map ends rather abruptly, can you apply a lense and fade out slightly ? make the edges lesss harsh since the strongly geometrical pattern of the streets is harsh with diagnals!

Notice the plan doesnt seem so clipped out...

 

 

Ouch, those are some outstandingly beautiful places to live!

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Gowator is right: because everything is so dark, it is hard to distinguish the outline of the boxes. Maybe you could give certain boxes a different color or make use of background images. The borders should certainly a bit more accentuated.

 

The blue on grey for visited links in the menu is perhaps also not the best contrast.

 

You've got a great basic lay-out, but I would now concentrate on how to 'spice it up' a little bit (of course you can be subtle about it, it doesn't -and shouldn't- have to be a circus).

 

All works and looks good on FireFox 0.9.1

 

Oh, and I like how you made use of title-tags in combination with links and images.

Edited by Darkelve
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Guest Adriano

hmm... A friend of mine has told me about the lack of visibility of those borders... The biggest thing against changing them is that the whole site has those borders... I'll have to think about it. Anyway... Here at home I can tell the boxes perfectly... not by the borders but by the colour. Perhaps the brightness? Anyway, when not one but three people tell me the same problem... I'll have to set that right.

 

Gowator, about the homepage load: how'd I do such a thing? I really do not know. I'll have to look that up.

 

Zone maps, Italy map... These are going as fast as I can... Not very professional.

 

Blue on gray... I'll experiment on that today.

 

 

Thanks, all.

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Anyway: It's not the "Visited" links on the nav menu... The link turns gray if that's the section you're in.

 

Yeah, that's what I meant.

 

Anyway, if those boxes are structurally seperated, you could each give them a different class, or better yet: an id.

 

E.g.

 

<div id="menubox">

<ul>

<li><a href="/" id="home" title="Return to the site's main page">Main Page</a></li>

</ul>

</div>

 

Then you could give these seperate markup, e.g. make a white border for the "menubox" containter but a red one for the pictures, and so on...

 

 

 

On my screen, it is *very* hard to see the borders, in fact I can barely detect the border lines.

Edited by Darkelve
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Guest Adriano

Hmm... They _have_ an id each. That's how I achieve that effect of changing the button's color according to which page you're in (in part, at least). But they aren't structurally separated: they are a list of links in a div.

 

I did change the color of the borders, anyway. For the mailform and the section links. The others still have a border, but it shows up only when you hover over them (then you see it against the blue).

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Guest Adriano

[rant mood=homicidal]

Just spoke to my uncle (the owner of the studio), and suddenly I want to kill him. Thing is, he doesn't like the stained glass image on the right because "it doesn't tell anyone what it is, it's just a decoration"... Of course it's a decoration. It stops the page from being too damn black... Argh.

[/rant]

 

Anyway, he never lets me get a word in this. Thank $deity I mostly speak to my aunt or the other partner at the firm about this job.

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Hmm... They _have_ an id each. That's how I achieve that effect of changing the button's color according to which page you're in (in part, at least). But they aren't structurally separated: they are a list of links in a div.

 

I did change the color of the borders, anyway. For the mailform and the section links. The others still have a border, but it shows up only when you hover over them (then you see it against the blue).

 

Yeah, now I see. I guess I shouldn't be such a lazy ass as actually take a look at the code, huh? :unsure: anyway, I was just referring to the fact that, with selectors, you could give all the <div>'s a different color because I thought you were saying if I change one, they will all change.

 

Oh yeah, one more thing: clients will always complain. I guess that's part of what makes them 'client' ;)

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LOL: Family eh!

Hmm, I actually liked the stained glass and I spotted where it was from!

I wonder if he is just sore cos its something someone else designed... LOL

 

Maybe you could integrate some more design elements from other projects into the pages .a different one on each but keeping that strip to add colour and prevent it being too black (i.e adding different aspects into the pages and making the visitor mentally connect them) perhaps his point is you are picking just one aspect of the company design and making it a design feature ... its also the one least charectaristic of the company I'd guess, given its not in a city. You could make a pattern of the terracotta for instance or clip and rotate the blinds form the stuidio while some filter to fade it a bit...

 

Anyway from work with IE6...

I think you just load the images in a different order and add the lo-res or alt-text flag...

 

Just a suggestion but how about a blue wash and add a paper texture with a few creases to the plans giving them a bit of character.... it will make them a bit less harsh...

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Guest Adriano

You're absolutely correct. In fact, they tend to speak too much. I'm suddenly this "computer wizard" with uncanny abilities... I always have to give them some raincheck on this or that matter because I simply do not know.

 

But I love it anyway, who am I kidding...

 

For Darkelve: what I was saying is, the whole site has those borders (and I quite like them) so it'd be a bit counterintuitive to have a different color. Sure, I could change each of them easily, given that they're all id'ed and class'ed and organized, but... Dunno, I just liked shade #202020.

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it is hard to distinguish the outline of the boxes. Maybe you could give certain boxes a different color or make use of background images. The borders should certainly a bit more accentuated.

I have no problem with the boxes or borders here, but I have a very good LCD-laptop-monitor, on for example a darker and possibly more blury CRT I can imagine the boxes will be difficult to see (not saying that any of you guys have that :o ).

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For Darkelve: what I was saying is, the whole site has those borders (and I quite like them) so it'd be a bit counterintuitive to have a different color. Sure, I could change each of them easily, given that they're all id'ed and class'ed and organized, but... Dunno, I just liked shade #202020.

 

Well, I thought that was what you were asking originally. My mistake.

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