This web page (<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.nolenbrown.com">http://www.nolenbrown.com</a><!-- m -->) ... if you wanna take a peek and make any recommendations (to me) on easy ways to spiff this up, fire away. Doing this for a friend. I'm no expert but if there are some simple things that won't take that long.<br />
<br />
I wish I could get each caption for those photos with the pics but I don't have a photo program and I guess it's not that big a deal. Not worth much time, for sure.<br />
<br />
Color here and there wouldn't hurt, maybe. Or a border or something.<!--content-->http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nolenbrown.com%2F&doctype=%28detect+automatically%29&charset=iso-8859-4+%28Baltic+Rim%29&verbose=1 a few valid html buttons and a more current doc type would spiff it up. From an aesthetics stand point how about more of a layout?<!--content-->Originally posted by PeOfEo <br />
From an aesthetics stand point how about more of a layout? <br />
<br />
What you mean by that, specifically?<!--content-->its just straight up and down, no columns or rows. Its just like text on a page with no menus or bars or anything. Doesn't seem organized.<!--content-->Definately would recommend that peo ... but this page seems best this way. Maybe have the photo on left, title at top, songs at right, info at bottom, but this way allows the user to scroll reading one piece of info. at a time<!--content-->There is no menu, it's just a one page site. That's what I mean, like, what could be done? If I could find some very simple sites to look at, that would help. I mean, I could create pages just for the hell of it but I don't see the point of that.<!--content-->split it up into pages or have links to each part of the page.<!--content-->You could use the handy # link feature thingy.....I am currently in the process of having a cerebral-flatus...(brain fart)....and I can't seem to think striaght...anyways....<br />
You could have a nice layout on the left side. And have the links take them to different places on the page.<br />
<br />
Use <hr> to separate the different sections. Not much else I can think of....I mean it's just one page, after all.
<!--content-->neenach, I said links to each part of the page... that is what I meant, locations.<br />
<a href=http://www.webdeveloper.com/forum/archive/index.php/"#news">news</a> for the link<br />
<br />
<a id="news" name="news">NEWS</a> for the location.<br />
<br />
It can be seen in action here <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/#news">http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/#news</a><!-- m --><!--content-->I was supporting your suggestion...
...I just couldn't remember the name of that type of link.<!--content-->In my humble opinion, web pages really shouldn't have more than 1 page scroll to view the content. Better still, no scroll at all. If you have different sections then put them on different pages...it's very little extra work and makes the site much easier to read.<br />
<br />
There's a lot of text there... it's always easier to read text if the column widith is quite narrow (just see how newspapers do it). Why not put the text into a single fixed-width table and set the cell background colour to something a bit different from the page background, for example see...HERE (<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://homepage.ntlworld.com/zingmatter/zingcobol/data1-b.html">http://homepage.ntlworld.com/zingmatter ... ta1-b.html</a><!-- m -->) (I used an image for a background but the idea's the same)<br />
<br />
<br />
For your linked text...it's hard to read blue and purple against a black background (why the original designers of browsers thought these where good colours amazes me). In the <body> tag, use link="#whatever" vlink="#whatever" alink="#whatever". Red makes a good link colour as red means hot, so click me. <br />
<br />
Hope this helps<!--content-->Originally posted by zingmatter <br />
In my humble opinion, web pages really shouldn't have more than 1 page scroll to view the content. Better still, no scroll at all. If you have different sections then put them on different pages...it's very little extra work and makes the site much easier to read. <br />
<br />
Then why does YOUR page you referenced require six "pages" to scroll to the bottom?<br />
<br />
I appreciate your comments but I don't know if I buy "it would be best if there is no scrolling at all." I have addressed this before, researching the answer. And a partial answer is, marketing gurus, copywriters that sell stuff... there is a large percentage that use super-long copy. Many "pages" deep. They sometimes even make you click to go deeper but still, each "page" is very long. Now, a songwriter site is not a marketing site where he's trying to sell something, I admit.<br />
<br />
BUT, usability... it seems to me scrolling is much easier than clicking on links. Just keep your hand on the mouse and scroll. Although, I'm sure usability experts have made "decisions" on this. Need to investigate that.<br />
<br />
But from a practical standpoint, I just can't see how enough info can fit on one screen. That's not much. And any piece of copy with appreciable length would be many clicks long.<br />
<br />
As for colors, the man likes black background and colored text, so I was stuck there. I squished up the text some more like you said by amending the margin from 10% per side to 15% per side.<br />
<br />
Again, comments appreciated.<!--content-->Yeah, you're probably right about scrolling...the example I gave nicely contradicted what I'd said. That example the flow of text was better suited to all-in-one-page as far as reading it was concerned. <br />
<br />
My only thought was that your page has distinct sections that a visitor might want to go directly to without having to scroll down to. Internal links can do this directly too but if the section is short then the next section lying directly below can make things look untidy or even confusing (people often expect to be taken to a different page and don't realise they're on the same page).<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
BTW, as far as captioning the images, either you could use javascript to detect which picture the mouse is pointing to and pop up a caption (I have no idea how). There are free graphics packages out there to Download <!--more-->. Not of the standard of Photoshop but would certainly do the job.<br />
<br />
try: <br />
ImageForge v3.41 (<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.freewareweb.com/cgi-bin/archive.cgi?ID=949">http://www.freewareweb.com/cgi-bin/archive.cgi?ID=949</a><!-- m -->) <br />
<br />
<br />
Hope this helps.<!--content-->
<br />
I wish I could get each caption for those photos with the pics but I don't have a photo program and I guess it's not that big a deal. Not worth much time, for sure.<br />
<br />
Color here and there wouldn't hurt, maybe. Or a border or something.<!--content-->http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nolenbrown.com%2F&doctype=%28detect+automatically%29&charset=iso-8859-4+%28Baltic+Rim%29&verbose=1 a few valid html buttons and a more current doc type would spiff it up. From an aesthetics stand point how about more of a layout?<!--content-->Originally posted by PeOfEo <br />
From an aesthetics stand point how about more of a layout? <br />
<br />
What you mean by that, specifically?<!--content-->its just straight up and down, no columns or rows. Its just like text on a page with no menus or bars or anything. Doesn't seem organized.<!--content-->Definately would recommend that peo ... but this page seems best this way. Maybe have the photo on left, title at top, songs at right, info at bottom, but this way allows the user to scroll reading one piece of info. at a time<!--content-->There is no menu, it's just a one page site. That's what I mean, like, what could be done? If I could find some very simple sites to look at, that would help. I mean, I could create pages just for the hell of it but I don't see the point of that.<!--content-->split it up into pages or have links to each part of the page.<!--content-->You could use the handy # link feature thingy.....I am currently in the process of having a cerebral-flatus...(brain fart)....and I can't seem to think striaght...anyways....<br />
You could have a nice layout on the left side. And have the links take them to different places on the page.<br />
<br />
Use <hr> to separate the different sections. Not much else I can think of....I mean it's just one page, after all.
<!--content-->neenach, I said links to each part of the page... that is what I meant, locations.<br /><a href=http://www.webdeveloper.com/forum/archive/index.php/"#news">news</a> for the link<br />
<br />
<a id="news" name="news">NEWS</a> for the location.<br />
<br />
It can be seen in action here <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/#news">http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/#news</a><!-- m --><!--content-->I was supporting your suggestion...
...I just couldn't remember the name of that type of link.<!--content-->In my humble opinion, web pages really shouldn't have more than 1 page scroll to view the content. Better still, no scroll at all. If you have different sections then put them on different pages...it's very little extra work and makes the site much easier to read.<br /><br />
There's a lot of text there... it's always easier to read text if the column widith is quite narrow (just see how newspapers do it). Why not put the text into a single fixed-width table and set the cell background colour to something a bit different from the page background, for example see...HERE (<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://homepage.ntlworld.com/zingmatter/zingcobol/data1-b.html">http://homepage.ntlworld.com/zingmatter ... ta1-b.html</a><!-- m -->) (I used an image for a background but the idea's the same)<br />
<br />
<br />
For your linked text...it's hard to read blue and purple against a black background (why the original designers of browsers thought these where good colours amazes me). In the <body> tag, use link="#whatever" vlink="#whatever" alink="#whatever". Red makes a good link colour as red means hot, so click me. <br />
<br />
Hope this helps<!--content-->Originally posted by zingmatter <br />
In my humble opinion, web pages really shouldn't have more than 1 page scroll to view the content. Better still, no scroll at all. If you have different sections then put them on different pages...it's very little extra work and makes the site much easier to read. <br />
<br />
Then why does YOUR page you referenced require six "pages" to scroll to the bottom?<br />
<br />
I appreciate your comments but I don't know if I buy "it would be best if there is no scrolling at all." I have addressed this before, researching the answer. And a partial answer is, marketing gurus, copywriters that sell stuff... there is a large percentage that use super-long copy. Many "pages" deep. They sometimes even make you click to go deeper but still, each "page" is very long. Now, a songwriter site is not a marketing site where he's trying to sell something, I admit.<br />
<br />
BUT, usability... it seems to me scrolling is much easier than clicking on links. Just keep your hand on the mouse and scroll. Although, I'm sure usability experts have made "decisions" on this. Need to investigate that.<br />
<br />
But from a practical standpoint, I just can't see how enough info can fit on one screen. That's not much. And any piece of copy with appreciable length would be many clicks long.<br />
<br />
As for colors, the man likes black background and colored text, so I was stuck there. I squished up the text some more like you said by amending the margin from 10% per side to 15% per side.<br />
<br />
Again, comments appreciated.<!--content-->Yeah, you're probably right about scrolling...the example I gave nicely contradicted what I'd said. That example the flow of text was better suited to all-in-one-page as far as reading it was concerned. <br />
<br />
My only thought was that your page has distinct sections that a visitor might want to go directly to without having to scroll down to. Internal links can do this directly too but if the section is short then the next section lying directly below can make things look untidy or even confusing (people often expect to be taken to a different page and don't realise they're on the same page).<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
BTW, as far as captioning the images, either you could use javascript to detect which picture the mouse is pointing to and pop up a caption (I have no idea how). There are free graphics packages out there to Download <!--more-->. Not of the standard of Photoshop but would certainly do the job.<br />
<br />
try: <br />
ImageForge v3.41 (<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.freewareweb.com/cgi-bin/archive.cgi?ID=949">http://www.freewareweb.com/cgi-bin/archive.cgi?ID=949</a><!-- m -->) <br />
<br />
<br />
Hope this helps.<!--content-->