Please take a look at http://www.tlcwe.com/demo/index2.html and help me answer a question. How do I get the small round corner gif file to fit flush with the bottom of the table cell that it is in? I have tried to put it in its own cell with valign set to bottom, but that doesn't seem to work.

Thanks in advance.

Nevermind. Arachnophilia sticks again. There are some things that I just do not like about this program.

Still would like some opinions on the layout of this web site template. None of the links work so I am looking for a general evaluation of the layout.

[Edited by Marty on 10-10-2000 at 08:29 PM]

Marty,

The layout is fine and very easy on the eye. However, I daresay the texture behind the banner, nav system and the plans is very early nineties (reminds me of narrow vertical curtains, which was not a good look :)).

I also recommend dreaming up a creative slogan of some sort - the title banner looks very lonely by itself up there.

#tip for the day:

Did you know a horizonal gradient takes longer to load than a vertical one? (ie. horizonal fade of red to black for example) It's due to the way gifs render. :)

Gradients in general are pretty nasty business as solid colors (read BC's early 90's comment). One of those "Great once upon a time, but passe' now". Sort of like what the 'TV lines' effect will be this time next year.

The design is very clean and well put together. The red seems a little too heavy though (though a wonderful shade I have to say). Red is one of those colors I hate to use as it's a tricky number to get right as not to off-put anyone. A general rule to use is to go light and mix as much white through it as possible. (or use another color).

I think the one thing I noticed most was the lack of consistancy with the boxes (two square, one rounded) You might want to look at removing the gradient off the nav and title ones, and then the white borders. A grey nav box may work (and break up the red a bit).

That logo needs to go however. As it's plain text you may as well just use heading sized text instead as it'll load faster and look pretty much the same. I presume that's a work in progress though.

You might want to size down the text (content) as well and throw in some graphics. In all it appears a little too 'wordy' to grab my attention right away. You may want to move the creditcards away from eye level as well. If I go to a site I'm not too interested in a reminder of the fact it's going to cost money before I've looked at anything else to convince me a site deserved my hard earned pennies :)

IE 5.5
Win 98
14" cathode / 12.1" LCD screens

Hope that helps.

Greg Moore
http://www.akashik.net

Greg and BC,

Thanks for your comments. I did a complete work over of that page. I have changed the color scheme. After looking at it a while, the red did become a bit over the top. I have altered many of the things that you suggested and now have another version up.

http://www.tlcwe.com/demo/index2.html

I still have not done anything with the banner. I am going to have to put some thought into that. I am glad the sight came across as clean and simple. That is my intention in web design. I strive for crisp and clean designs that load relatively quickly.

Let me know what you think of the rework.

Thanks again.

Marty,

Much better. Looks much better with the blue/black/white color theme.

Now it's time to inject some consistency. On my Netscape 4.72, I can see two different fonts for both links and colors (using a mixture of Verdana and Times New Roman) because the style sheet isn't being properly supported by Netscape. If you want your entire site to be Verdana (as it is in IE) then I suggest you hard code it into the BODY tag - nasty and technically not correct HTML, but it works cross-browser. It's not a major consideration, but one worth thinking about if you're interested in trying to create the same look for both browsers.

To see what I mean, if you have NetSheet (err.. Netscape), then check it out. Basically I see Times New Roman font in the left navigational bar, and Verdana in the pic, which is fine. Times New Roman however for all the text on the entire page. Ouch.

You have an incorrect META tag - <meta name="discription" content=...">

Uhmmm... In the style sheet, Font color = "#OOOOOO"? It looks like the letter O, not the number 0 to me... :) (you get away with it though since the default font color on a browser is black anyway)

Apart from that, good work!

BC,

First, Thanks for all of the effort that you go through to help us amateur web designers. Second, explain hardcoding in the body tag. You must understand, that I learned HTML by the book, so I do not know many of the tricks. I had already noticed the cross browser differences. By the way in NS 6 PR3 the left nav bar text is blue, ugh. Could they atleast produce a new browser that supports everything the last one did.

I appreciate your help, becuase I would want to make it consistent across browsers.

Hello Marty,

Try this link:
http://www.websitegarage.com

It usually helps us a lot.

Marty,

Hey, not a problem. I always like to help others in the interests of promoting a cleaner Net with less junk ;) And helping up-and-coming web designers is one way to do so.

What I mean by hard coding the HTML in is simply this : in addition to using the style sheet already present on your site, you add old HTML3.2 tags to the <BODY> tags (and underneath) so that Netscape will correctly render the fonts, sizes, colors, et. al.

For example, in your case, you currently have :

<body background="/images/background4.gif" bgcolor="#47486D" text="#000000" link="#0000ff" vlink="#0000ff" alink="#800000" leftmargin="0" topmargin="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" face="Verdana, Helvitica, Arial, sans-serif">

Unfortunately that doesn't quite work because there is no such tag as <BODY face="font....">

YOu need to remove those fonts and instead do the following :

<body background="/images/background4.gif" bgcolor="#47486D" text="#000000" link="#0000ff" vlink="#0000ff" alink="#800000" leftmargin="0" topmargin="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0">
<font face="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" size="whatever size you want, like 2 or 3">

That should fix the problems. As I said, if you run it through an HTML 4.0 validator you'll get errors everywhere, but at least it should be fixed with Netscape.

Just another little note : Helvitica (this is in your style sheet) is spelt Helvetica.

Hope this helps.

BC and others,

Thanks alot. I think it is now complete. Now to transfer my old website to this format and to come up with a template for the support guide portion of the site. I really appreciate you assistance. I learned a few things through this process.

Trijnie,

Thanks for the link. That will be helpful.