Web Developer Advice: Commercial Project

[dabirdwell]

Hello all,

Well, this time I'm looking for critique and direction for a site I'm working on. This is for an engineering company.

We are migrating some content from the old site and creating some new for this one also. The site won't use server-side anything right away. We will probably add some database features later on, but I have a local back-end shop that will fill that role for me as a subconsultant.

I am using Dreamweaver MX 2004 outputting XHTML and CSS. I realize we won't be serving this as XHTML right away, but I want to have my code in order if we are able to move to XML soon. I have BBEdit 8 but haven't yet made the transition, but would like this to be my last site with a WYSIWYG editor.

Graphics and such are largely placeholder right now, so I'm not really looking for as much graphic design critique as CSS usage and potential problems.

The menu is a CSS list-item rollover that seems to work fine in Safari and Opera, but IE Mac breaks the inline attribute apparrently. I still haven't been able to test on a PC yet. The background image loads only once per button state and is big enough to allow a couple of text size increases without breaking the layout. The columns are flexible and I'd like to have some fixed-width content divs that float centered in the columns. I think auto margins, floats and clears should let me do this? I'll want to give the divs a class style to control all of them on the site.

The sample page includes the relevant features up to this point.

Thanks for any help at all,

David

PS- Here's the current site. Done by someone (or more likely several someones) else. www.gwssi.com

 

[dornoforpyros]

at the risk of coming off like an real jerk I'm gonna recommend you consider purchasing a web template:
http://www.templatemonster.com/

I don't mean to sound judgemental or rude but just based on on that image I'd say you don't possess the design skills to pull off a really nice site.
It takes a while to learn and many, many bad designs before you find your niche' so to speak. But in the mean time if your doing a site for an engineering company they are gonna need something of higher quality.

 

[dabirdwell]

The image is a one-minute Keynote mock-up of the content divs I describe

Did you view the sample Safari Web Archive? This is obviously a just-begun project. Any comment on the actual markup would be useful.

 

[dornoforpyros]

Did you view the sample Safari Web Archive? This is obviously a just-begun project. Any comment on the actual markup would be useful.

did you try validating
your css yet?

 

[dabirdwell]

Yup, all valid so far.

.

 

[mnkeybsness]

Did you view the sample Safari Web Archive? This is obviously a just-begun project. Any comment on the actual markup would be useful.

Can't comment on the markup because you didn't give a link to an html page. But the current site looks a lot nicer than the one that is in progress.

The nav is hard to read and very un-usable. I would consider something a little more standard like the tabs on Amazon.com or a vertical nav menu running down the left of the page like on audioscrobbler.com

The logo is hard to read. Consider having a professional design the logo.

I would refrain from using the abbreviation GWSSI unless it were something that everyone who visits the page will know what it stands for. I see no information as to was GWSSI means, so I don't want to "learn about GWSSI"

I could go on, but this is just a start.

 

[dabirdwell]

The attached zip file has a Safari Webarchive in it

It's the last thing in the first post.

And here's a more current one. Haven't validated all the new CSS yet though.

And I know the name is terrible and it's acronym is even worse, but this is how they are already known and I haven't been hired to rebrand the company. The logo, also, unfortunately is mostly out of my control, but you can see that I made improvements to it's readability from the one in the mock-up.

 

[dornoforpyros]

It's the last thing in the first post.

And here's a more current one. Haven't validated all the new CSS yet though.

And I know the name is terrible and it's acronym is even worse, but this is how they are already known and I haven't been hired to rebrand the company. The logo, also, unfortunately is mostly out of my control, but you can see that I made improvements to it's readability from the one in the mock-up.

so we need to download a zip file, open it and then look through the html code? This seems like alot of work

just post it to a development link man. even if it's just www.gwssi.com/dev or something like that.

 

[dabirdwell]

Sorry for the inconvenience, I don't have access to the server right now.

If it's that much of an hassle, then why take time to post a complaint about it? Seems like you might just drop the thread if it was too annoying. The zip file was there the whole time and was referenced in my original post. Also, html files can't be attachments in the forum.

Anyway, here's a newer version for anyone who'll take the time.

 

[dornoforpyros]

yes but your asking ppl to check your html and the traditional way is a live link because it's one click.