Site review Denis Wöhler

@mdoignyFeb 22.2004

I’m rewriting a site for a friend of mine. Part of the “job” is to get as much comments as possible about the site so as to make it more user friendly. Actually, we are in a deadlock, no one being able to come up with better ideas.

The “contact and order” (and pop-up windows), the gallery and guestbook pages and part of the intro are new, the rest is still old version.

The problem seems to be that the ordering system is too complicated. I don’t see any other method of displaying the goods and make it even more user friendly.
You can test the whole ordering proces and/or register (use “test” as name and address, your email or ‘[email protected]‘ as e-mail).

An overall review of the site will be appreciated, too.
The address is ~~[url]~~http://www.denis-woehler.de[/url]

You can contact the owner of the site directly if you want: ~~[email]~~[email protected][/email] (in German, if possible).

Thank you very much.

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Full-stack Developer

11 Comments(s) _↴

@toicontienFeb 23.2004 — #Surfing on Netscape 7.01 on Mac OS9:

1. I'm sure I'm not the only person to have said this, but ditch the intro page. :rolleyes: That's personal preference, but I do understand its purpose is to give a language choice for the site.

2. The text links do not show up on this browser. The links DO show up, but only as tiny underlined spaces. I'm not sure it it's Netscape being picky about the HTML, which it is. It's not nearly as forgiving as Internet Explorer. Try checking the site out in Mozilla, Netscape 7.0+ (6.x is riddled with bugs), Mac browsers, etc.

3. In frameset D, the background image repeats and their isn't a transition between the top and bottom of the photo. I think it's kind of tacky when a BG image doesn't repeat seemlessly. Maybe shrink the height of the image and fix it to the background using CSS so that it doesn't scroll with the page. Have it no-repeat too. The width seems OK.

4. Frameset E: the logo for the Main order page has a white halo around the text.

5. The gallery is kind of confusing. Does it scroll automatically or do the images cause the pics to scroll? The cursor doesn't turn into a hand like it does over links, so the arrow images only seem to be decorative.

Other than that, it's a good clean-looking site.

@mdoignyauthorFeb 23.2004 — #The site was developed with a screen resolution of 800 * 600 and 1024 * 768, and IE5 and IE6 in mind.

I've been checking the stats for one month, and didn't notice any other browser. The public for the site is very low-tech.

I'll contact the owner for the headlines (he provides me with the headlines, since i don't have his specific font).

The problem with the link is probably CSS-related. The CSS is updated for PC, not for Mac (i don't have a mac)

The intro was also asked by the owner. I don't like it, it takes the control out of the user and it doesn't add much to the site.

It's interesting to have other people review the site. For instance, i didn't notice that the arrows are being seen as decorative, not as functional elements. But then, how can you signal that the arrows are functional without using those awfull descriptives "click [b][u]here[/b][/u] to scroll forward - click [b][u]here[/b][/u] to scroll backward".

(i used a normal link with text before, but the owner requested these arrows). I'll add a blank href to change the cursor into a hand.

@spufiFeb 23.2004 — #Am I missing something because after the intro page loads, I don't see a link to go to the rest of the site.

@iniquity101Feb 23.2004 — #Am I missing something because after the intro page loads, I don't see a link to go to the rest of the site.[/QUOTE]

you have to click on english or german, which then sends you to the very very very long intro, where you can skip (link at the top) or wait...and wait...and wait..before it finaly loads the homepage.

@mdoignyauthorFeb 23.2004 — #First you should see the page with one jpg (centered vertically and horizontally), a name (gif) and two links (Deutsch - English).

When you click on one of the links, the name and links should move to the upper part of the page. the link renames itself to "skip intro" and there is a dot-counter to show you the time position in the intro.

[img]http://web.verfaillie.be?intro.jpg[/img]

The link to the page (without intro) is

http://www.denis-woehler.de/english/frameset_e.htm

@toicontienFeb 23.2004 — #There were several things wrong with the page. There were about 4 or 5 tags that weren't closed. The table that held the bottom links had visibility: hidden; in the style attribute. That's what was hiding things from Gecko-based browsers. I have no idea why all others, including Opera 7.2, showed the text just fine.

Initially though, with the original files I downloaded from your site, only Opera 7.2 showed the bottom text links. Not even IE6, IE5.5 9x/NT and IE5.01 9x/NT showed the links. I've attached a ZIP file that contains HTML comments on what was wrong. The tags are all properly indented too so it's easier to read the code.

[upl-file uuid=834f40a7-5e52-41e3-b861-3c3a12377079 size=4kB]new.zip[/upl-file]

@mdoignyauthorFeb 23.2004 — #The table had the hidden style attribute to make it invisible until the complete page was ready.

<body ... onLoad="lw.style.visibility='visible'"> should have made the element visible.

To play safe i removed the whole hidden thing.

Ive downloaded the zip file, but it seems to have unix-style line terminators. can work with that, no big trouble.

@toicontienFeb 23.2004 — #seems to have unix-style line terminators[/QUOTE]
Yeah, sorry about that.

The javascript that is used to show the table is at fault then. When testing for browser compatibility, always use document.getElementById first, then document.all. The first is W3 Standard DOM and IE 5+ recognizes it. So basically 99% of the browsers out there will recognize the standard DOM.

@Daniel_TFeb 23.2004 — #i use firefox 0.8, and cant getr past the intro page. it shouldnt use javascript as links.i could get farther, but id have to look at the source, and ppl coming to ur site arent likely gonna know how to do that, or want to do that.

-Dan

@Daniel_TFeb 23.2004 — #also, no offense, but ur intro page kinda makes it look like a p0rn site?

-Dan

@mdoignyauthorFeb 24.2004 — #I'll send your comments to the site owner.

I'm not a fan of the intro too, but he wanted it.

Added a fastlink (no intro and no javascript) on the page.

If nobody get's past the intro page it will be rather difficult to evaluate the rest of the site. ?

The problem is mostly this: the visitors of the site are very computer-illiterate (they all use the standard internet explorer that comes with their computer) and don't read the text that's on the page. Basically, the owner want that a six years old child could navigate the site and order items.

There seemed to be problems with the ordering system: for instance, a visitor clicked on the CD link, this started a pop-up window, but the visitor closed the window before anything could load, thinking it was a pop-up add for a (real) porn site (tested it in an internet café yesterday). Made the pop-up window 90% of the available screen size, but this fooled the layout of each pop-up window, that was designed with the fixed size in mind.

Another person asked a "order basket" near each item.

This is possible for the CD page (basket below left each picture), the calendar page (basket below each calendar name) but not the poster page (too much items). If visitors see order baskets on the CD and calendar page, they will get confused if there is no basket on the poster page!

And BTW, all those baskets make the site "un-classy". You don't place bigs signs "[b]ON SALES NOW- LAST DAYS[/b]" in an Bang & Olufsen shop. So it's just trying and evaluating what could be best.

Just to show you the type of problems i have when rewriting the site.