technowax.net

Hello boys and grils. I seem to spend more time than nessisary on #snarkpit, but havnt posted here in a while. So, hi (:

My reason for posting, is my website; www.technowax.net. I've always had a big dilema when it comes to making a pretty designs, they allways turn up looking the same. I want the site to be fast, so I include very few images, as most of the structure is made from table cells and chunks of text. So, If you could please post every bit of critisism you can find, along with suggestions for improvment, that would be awsome.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

the design looks fine.

The only real criticism I could give is when listing a series of links under the content area (where your messages are) comma separate the links. Changing the color wouldn't hurt either. They're very close to the normal text color.

Other then that ... looks fine, I don't really see the point of the site though.

What back end did you use (just wondering)?

your tables bleed off the edge of the page :sad:

tell you what, i scanned a whole book on html.. its the most basic book i have ever found.. you look at the pictures, decide on the design you like, and the text is on the adjoining page to use.. very simple..

holler at me PM .. lets keep the taboo to a minimum in the open forums please.

Oh, I didn't notice that since my monitor is at a really high resolution.

Orph, no. :smile:
Since tables in general aren't the problem.

A much better fix would be to use a percentage for your tables width, so it stays the same preportion on almost any resolution. I'd say use some css "left" "right" elements, but those are REALLY flakey and crappy on Internet Explorer, and sadly, thats why most people use. (They work beautifully in Everything else though).

I cant get the tables to go off the page, nor can I get the page to scroll sideways, the page just resizes itsself?

I programmed the backend my self. The whole lot is all custom, and the point of the site, is sort of described on the front page. If you login, you can add to the wicki too...

Prehaps if I made a theme system - would that solve the color's issue?

xconspirisist said:
I cant get the tables to go off the page,

hmm, well.. i suppose i just made that up then.. my bad.

I think you should actually figure out what you want to show off on your site- what the content is- then go from there. Personally, for small personal sites I like just the simple top image/banner with a few main links at the top or the side, and no excessive tables/bordering/etc.!

awsome. I think I will lend my hand at making a header image then, and prehaps a few more images here and there.

as my reply was dismissed the 1st time, i checked better..

with firefox, the table does its job, with IE it falls off the right side of the page..

still, if that doesn't bother you, i can live with it as well :smile:

xconspirisist said:
awsome. I think I will lend my hand at making a header image then, and prehaps a few more images here and there.

rofl You're going to lend your hand...to yourself?

Nice clean layout btw. though as Orph says, the table does disappear off the edge of the screen.

I am not dismissing you orph, I am far too scared of you to do that... :biggrin:

Nah, really, its just I find it very hard to believe. Could you send me a screenshot, then prehaps I can see what is pushing it off the edge of the page?

sure, gimme a few

I programmed the backend my self

...You wrote an entire database program just for your site? Or do you mean you used flat files?

Everyone else: Quit bitching and use a browser that follows, at the very least, most of the W3 standards. :razz:

Or he could add scrolling to the page ... or the percentage thing I was talking about.

[EDIT]
Oh ... I see the problem.

Don't use "100%" ever. Use like 98 or so, unless you really want the item to go from first to last pixel on the screen.

And yes, IE is flakey in this area, so deal with it.
[/EDIT]

Interesting. I will wait for orph's screenies if you dont mind, btw.

The backend is written in PHP, which interfaces to SQL. The backend will be open source'ed / gpl'ed, when it materialises quite a bit.

I believe it may be the horizontal lines, IE doesnt even seem to be able to color them.

I will take them out, see if that makes any difference.

i've used color lines/bars in IE before.. gimme a sec, i will look up the code.

I have too, but I am doing it the correct way atm, included in an extrenal stylesheet;

<!--code-->Code:<TABLE width="95%" align=center><TR><TD>{

height: 6px;

border: 6px;

width: 100%;

background-color: #D7E5F2;

color: #102132;

}</TD></TR></TABLE><!--/code-->

More importantly, are the tables leaking off the edge of the page anymore?

You also have no margin around the thing. Try putting "margin 5px;" or so, under that area in the css page. It should create a 5px gap between all other page elements. I believe it also considers the outer border of the page.

By the way, forget what I said about the table percentages. If that were really the cause it would go to the end in mozilla as well. Sorry.

So, you used SQL ... cool. (That's all I was asking).

xconspirisist said:
<!--code--><!--/code-->More importantly, are the tables leaking off the edge of the page anymore?

yes

ahha !!

hmm, I think, I know what it is. Bug in MSIE... should take about an hour to fix...

Okey, I've had a poke around, and the site has got a brand spanking new theme to it. Looks a tad more solid, i think. Ive not really had a go at the MSIE error, because the page appears fine in firefox, epiphnay, mozilla, lynx and konqurer, and I have no respect for buggy microsoft software.

With the new theme system, i will make a snarkpit theme too, I like the colors and stuff, will be interesting to see how it turns out.

xconspirisist said:
With the new theme system, i will make a snarkpit theme too, I like the colors and stuff, will be interesting to see how it turns out.

clones seldom fare well.. keep going the way you were, originality has its own rewards.

/2 cents

http://www.alistapart.com

Discusses layout theory and techniques.

http://www.bluerobot.com

Has some good stuff with auto-centering and floating-column layouts, in addition to links to other things.

http://www.csszengarden.com

A collection of high calibur CSS layouts - amazing works of art, they
are. Good for inspiration when designing your page, possibly.

http://wellstyled.com/tools/colorscheme2/index-en.html

Color Scheme tool, matches colors with, um, other ones. Really useful for mapping as well.