http://www.courthold.co.uk

Hi all. First post here at DevShed although I've used it for a long time now I'm almost done with my new site, mainly a place for me to write and show my photos. The address is http://www.courthold.co.uk . Any feedback / comments would be brilliant. Like I said, I'm almost done, there are some things still not finished (such as all the header images), and I need to majorly tidy up my HTML / PHP and CSS and make sure they validate. Design wise however, It's mostly done. I look forward to hearing your comments. Thanks.

Ok, well, first of all, I'm not too keen on the design, but thats mostly a personal thing. Something about it makes me not want too look at it, and the text seems really bitty, and not easy to read.

At 800x600, you don't seem much of the content, maybe making the banner image smaller.

The javascript is all well and good, but if I disable it, I can't seem the thumb nails. I'd suggest coding in an alternative, whereby the link itself had a bg img in css, and use the pseudo class :hover to change it to the lighter version. You can set it up so that the img is display:none, but js actually turns it to display: block onload, so if js is disabled, you wont have a problem.

Use a <ul> for your menu. If you've hovered around devshed for long enough, I'm sure you know what I'm talking about.

Use <h1-6> for your headings, thats what they're there for. If you want to use images as your headings, I'd suggest looking at:
http://levin.grundeis.net/files/200...ternatefir.html
http://levin.grundeis.net/files/20031203/ir.html

Ok, I'm done for now.

Thanks for the reply



Like you said, design is a personal thing. As for the text, I think the text on the right needs spacing out more, I had been playing with letter spacing and various other things. The main text seems ok for me though.



To be honest, I wasn't catering for 800x600 when I made it. I know that's bad practise, but it's my personal homepage that wouldn't have a huge audience anyway, and I know that very few use 800x600 (and those that do use AOL as well, what can you do eh? )



I understand that no JS means no fading in, but the standard thumbs are still there and can be clicked on fine. Again, I suppose I am thinking about the audience I know I'll get - having javascript disabled is pretty rare I would imagine.



Obviously not long enough, elaborate please :P



I understand that they are there for that specific reason, but what disadvantage is there to using <divs> and css and formatting it that way?


Thanks again for your feedback.

I'm using Firefox, I didn't check it in IE, but the spacing thing may be fixable by changing the font..???



Fairenough it's your site afterall . It's my own personal mission to try and get all my sites working on as many thigns as possible, it's an unfulfilled obsession



Again it's your site, and if you don't anticipate this being a problem, you needn't worry too much, but what I suggested isn't much more work to implement...



It's makes more sense semantiaclly to have a list of links presented as a list. Again, if this is a personal site, it won't matter too muchm but it's good to get into good habits/practices.

Read more: http://www.alistapart.com/articles/taminglists/



It's to do with semantics, same as using a <ul> for links. It defines what TYPE of content it is, so it retains semantic MEANING. It's an accessibility thing/good practice thing. Ultimately one should be able to turn off all styling and stil lbe presented with a logical page structure, complete with headings, paragraphs, lists, accronyms, and anything else. THis way the content of the page is much more accesseble to more devices, and helps with search engines too.



You're welcome.
And incase you're interested, I ran your site through Browsercam:

http://www.browsercam.com/public.aspx?proj_id=171560