survey web design

can you check the site i made?

http://school.activeresourceteam.com

i think it's pretty empty and am thinking aloud if i should add cartoony graphics for background. should i? based on the questions in this survey, the target of this site are troubled teens, i think.

Validate and correct your code before submitting.

gary

What!?

works perfecly fine on me though, i don't know what error you have tripped upon...

In 43 lines of code, there are 26 errors. It is a tribute to the browser authors that the page renders at all.

gary

You don't have to be that blunt - I'm sure he just wants a review of the content and looks at the moment - by all means suggest this but please don't be so abrupt.

Worry about your code validating later, you have bigger worries...

If I had trouble understanding exactly what you wanted me to do think how school kids will cope. You need much clearer instructions, and why not use a bit more of the page? Linespacing of 130% looks good too, spaces things out a lot nicer.

Also the link to the survey needs to be more prominant, I wasn't at all sure where to click at first (I assumed the link was a copyright message it was so small).

As for the survey itself, I didn't like the forms. I suggest using three check boxes per line/question and make sure it's clear that they should only check three boxes on each section, or use a textbox and let them type 1, 2 or 3 next to their top three selections.

Now to your actual question, no, I wouldn't use cartoony backgrounds, this seems to be a somewhat serious survey, maybe some very light, watermarkish bg graphics of some kind, maybe some jazzy, upbeat graffiti??

Hope this helps,

John.

EDIT:

also just took the whole test and some kind of progress indicator would be nice, even a simple 'Page 3 of 7' would be really nice.

I actually like the current background - I think that the question mark works well Maybe you could have 'page no x of y' at the bottom of the survey, so the children know how many more questions and pages.

Perhaps I was abrupt. I can only plead a *nix ML background where bluntness is more the norm. I do believe my post was appropriate.
My order of critique follows what I believe to be the order of importance:

1. Technical correctness. Code must be well formed and valid. Invalid, poorly formed html leads to unexpected results.

2. Usability and accessibility. Poor usability leads to poor visitor experience. Poor accessibility is impolite and may have legal ramifications.

3. Æsthetics. Visual appeal is like a picture frame. It enhances the visitor experience, but the site can exist without it if items 1 and 2 are OK and the content satisfies the visitor's needs.

So, in that order:

1. In the case of this particular page, there was an error rate of 1 error per 1.65 lines of code. That is a bit excessive.

2a. As JonnyboyH pointed out, usability suffers due to a poor instruction set.

2b. Poor semantic markup reduces accessibility. Use the label tag to, umm, label the form elements.

3. Layout could be improved by bringing the form elements in from the edge. It would create some whitespace for separation and use the eyes's natural inclination to go toward the page center. The background question mark image is very good.

cheers,

gary

I never said that you shouldn't point out validating the code - it just seemed too abrupt and harsh - that is all. As I said before, by all means point this out.

thanks for all your reply guys... i really appreciated each suggestion you gave to me. as for the errors, maybe i should access this site outside. i can't seem to figure out which page has that error(my fault). thank you all.