Mark Green

I have just published a website for my engineering company.

The Zohan

Hello there.

Just a few comments if i may be so bold.
1) The pictures look dark. Look shot by a well meaning amature rather than a professional photographer?
Pictures sell, may well worth getting as pro in to do 'em
No offence meant.

Front pages states you have been in business for six weeks. If this is the case i would drop that comment, maybee established in 2000 or leave it out all together.


Have you a client list, if so put it in somewhere - helps with credibility.


All in all it look sgood.

IPlease do not take my comments the wrong way.

Have a look @

RichB

Your site doesn't look right on a Mac.

(Cue all the PC lovers saying 'who uses macs anyway' and 'macs are crap')

OOoo, it doesnt work at all well on a mac actually........Frontpage is not that great it seems. Try DreamWeaver, its the muts nuts.

Markus

RichB is quite correct. Looks, erm, 'odd' on a mac. For reference I'm on a beige G3/233 desktop running Mac OS 9.0.4 and Internet Explorer 5.0

Frontpage, pah!, Dreamweaver, double pah! Settle for a copy of BBEdite, Graphic Convertor and you're away. I helped to code our site (www.hi-resolution.com) and used nothing more than the above. OK, so PageSpinner did get used at first, but we dropped it after we'd learnt HTML from it!

RichB

I agree with you Marcus that raw html is better, none of this horrible crap that the others put in but I do use DreamWeaver for seeing the results of my HTML, great for table generation.

RichB

...I think it may be a stylesheet issue....

RichB

Mark,
It seems that your tables have funny numbers in some places. The width and height settings play an important role and can cause the text to do weird things.
The problems trying to get text to look the same and the same size between a mac and pc and Netscape and IE are one of the worst problems I have come across so far. Its a nightmare...

The Zohan

Maybe i got it wrong.

Are you after comments on design/content/creativity or compatibility with systems or both. Hope my comments are not out of place.

Paul

Mark Green

Thanks for all the comments folks.

I will try to find time to take them on board and update. I may have to take the liberty of asking a few technical questions as I go though.

Mark

DavidRB

If you're keen to learn this stuff, then you could do a lot worse than check out

Shaun

Mark,

Good 1st attempt m8....What you other guys have got to realise, is that we all have to start somewhere!!!!

Dont worry Mark, the more you play, the more you will learn.

I have recently just gone through the same process. I recently set-up

Blow Dog

As Shaun said, 1st attempt can always be a very rewarding thing. I remember when I did my 1st site, I was very impressed.

Can I ask also, on what merits are you downgrading Dreamweaver and since when in todays day and age, especially for an amateur, is raw HTML the best option? I find that amusing, with the plethora of tools available to make even the most artistically challenged develop aesthetically pleasing material.
Cem

RichB

Sorry Mark,
I thought you were after constructive comments about your site, apologies if you or others think we were belittling your efforts, yes everyone does have to start somewhere and well done for getting stuck in.
Personnally, I think having a good understanding of how HTML works is an excellent skill to have, it makes fixing niggles such as the one we were discussing above a lot easier, yes there are a range of execellent tools out there to help you build web pages but you have chosen one of the most popular and it has already produced something that only works for PC users.
Also Dreamweaver (on the Mac) thinks that the page you created is OK as it represents your HTML correctly in its viewing window, only when it is used with IE on the Mac does it display incorrectly.

Just wanted to draw your attention to some of the pitfalls I have experienced as an HTML amateur.

Dream Weaver

Paul

Just had a look at Outlook.co.uk - like the Flash site - clean, simple, informative etc, no complaints there.

Mark

I cant seem to get into your site at the mo, but will have another look - I know how difficult it is, as I only started designing sites about 12 months ago, and began teaching myself a year before that. I have only done one external site so far which has taken me over 12 months so far due to the size of it:

RichB

Dream Weaver,

Your site looks nice too, two small problems though The background colour of the page is not set to be white so on Netscape it defaults to grey. The other thing is that banner ads appear on the site after a short while and they overwrite the text, they snap to the top or the bottom of the frame.

Blow Dog

As long as you dont quit the day jobs.



Cem

DavidBrown

In context, it's much much better than most other Machining/Welding/Sheet Metal sites that are written by their owners.

Don't let the perfectionists put you off. It's far easier to pick holes in something than to create something yourself.

Does it work ? Yes. Job done.

Just primp it as you learn new stuff.

carl

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:<HR>Originally posted by RichB:
<B>I agree with you Marcus that raw html is better, none of this horrible crap that the others put in but I do use DreamWeaver for seeing the results of my HTML, great for table generation.[/quote]

I used to use MSWord to generate my documents, but now I just type in the raw Postscript and send it to the printer

Dream Weaver

RichB

Cheers for the feedback - were you looking at it on Mac or PC? On PC using Netscape I didn't think there were any probs. Time to change the bgcolor tags I think. The banner ads will be removed once the site is finished, up and running - for now they will stay though.

Blow Dog - I disagree with you on the day jobs bit, if you aimed that at me?? I am currently developing an Intranet for a huge Blue Chip company. I am quite proud of my site for a first one - far better than some pro websites out there. My next sites will be much better though!! Watch this space.

Dream Weaver

RichB

Cheers for the feedback - were you looking at it on Mac or PC? On PC using Netscape I didn't think there were any probs. Time to change the bgcolor tags I think. The banner ads will be removed once the site is finished, up and running - for now they will stay though.

Blow Dog - I disagree with you on the day jobs bit, if you aimed that at me?? I am currently developing an Intranet for a huge Blue Chip company. I am quite proud of my site for a first one - far better than some pro websites out there. My next sites will be much better though!! Watch this space.

RichB

For Christs sake, didn't Mark want constructive comments? From his initial post 'All comments gratefully received.' I presumed he did.

Carl, congratulations on knowing Postscript, I know someone who also knows enough about postscript to do that...I just hope you are not as sad as he is!

DavidBrown, 'Does it work ? Yes. Job done.'
Er, Not quite, it doesnt work on a Mac. But then I guess you are happy to ignore one of the best selling machines around at the moment. Afterall, that's what most Windoze users are happy to do... (muppet )

DreamWeaver, no problem, as I said, I'm happy to help, not an HTML expert by any means but have done enough to know how to fix this sort of stuff.
Plus I have access to both Macs and PCs but surf using the Mac, hence noticing the differences between the two.
Also, I have seen many a site that people are making money from that are no where near as good as yours.....DBs for one

I admire anyone who doesn't come from an IT background and manages to get the sort of pages you guys are producing, hopefully some of us can give you a few pointers so you can avoid some of the holes others may have already fallen in.

This is also a good site for web related stuff:

Blow Dog

I hear Pizza Hutt are looking for delivery boys. I can put a word in if you want?

Cem

RichB

So the jobs still open is it Cem - Shame, it sounded like you were just right for the job...
I'll let DB know.

JC

Looks OK to me. Most of the info is in the web site although I prefer real examples of work carried out.
Also the client List again with real examples is missing.

Photos look a bit amateur.

If that is your first attempt .. very good.

Mark Green

I'm glad this thread is doing so well. As long as this keeps up more people will be looking at my site - which can't be bad for business.
I already knew that the photo's weren't up to the required standard and these will change in time.
The customer list will be along shortly, I just wanted to get permision from the companies involved to use their logos.

Thanks again for the comments and keep the thread running - long live my free advertising.

Mark

AllanB

Damn good for your first site, well done. You've done more than me considering I work in IT and my doris was the Macromedia marketing bod , I just got a bit lost so well done on getting there.

Site does look a little basic and the pictures are a little small . I'd suggest trying to get some higher quality images.
As Markus and RichB mentiined this doesn't seem to be a Mac friendly site so it may need some tweaking.


AllanB

DavidBrown

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:<HR>Originally posted by RichB:
<B>
Also, I have seen many a site that people are making money from that are no where near as good as yours.....DBs for one
[/quote]

Agreed Rich.. so many people disappear up their own a?ses, wasting time trying to make the perfect site (which is impossible anyway) when one could be making millions instead.

Give me a site, any site.. and I could rip it to shreds technically.. but what would be the point, if the users are happy and the owner's happy ?

Don't worry about the Mac audience.. if we all make sure we don't support them.. they'll go away quietly - Figures show less than 1% of surfers use Macs.

Long live Unix !

[This message has been edited by DavidBrown (edited 15 December 2000).]

RichB

Blow Dog

ahh....screw tha mac guys..


and netscape users.