Comments On Design Etc.

[Medium Willy]

Hello,

I'm investing a lot of time in designing my new site (About Thailand). So I can be sure I'm doing a good job of it, I would like to invite comment from you, if it looks like sh*t I can adjust it accordingly.

Please give constructive criticism only, I don't have time or patience for flamers or sarcastic types. Also, I know the text content is thin on the ground at this time, I'm working heavily on that, I'm nore concerned about the layout,, colour scheme etc etc etc.

...and before you groan and say 'Oh, yet another Thailand website', you'll find no sex on this site. I'm aiming it at Farang/Thai families, those with Thai/UK links and more intellingent site visitors wishing to expand their knowledge of Siam culture.

The time you take to quickly have a look and write some feedback will be greatly appreciated.

The address is www.siamcentral.com

[Khun Jean]

First impression.

The colorscheme is not what i really like but that is not the most important. Different tastes.

Too slow to load. Main problem is that you have too many gifs.

Remember a browser (if it follows the wc3 rules) can have 2 connections open to the same domain at any one time.

The pictures will be downloaded 1 by 1 -> slow.

The top is made out of many pictures why not use 1 or 2. Compression of the gifs will be a lot more efficient.

The spacer is unneccasary you can use style attributes margin or padding.

The menu can have the same look and feel when you do it with backgroundcolor and text. And make the text a little bolder to enhace readability.

Make the yellow/greenish block in front of the menu text a div and manipulate the background color with script. Again why use gifs if the same effect can be reached with plain text and elements. It will be a lot faster and more responsive to the users actions.

You can make the top and left grow with the size of the users window when you use a TD with background color and a width or height of 100%.

I have 1600x1200 resolution and i have a lot of whitespace.

Try to make your content more flowing (horizontal) and try to make it use the space available.

A good way to test a website is using a older browser and a slow connection. If it works on that configuration it will perform very well on newer and faster machines.

If you have it on your localhost or a computer on your internal network you can not do real testing.

I do have a fast computer but i use a dialup connection currently 50Kbps. And i wait and wait and wait with every change of the menu. Irritating and not inviting.

If you can speed it up. Maybe by using a IFRAME to hold the center content you can at least save the time needed to load the menu and top every time. (Not everybody has his caching enabled)

Keep up the good work. But finetune it.

[Medium Willy]

Hmmm, food for thought indeed.

I guess I take my 2 Mbit/sec connection for granted.

[Medium Willy]

Published a simpler design I'd previously abandoned, does that load any quicker?

[organic]

I didn't find any problem with the speed, and my connection is very poor. I'm not disagreeing with Khun Jean, though, every little bit of speed you can wring out of it is valuable.

As for the artwork, wouldn't it be better to have something relevant to Thailand rather than those squares? I'd also avoid using the Thai flag, bit of a cliche.

I know you say the text needs working on, but one thing you're missing so far is getting relevant keywords up near the top on the home page to feed the search engine robots. Also it would be good to have your menu as text, with rollover images (or other special fx) underneath if you so wish, again for the search engines.

[Medium Willy]

I'll work on the initial text when it comes to search engine placement in the near future.

I'll ditch the Thai flag, thanks for pointing that out. I'll find something better.

I think this old design I've just uploaded is a bit naff though

[40theives]

• NEVER display an "Under Consturction" sign. If it's not done, don't link to it.
  
• For information sites, ALWAYS use text links - not graphics as they are a hassel to update.
  
• Information site? Why would you ask about color schemes? People don't care how informational sites look, they care how they navigate.
  
• Give intuative HTML page names like siam.html rather than 10203.html
  
• Forget about graphics. If you do use them, ask how they improve the user experience. The Thai flag on the front page gives the user a quick visual cue of what the page relates to, but so could an icon a 1/10th of the size.
  
• The more info and links you can give on the front page, the better. In your case, all of the pages in your site, should be availble as links on the front page, or you have not done a good job of organization.
  
• Your website title or logo should always link to your home page.
  

Good luck and visit Jakob Nielsen's Website before going any further.

[Ricci]

I like the menu on the left side.

Anything else? See above.

[SeaVisionBurma]

Not to be pedantic - but if you ARE going to display an "under construction" sign - try and have the accompanying text spelt correctly.

Some folks will never re-visit a website if it has spelling errors, as they believe it to be sub standard.

Actually on second glance there are grammatical errors apparent throughout the text on the information pages. I think you may have been a bit enthusiastic on your use of apostrophes! I gather that the written text will be thoroughly checked for spelling and grammar before the final version is published?

If this is not your strong point then say so, as there are plenty of folks who would be more than happy to give the text a once-over to point out errors.

[sVB carefully checks his own spelling again after typing 'perdantic' instead of pedantic in the initial post ]

[Medium Willy]

Thanks for all the helpfull advice.

My grammar is appauling and I do indeed have a collegue check it over.

I think I'm gonna scrap this one and spend a few days on a stripped down site (in a speed of loading sense)

Thanks again.