Model Airplane Site

[crmamx]

Being a novice programmer I am primarily interest in your comments relative to layout, colors, ect. I have used some tables where I should not have but it is just easier and faster for me. And my CSS is not the best but it works which is in itself a miracle.

 

The site is southalabamarc.com

 

Thanks for taking your time to help.

[MDCode]

Right from your source code

 

 

<div id="left-header">
/*    <img src="images/information.gif" width="16" height="16" align="absmiddle" alt="" border="0">  */
   <img class="float-left" src="Pictures_Other/sarcm_logo.png" alt="new picture" border="0" width="240" height="150" />
</div>

 

/* */ is not an html comment (<!-- --> is) and is making the first thing the user see is a random square next to your banner.

 

I'm not too sure what the random picture of an airplane in the bottom left of the page is doing? Does it serve a purpose?

 

Your member's area doesn't work btw.

[crmamx]

Don't know where that came from but I must have done it. Didn't notice it because it didn't seem to be doing anything. Deleted it.

 

I had a site before and a beautiful image that cssfreakie did for me. But he doesn't answer emails and seems to have left PHP freaks and I am not a graphics person so I just put that picture there to replace his.

 

Haven't done the member's area yet. Not sure they even want one so I have commented it out for now.

 

One thing I might have to fix is the time on the clock. Sometimes it is right (CST) and other times it is 6 hours fast which I assume is Zulu Time. I just like the looks of this one.

 

Thanks kindly for your comments.

Edited December 1, 2012 by crmamx

[KevinM1]

Hey, it's nice seeing you back on here.

 

Some crits/suggestions/questions:

 

Can you make the background of the SARCM logo the same dark blue as the rest of the header block? The black sticks out in a negative way, especially since the height of the logo isn't the same as the height of the header.

 

What's with the picture of the Concorde on the lower left? It kinda sticks out there. Looks lonely.

 

Have you thought about uploading the group's videos to YouTube? It would allow people to find your site from multiple sources, it would stop you from having to host the videos directly, and I believe it's easier to embed them than what you're currently doing. Just a thought.

 

For the rest of the index, I think you need to make a choice between the rounded orange rectangles and the light blue rectangles. I can't tell why two of the items are orange and the others are not.

 

As a general tip, try to make sure that your images are optimized, that you're serving as few files as possible on each request (your CSS can likely be combined into one file, and look into CSS sprites), and that your Javascript is solid. Given that most of the site is text, it had a bit of a loading issue.

 

Finally two files are missing: information.gif and loveismamst.mp3. I strongly suggest that you don't put background music on your site. Users hate it, and it's just cheesy.

 

Aside from that, it's pretty solid. Like you say, a pure CSS layout would be better, but recognizing that issue is better than not knowing it or ignoring it.

 

Keep it up, and keep improving!

[crmamx]

Hey Kevin:

 

I answered a couple of days ago but I guess I forgot to hit post.

 

I don't like the logo either. As I mentioned above, I lost my graphics helper...cssfreakie who use to be one of the CSS gurus here. He doesn't answer my emails. I might have to learn how to use Inkscape.

 

The Concorde, same problem, had a nice graphic before but not applicable here. It does look awkward so I deleted it.

 

For now going to leave videos as is since I had such a problem getting them to work.

 

Blue and orange...no reason. Changed all them to orange.

 

I have not optimized the images because it is such a pain and so time consuming. But! I Googled it and found a great resizer on CNet named Mihov Image Resizer. It is a tiny program and will do batch resizing, rename the result and load it in the same file. I resized about 20 images of 2.5 megs each and it did it in about 20 sec. You select the pixil size for resizing.

 

I love redneck cheesy music but I took it out.

 

Thanks for your time.

Edited December 3, 2012 by crmamx

[mrMarcus]

I have not optimized the images because it is such a pain and so time consuming.

 

Think about what it's like for your users then!

 

Instead of resizing a large image using HTML/CSS, create the thumbnail within some sort of photo editor (perhaps even MS Paint?). That will shrink the size of each image dramatically. And that way, if the user wants to view the larger version of any given image, just create a link on the thumbnail that points to the larger image in question.

 

Don't forget, a lot of people use their smart phones for browsing now and these kinds of issues (excessively large images) can cause them to close their browser.

[crmamx]

Marcus:

 

That is exactly what I did on my last site. I have a good thumbnail program and might change back to that. The average size of the tn file is about 8 k and the average size of the resizer is about 28 k. Don't have any idea how much that would reduce the load time.

 

Thanks for the suggestion.