Website design review

[icarus]

Quick question:

I've heard back from some people that they have trouble reading my website.

Do you?

If so -

1) is the print too small (11 pt in windows, 10 pt in navigation)?
2) is the blue and black theme too dark?
3) are there broken links?
4) do you want me to list fics by pairing?
5) ...other problems?

Thank you. The website's there for you, so however stylish it is -- if it's not readable, then I need to fix it.

ETA: So far it's pretty universal that -
a) the strikethrough needs to be removed
b) the links need to be a different, brighter colour
c) there needs to be a larger margin on the individual story pages
d) list fics by pairing instead of by rating
e) do not use heading < h 1 > style as it does not work in some browsers
f) bump point size up one notch (11 pt & 12 pt)
g) ... I'm not sure how to fix the navigation/pix overlap found in some browsers. Hmm.

ETA2: I've updated some of my pages with larger fonts, yellow instead of the cross-out mouse over, removed the < h 1 > tag in places. Haven't fixed the margin, and a new issue has arisen: some find the frame in the middle of the page difficult and too-small. Correcting that... would involve a none-too-pretty (in terms of the work involved) change to the picture framing it.

Please keep the critiques coming, again, this came from a few private, hand-over-the-mouth mumbles from friends.

Comments

[grodwona.livejournal.com]

Before reading your stories, I would carefully set my browser options so both frames and stylesheets are disabled. Main problems :-

• Tiny blue text on black background can work as a site colour scheme, but only on sites where the text is irrelevant.
  
• Move your mouse over the links and the cursor changes to a double-headed arrow (as is used to resize windows). First impression - WTF? And sometimes links go yellow on mouseover and sometimes they get crossed out. Second impression - WTF?
  
• Most of the site links open in a little itty-bitty frame in the middle of the page.
  If I select "1024 x 768" the little-bitty frame now appears in the middle of the page instead of the left hand side. I'm not sure that's an advantage. And the frame makes it difficult to read the text, difficult to bookmark, difficult to print. Really horrible. I have a large monitor and I want to use it; I don't want to be restricted to a box which is 400 pixels square.
  

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

*nods*

My usual criteria is simplicity, large fonts, with minmal graphics and doo-dads. But this site was a gift to me, so who am I to complain?

But now I'm trying to correct it so it works for everyone.

The links originally crossed out, and people didn't like that. So I changed it to yellow last night on some of my pages to test that option.

The double-headed arrow I tried to get rid of last night -- no one mentioned it, but it doesn't work for me as it's difficult to aim. I'm not at the technical level of the designer of this site, so I'm not sure how to change it.

The stories do not pop up in the tiny frame, so they can be booked-marked and printed individually. So I don't think that part's a problem. If you pop open a story link, you'll see what I mean. The frame does feel too small and crowded. As for bookmarking say, the updates page, I really don't want people to do that in case I ever radically change the site.

Thank you. I've been getting the impression that people are frustrated with the design of the site, and I'm grateful that you let me know. I think I need to take it back to the designer and back to the drawing board completely. Because the fancy picture frame and tiny box is a fundamental design issue that makes the story descriptions difficult to read and inaccessible.

I may take this down and put up a blank no-graphics site in the interim.

Icarus

[grodwona.livejournal.com]

The double-headed arrow I tried to get rid of last night -- no one mentioned it, but it doesn't work for me as it's difficult to aim. I'm not at the technical level of the designer of this site, so I'm not sure how to change it.

Boring techie html-ly stuff - someone's tried to comment out the styles at the top of the page with
This doesn't work with styles, you have to use /* ... */ instead.
E.g.

/*
body, p, td {font-face: times new roman; font-size: 10pt; color: skyblue}
.....
*/

And the double-headed arrow is caused by cursor: nw-resize

If you'd like any help give me a shout. CSS/HTML I can do.