Can you find any bugs in my website?? Rep for the helpful...

[Cookie]

Hi TonyB. Here are a couple of opinions which I hope are helpful as you develop your site. Others may disagree

The use of “rollovers” to conceal navigation information has been referred to as “Mystery Meat Navigation” (MMN) (although this term will mean something entirely different to Maurice).

A fun place to learn a bit about good web design (by looking at bad design) is at www.WebpagesThatSuck.com. Here is his reasoning for not being a fan of MMN: http://tinyurl.com/c3jl5.

Your site works around the problem by providing duplicates of the main navigation links on the upper-right of the homepage – which is using up your valuable screen real estate.

On http://www.motoequip.co.nz/Minotaur-frontpage.htm, the user can miss the fact that there is some additional info available for each product. I would remove the second "rollover" images on the product graphics but leave them linked to the detail pages as they are. In addition I would make the product descriptions/names (e.g. “One Piece Suit”) a coloured hyperlink maybe, so the user can NOT miss the fact that there is some great additional info available for that product just a click away.

I recommend avoiding the use of hyperlinks that start life out as black text. Blue is a good colour but others have been known to work – something other than just a mouse cursor change needs to say “I can be clicked”.

Once you start adding more content the site will benefit from a “search” function.

There is something about the font type and font colour combinations that need a tweak in my view. There are some talented graphic designer types around here who might comment – (the comment might just be that I am full of BS ).

Best wishes!

[TonyB]

Thanks man, I can definitely see your point. But I like MMN ... it looks cool and stops my pages from just being a bunch of boring text. I think I'll stick a "Click here" on each of the images.

On the subject of mystery meat- does anyone NOT realise that when you go to one of the Minotaur product pages, all of the small images can be clicked on to open a large image in a new window?

I'm still having issues with the tables stuffing up the spacing for the MMN stuff on the left. Riffer- I'll try what you mentioned.... when I figure out what you meant LOL.

As for the coding stuff, I will look at it- promise! Try to remember that I did a bit of work on the website for my last job- just manipulating existing pages to make new ones. This is my first ever crack at starting a website from scratch, so if you imagine someone who's done less than 2 weeks over 3 years manipulating an existing site, and then probably about 16 hours fumbling about creating their own website with zero training, that'd be me!

Thanks to all that have offered advice. I'm all repped out at the moment- been giving out too much- but once the system lets me, I'll make sure everyone gets some bling.

And yes Biff, that would be D. Some of them are me as well. I was going to hire a model- models themselves are fairly cheap, its the royaltys that add up. D did a great job, as did Rashika on the camera.

[Cookie]

Thanks man, I can definitely see your point. But I like MMN ... it looks cool and stops my pages from just being a bunch of boring text. I think I'll stick a "Click here" on each of the images.
[snip]

Glad you appreciated the perspective. I like the graphics down the left side too Tony and I would keep using them on the site but they don't necessarily need to fullfil the additional navigation purpose. Adding the "click here" text to each of them will tend to spoil the very nice clean look you have achieved with those graphics.

That guy has a good (and amusing) review of many basic design issues that are easy to avoid at the link below (if you have not already read it).

http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/bigg...s-in-2004.html

Happy coding!

[Karma]

On the subject of mystery meat- does anyone NOT realise that when you go to one of the Minotaur product pages, all of the small images can be clicked on to open a large image in a new window?

Not at first glance no, you'd think they were just pure decoration.

General rule of thumb of web design, as with many things, Keep It Short and Simple, but I'm sure you already know this.

The site looks great, and considering you're catering to a specific market who will have gone to your site looking for leathers (as opposed to something like Amazon where people just browse and don't know what they really want) then they're more willing to take the extra time to explore the site than Joe Public would.

BTW, that's a great first effort for someone with as little programming knowledge as you say you have... most first sites are dodgy frames pages with pure text all over the shop.

[Lias]

My 2 cents.

As of this post, the main page is still only titled "Index"
Find this and change

<title>Index</title>

to

<title>Motoequip - Killing small kittens since 1839</title>

Or whatever you want it to say

"Under Construction" pages are evil. If you havnt built it, dont have the link to it in the first place. Unless you have your acessories page nearly ready to go, remove the entire button/link and add it back in when you have it gtg.

Other than that it looks good to me.

[Devil]

Hey mate,

Here's a few idea's from me, sorry if any are repeats from previous posts.

Put the contact details into a header or footer on each page (including the index page). Being able to pick this information up on a website without having to click anything is very handy. I'd go for a footer myself, it would tidy the bottom of the page nicely, instead of the page just "finishing".

Regarding the table widths and screen resolutions: I would say leave it as it is if you're not that experienced. The downside with a variable width is that it can get untidy very quickly. If you fix the table width like you have, you are guaranteed a tidy presentation of information.

Text is "good" but I think it could be better. Investigate a few different font types, keep it clear and simple. Not sure if it was mentioned earlier, having a little extra space on the right side of the text before the end of the white space would make for a tidier page.

Switching between your apparel pages and the main page I noticed the gaps between the picture links on the left changes depending on the page you're in. Does this table have the same properties on each page?

Well done in any case!

[Yokai]

List of issues:

1 - no Doctype - this is a problem for search engines and means that your html will not validate correctly

2 - Useful to keep the links to where you are going and have been in the same place. i.e. if you are gonna have a home link keep it at the top of the list or whatever - Also - keep that list in the same order. It changes too much.

3 - Contact page has no home link (just a contact us link)

4 - Apparel page has a different layout (the links at the top are wider, the clickable images are slightly further apart)

5 - No Contact Us on the Accessories under construction page

6 - Navigation changes on the actual leathers pages - i.e. should have an "Apparel" link at the top (to cater for those who don't see the roll-overs)

There are some problems in the html too, but these will be sorted differently depending on what you want the html to validate as.

To get around the layout changes you can sort this by using CSS...
Tables can be populated with the   code for blanks which provides content and allows the tables to be easily aligned

Hope that helps!

[Sparky Mark]

This is a bug rather than a criticism.

I notice that your logo is active as a link from most pages back to your home page. However from the parts page it isn't.

Nice layout though, easy to navigate and simple.

[k14]

There's a major bug I found. Some ginga has managed to get his photos on the site under the photos of the leathers. I think you may have been hacked by some ginga's rights activist group to try and get some equality for all the gingas out there. I think you should change these photos asap as they will most definately impact on sales.

.....now where's my rep

[TonyB]

To get around the layout changes you can sort this by using CSS...
Tables can be populated with the   code for blanks which provides content and allows the tables to be easily aligned

:spudwhat:

[TonyB]

Some ginga has managed to get his photos on the site

The ginga actually did a bloody good job

[skelstar]

&_nbsp; stands for 'non braking space'. Its like a code to tell the browser that its a space character (no not like R2D2). Like &_amp; is ampersand (?). So....if you put lots of &_nbsp;'s you will be filling out a table cell with spaces, making the cell bigger and bigger, thus moving the image over...or something.

Your code has the odd &_nbsp;, dreamweaver put it in there.

Note: I have written non-braking-space with a '_' to stop your browser thinking its a space character .

[Devil]

&_nbsp; stands for 'non braking space'. Its like a code to tell the browser that its a space character (no not like R2D2). Like &_amp; is ampersand (?). So....if you put lots of &_nbsp;'s you will be filling out a table cell with spaces, making the cell bigger and bigger, thus moving the image over...or something.

Your code has the odd &_nbsp;, dreamweaver put it in there.

Note: I have written non-braking-space with a '_' to stop your browser thinking its a space character .

Thats "breaking" mate

[skelstar]

True . Old habit.

I think the non-braking space is between my ears.

[TonyB]

Right, I've made some small changes. All of the image buttons (MMN) on the Minotaur detail pages now have "Click for larger image" on them. It doesn't look quite so purdy now, but at least it's clear.

I've updated the titles so they now give a better indication of what is on the page.

I'm confused about this Doctype thing. Exactly what do I need to insert?
is it (between <>)

!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"

??
This is what my version of Dreamweaver mentions in the help files.

HELP!