SITE REVIEW: Genisystem GFX

Hey everybody! I'm back asking for another review!

It's a soon-to-be web design firm and I need any suggestions about the source code or the components and layout of the site itself. I call it Genisystem GFX. Also, people told me that the iframes are blue but only in browsers other than IE 6. If anybody can help me fix that, that'd be greatly appreciated.

http://www.gsgfx.com/

I know some of the content is not finished but I need some help on scripting. If you can help me out, e-mail me at genisystem.gfx@gmail.com. Thanx!

The very first page has too small fonts, I would say.
(Links would be easier to read without underlining.)


The page one finds by clicking "enter website" pais very
well made! (I see black hairlines near the corners
of each box - is that wanted (Safari).) But the
page is very well designed. (On Safari the font
remains somewhat small.)

MM

I had to select the text to read it. Choose another background color other that blue, or change the text color .
I also think that the fonts are too small.

IMO

the blue iframes is not what I intended and this does not occur in IE 6...I would really appreciate if someone can tell me how to solve that problem as it looks, very very ugly! However I will enlarge the font sizes...

thanx but is there anything else?

yes and the hairlines on the edges were intended

the scroller flash is moving too fast i think, and the sponsor advertisement try not to have it on the top there, maybe under hte content?

the header image is awesome.
the marquee is about 10 times as fast as it should be, i hate those "enter" pages.
do not use a scroll box for the content, particularly not a blue one when the rest of the site is blue.
the actual design is brilliant, i like the design round the box parts.

i noticed you used frames and tables a lot, try and avoid this, the SEO is not good for frame based sites and for some reason people hate tables not that i have much against them.

Try changing the IFrame bgcolor to the same as the rest of the page: #FFFFFF.

You currently have it set to transparent.

The header image on the hosting page should look the same as the others, not have the top half lopped off...it's looks "wrong" the way it is now.

Again, the blue box was not intended. Instead, it is supposed to be a patterning image and the iframes have already been set as transparent. They are fine in IE 6 from what I can see and if anybody can tell me how to get rid of the blue and make the patterned image visible, I would greatly appreciate it. Thank you for the compliments in regards to the site itself! As for using tables, I must use them as Photoshop won't output a sliced layout any other way. I will do the following suggested things:

- Lessen Speed of scroller
- Get Rid of the Blue in content box (if anybody can tell me how to)
- Enlarge text
- Change header image in hosting sect.

I cannot change the location of the sponser section, as it will require me to recode the entire page and I personally think it is fine where it is. As for the Splash Page, I need it as it gives users an idea of my services and gives quick reference to the sections of my website, so I will not remove it. I will do the above stated changes as soon as possible. If anybody has more suggestions, please post here!

You misunderstood...change the background so that it is NOT transparent...make it white (#FFFFFF), there is no transparent (in that sort of naming convention) color in html, but there is in CSS.

BTW...that blue shows up as a medium green in Opera 8.54

Hi,

First thing, yes you mix styling in html, and in css. When you will have removed all hardcoded styles in the pages (in tags such as body, table, tr, td, etc) the blue will disappear.

Now in your style I see you added the scrollbar definition, you must know this won't work on Firefox, I think only IE and Konqueror support colored scrollbars, and they are not approved by w3c.

Also, before they hire you as a webdesigner, some people (or a lot) will check your page with w3c validators, and if errors show, they will move away, use validators here:
http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1 ... gfx.com%2F
http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/vali ... gfx.com%2F
(the css validator will work only when the html is ok)

the first important error is that you did not declare any doctype to your pages. and if you declare XHTML then, you will have to add /> to your unclosed tags. For example, a tag such as <a name="top"> must be <a name="top" />

To help you on CSS, you should get Firefox browser, and add the web-developper toolbar, then you can edit CSS "on-the-fly".

As a designer-to-be, try to learn working without frames and tables, tables are meant to display tabular data (like a list of things in a page), not to layout. You will also save on page load, and on search engines indexation. You can replace frames by divs with overflow.

About style, another thing which is great is to use "em" to size fonts and divs (also for margins, height, tabbing, etc), then if someone use their own stylesheet to view the page (like people with poor eyes, and like browsers allow to use), or if they increase text size in browser, then all sizes will become bigger, and not only some (so it doesn't break the style). This comply to accessibility standards.

My last comment is that you insert your email address in plain text in your page, this will for sure be spiderred by spammers' bots, (same as here in your first post).

I wish you all the best, read about standards and accessibility, and make some corrections and you will do well. The green header graphic is great especially with shine and shadow that render as 3D. We can see you master graphics.

Do not hesitate to ask me if you need anymore information about CSS, if I see the post, I'll answer.

Cheers

You see, the cell of the table of the content and menu box is not set as transparent and instead has apatterning image, rather, the iframe itself has an 'allowtransparency' value to it's tag and all the pages that are targeted to its respective iframe have a body bg color of 'transparent'. So if I use white as the cell background, I will lose the patterning image. Patricia, thank you for your comments but, I make my layouts through Photoshop, right? If that's the case, then how else will Photoshop output the layouts as? If you're suggesting DIV layers with overflow, I don't know how to convert from tables to div layer, if you can tell me how, that'd be great. As for Iframes, next time I'll just use php includes. I realize about the w3c validator and I will make any neccessary changes so it conforms to their standards (including adding the doctype). I will remove colored scrollbars & remove open e-mail addresses. But I cannot remove some of the hardcoding, if there is anyother way to remove the blue, please let me know. Another thing is what could you tell me how I can conform to the accessability standards? I'll also have FF installed with the web developer tool bar. Thank you guys again for all compliments and suggestions, but if there is anything else to be suggested, keep your posts coming in. I need all the help I can get!

Hi,

Excellent website. I noticed that you're advertising genisystem.gfx@gmail.com ... why are you using a gmail address Surely its better to use your own domain name

Good luck.

Cheers, Prime

exactly... your supposed to learn how to make better ones... and as for the frames, you should learn to make a better form of navigation, but overall i still think the site looks great.. and check the frame tutorials on htmlgoodies.com for the background... i used to know how but i havn't used them in so long i've forgotten

Hi, Prime. Strangely enough, the gmail address is actually my personal e-mail. My e-mail pertaining to the site is admin@gsgfx.com!

Then why not just use a background tile, there is no transparency in html, in fact, when I bring up the view source, the command isn't even included in the code display...switch to a tile of your background image and it'll do the trick.

Photoshop is quite capable of outputting your layout using only CSS...no tables at all.