i didn't understand the last post it was cornfusing. so what are you trying to say.
Back to the website, if you've gone in the last couple of days you've seen it's taken a turn for the worse. The main problem is that I don't have a goood idea of what the site should look like.

Which paragraph was hard to understand? :P

Ignore first, its a side comment.

2) I think in an ideal world webpages would scale well on low resolutions. (Ever use a pocket pc to surf the 'net? Too many people have hardcoded table designs that make life... painful)

3) Flash is bad as a means of presenting information. Most flash menus tend to be badly thought out. I prefer links, its an idea thats simple and works, and requires little mouse control (as opposed to digging through multi-level flyout menus...) This is mainly an argument for non-dynamic menus.

See my team's site: http://www.mvrt.org/ I wanted the webmaster to change the idea. People couldn't figure out that the strange boxes were menus, and you have to be careful about moving toward the links, if you move diagonally, you mess it up and a different menu has appeared.

I didn't really understand your side comment the one about windows having nothing to do with resolution. It has a huge amount to do with resolution. Most windows XP users have their resolution set at least 1024*768 because of XP's large fonts. 1024*768 XP looks about the same size as 800*600 '98. Some of this is because of better technology but most is because 800*600 XP looks bad and is just massive on most people's computers.

Does this rule includes small modules either?

We have a guestbook script installed. If it´s not allowed, I´d better start writing a guestbook in PHP!

I believe its more an issue of better technology. When I got my win98 laptop, 1600x1200 resolution was out of the question. When I got my new moniter for my desktop (winXP) 1600x1200 was an option. I've run win98 @ 1600x1200, it looked about the same as XP...

XP's fonts are just as big as older windows IMO. I think what you're talking about is the UI elements like the titlebar, close/minimize/maximize buttons being larger. And they really aren't noticably so.

Re: New Website
 

Check ou the <a href="http://wahsrobotics.com">website</a>again...We opted for a clean look and we will keep working to polish up the look. Also check out the flash site it's rather spiffing.

Re: New Website
 

Not bad. I'm not a huge fan of the image on the opening page. The fade-to-black thing doesn't quite finish and looks out of place.

Re: New Website
 

You guys did a pretty good job with the html site, but the flash site may be a bit too confusing to the average user. Most people probably wouldn't understand how to get to the menu options, and the fact that the content only appears on a small corner in 8-size font doesn't really help people with large monitors. Also it is nice to have control of one's web experience, and your flash site just takes up the whole screen without giving the user an option to leave (unless they find the shutdown button). You guys might want to give your flash site some specific boundaries on a page that isn't in full screen mode.

I do see a lot of effort though, so good job!

Re: New Website
 

The html site is, well, not bad, but it could be better. I'm a big fan of simplistic/minimalistic layouts, though I think it's a *little* too plain. Also, one thing I learned was that google (and search engine bots in general) do not index things like /modules.php?name=[section], it would rather see a [section].php.

As far as the flash site, it's fullscreen (duh), and that's bad. Full screen and pop-up sites are evil. The text wasn't quite readable. I do like the whole concept of it, it just need a little more work concerning the way contents are displayed...

just my 2 canadian cents :)

Re: New Website
 

What kind of person wouldn't be able to understand a windows os style interface?* But...Good Critiques for the most part. I will try to fix the bad readability of the fonts. I was wondering tho why do all the people who post have a problem with popup websites and or non w3c compliant websites.. I would like to see one person who isn't able to see the website because of noncompliancy.

*btw pedro did you know that you can draw the windows around so they don't only show up in the corner?

<rant>
 

I decided I'd make a post addressing this issue, but I'll briefly go over the direct answers before I put in some commentary about relating issues.

New windows break back buttons and play havoc with usability--especially for people that know what they're doing when they browse. I sometimes get angry when this stuff happens overly. If I want a new window I'll shift-click it and not have an HTML document decide how I'm going to look at it. I think it's common sense. Requested popups are almost as bad as unrequested popups (which I don't get) and really are some of the most useless design elements ever; what possible use can a target="_blank" do for your document except annoy and confuse the reader?

I would argue that there is no case in which taking over someone's browser is justified. So many people want to make their websites a huge 'visual experience,' usually the people that say, 'I'm making a new layout' every couple of months. I say there's nothing wrong with a nice-looking site, but we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that bloat is bad, and should never detract from content. The vast majority of 'web designers' that say things about their 'new layout' tend not to care about some of the important issues in web design. Often this is a result of them being deficient at markup and good at Photoshop or programming and trying to make up for it with the latter two. I'd even argue that overuse of Javascript, tables, Flash, and images for text (again, the 'new layout' bunch comes to mind) will also hurt you in the long run, and I've yet to see someone prove me wrong in the slightest.

W3C standards serve one purpose above all, which is to refine and improve the status quo of web documents. They do this by putting everyone on the same page (for example IE, Mozilla, Opera all support W3C standards and thus will theoretically render the page flow similarly) and then improving on that standard systematically. This acts as incentive for many savvy web designers (although it probably isn't always necessary to a grand extent) to help improve their site's content, because they realize standard pages are there for their best interests, such as serving documents to multiple media, making documents cross-agent compatible, and improving search engine rankings. Instead of asking 'why use standards', we should be asking 'why not use standards'; if they truly aren't necessary for whatever is being accomplished (which is very rare), then don't use standards; oftentimes, the reasoning behind not using standards is because they are supposedly difficult to learn (they aren't at all), and yield few tangible benefits.

Re: New Website
 

I think the point is that a website should not appear like an operating system. Most people know how to use windows, but wouldn't understand how to use a website that looks like windows (because it is very unusual and ends up being more of a hastle to the user). The fullscreen is probably your website's worst weakness; I don't have an objection to pop up windows (on demand), but when one's computer screen is taken over, it quickly leads to much anger on the part of the user. I know that there are ways to get out of it (like alt-tab) but most people don't know that, and find themselves with a screen that they cannot change.