1620's Website - Critiquing Needed

[Rohan_DHS]

Hey everyone, we (team 1620) finally got a site up!!
Check it out, here's the link: http://www.teamrobolution.com
Any comments on how to make it better or such would be appreciated

Thanks,

Rohan

ps. its not 100% done lol
pps. feel free to sign the guestbook (located in the forums )

[Timothy D. Ginn]

Alright, I'll bite (I'm kind of tired and it's 1:30 in the morning, though, as I start this). I hope you take these comments to be constructive suggestions (I realise that doing web stuff takes a lot of time and that you've probably put a lot of effort into things so far and that some of these things are pretty minor).

I find the main text to be difficult to read on the background it's on; something a bit less active/bright as a background would help.

Competition is misspelled as "Competetion" on the About Us page

There's more sponsors/mentoring organisations mentioned on the About Us page than there are listed on the Our Sponsors page (I'm guessing an image for one of them is forthcoming or something).

The photos look nice (I like the one of the guy wrapped up in caution tape)

The way the table of links is layed out seems a bit confusing.

By all means post here again once you've updated things and I'll take another look (most likely at a more reasonable hour).

[Mike Schroeder]

I agree, the text against the background is a little hard to read,

I suggest making the text, bolder, if not a little bigger. i am not so much a web designer, but a surfer, so i cant really give you much of a technical critique

[Ian Curtis]

Firstly, the FIRST logo has to be prominently displayed. Also the load time was a bit slow, but not unbearable, and I'll second that the text can be a bit hard to read.

[Stephen Kowski]

new font & size on the links and the main site....

i don't know how it would look, but i'd think a little darker background would look good as opposed to the white....

I would also look @ the margins, i dunno what to do with them (maybe just leave em the way they are, i guess) but overall it is a nice looking design good job

oh and what is going in that right hand column, looks a little too empty

[phrontist]

A blue background is dangerous. A rather busy blue background doubly so.

Choose a text color that contrasts with the background as much as possible. In the case of blue, this is unavoidably a hue of yellow. I'm not a big fan of bright yellow text, but in this case nothing else will be intelligible. For this reason, I wouldn't reccomend a blue background.

Technically speaking, you are doing The Right Thing (TM) with valid code (what a concept, adhereing to standards!).

[Tristan Lall]

If you want to improve the readability of the orange text, you might consider making it bold (but still narrow, to keep a consistent look).

Unfortunately the links pane text tends to grow a little, as it's highlighted (the underline is probably the cause); this looks a little silly, as the text shakes when you mouse over it.

Also, you could set the links pane graphic to fade to black near the top or bottom, in order to squeeze in the black-background FIRST logo.

[sanddrag]

I haven't looked at all the pages, but from what I can tell the front page looks pretty good. Instead of "Links" you might call it "navigation" but that is kind of long; I don't know. One thing I noticed is the background looks kind of splotchy toward the bottom in the center section. Anyway, keep up the good work!

[Rohan_DHS]

Awesome, thanks a lot folks im going to take all your ideas into consideration, and try to fix it up...

As for the pane on the right of your screen, random images from our gallery are going to go there (i javent gotten around to doing so yet)

I'll post back when I fix the stuff up

Thanks again, and others feel free to add your 2 cents as well =)
Rohan

[Adam Richards]

This could be me just being picky, but...

Try changing things like:

<td colspan="12"><img src="images/robotics-layout_01.gif" alt="" width="980" height="14"/></td>
<td><img src="images/spacer.gif" alt ="" width="1" height="14"/></td>

to:

<td colspan="12" background="images/robotics-layout_01.gif" width="980" height="14"></td>
<td width="1" height="14"></td>

It removes a lot of redundant code and eliminates the need for spacer GIFs. Though the width and height tags may be a slight bit redundant, setting some is very helpful to make sure all browsers view it the same way.

(FYI: I haven't tested it, and a &nbsp; might be needed between the <td> and </td>)

[looneylin]

it's pretty cool but you might want to make the links change color instead of underline

Also you might want to put more info on ur website about ur team