Yet another website to critique

[Joshua May]

I have finally updated the Team 1110 website to v6.0 for the 2005 season.

New Features:

• Feedback Form: Found under the "Contact Us" link. This sends a categorized email to our team's account.
• Ratings Page: I have added a ratings page (found under Main) to the website. This used the same rubric as FIRST's Website Judging Criteria, hopefully this will come in handy to pinpoint specific areas that need to be worked on.
• Resources: Articles, Code Repository, Downloads, Scouting Database, Tutorials, White Papers. Sorry that I don't have much of these up now, they're the main thing that needs to be worked on. Hopefully these will become really good resources for our team and others.
• Forum: Hasn't been used yet, but this will become a big discussionary tool for our team. Many of the subforums are closed to view from the public, but you get the idea.
• Search: Added a search so visitors can find information quickly
• Members Area: Hasn't been coded yet, but this will allow team members to view our Inventor area, access their email, and view classified team documents.
• New News Client: Comments and an admin area have now been made available. Before I had to write out the messages on the News Page, now we've got backups, archives, etc.

To-Do List:

• Content for resources pages
• XHTML Compliance
• The current chat room stretches out the page. I need to find an on-site host for a customizable chat room
• Anything you guys can come up with

I know, alot needs to be done, but I thought I'd get the design and everything out there already so I can get some preliminary comments.

[sanddrag]

A quick note on the forum and chat. Unless you have a really big team, like 40+ people, the forum will not get used much if at all. The chat probably will never get used. I mean, there's never even anybody on in Tigerbolt anymore.

[Roland]

Wow, 6 redesigns in 3 seasons? I'd be interested in seeing the progression that led to this.

I haven't done a lot of deep digging on the site but it seems like there's a whole lot of content. It seems in general to be a nice simple design - nothing fancy, but plenty of content. However, one major problem I see is navigation overload. There are so many links, all the same size, that it seems kind of overwhelming. I'd consider taking out some of the lower-level navigation links: maybe make a Resources page and a Links page that can both be second-level pages within Main. That'd mean you could put more description around the links. Think about who's going to be reading the page: if it's a FIRST student they'll likely already know about most of the sites listed in your Links box, but if it's someone new to FIRST words like "Chiefdelphi" and "SCRRF" have no significance and might go well with an explanatory sentence or two.

Also, is there any particular reason you decided to use a fixed-width layout?

edit:

Originally Posted by sanddrag

A quick note on the forum and chat. Unless you have a really big team, like 40+ people, the forum will not get used much if at all. The chat probably will never get used. I mean, there's never even anybody on in Tigerbolt anymore.

I agree and posted about it a couple of days ago.

[Joshua May]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

A quick note on the forum and chat. Unless you have a really big team, like 40+ people, the forum will not get used much if at all. The chat probably will never get used. I mean, there's never even anybody on in Tigerbolt anymore.

Yeah, the forum won't get used much. But hopefully it will during the build season as a discussionary tool and a way of catching up team members on what's going on.

The chat room is really for specific times when we need to hold a meeting or discussion on a set date if we can't use the school or something like that.

Addendum:

Originally Posted by Roland

I'd consider taking out some of the lower-level navigation links: maybe make a Resources page and a Links page that can both be second-level pages within Main. That'd mean you could put more description around the links.

I'll think about this. The reason for all of the links to be right there is so that most of the content is available right off of the main page.

Originally Posted by Roland

Think about who's going to be reading the page: if it's a FIRST student they'll likely already know about most of the sites listed in your Links box, but if it's someone new to FIRST words like "Chiefdelphi" and "SCRRF" have no significance and might go well with an explanatory sentence or two.

Descriptions to these links are available on the Links page. More links that are not going to be in the links box will be available on the Links page.

Originally Posted by Roland

Also, is there any particular reason you decided to use a fixed-width layout?

I find that variable-width layouts can get annoying as a designer. Pixilation and weirdness come up more than I'd like, so I decided to go with a one-size-fits-all approach. I haven't tested it with screen resolutions greater than 1024x768 because my flat screen doesn't support them, but I think the size fits well with 800x600 and 1024x768.

[MrToast]

I would try to go for the variable-width layout, if you can. It's a sign of courtesy to whomever is viewing your site. It shows that "Yes, I thought about you when I was making this site" as opposed to "I think everyone should have a browser window the same size as mine". It's a little bit of trouble, yes, but it's worth it.

Also, color is a wonderful thing. Straight black-and--white is a little hard on the 'ol peepers.

Otherwise, it looks like you've got lots of good content! It's a good layout the most people should be familiar with. The countdown timer at the top is a nice touch. I also like how your links are well organized. Some helptags (what do you windows people call them... tooltips?) for the links would be nice. Just a little description of what I'll be clicking to when I hover over the link.

MrToast

[HFWang]

Your header seems to be a bmp. And... is thus unnecessarily large.

It took awhile to load even on my cable, and it left a rather large white gap before it filled... so yes, optimize the image?

[Elgin Clock]

Originally Posted by HFWang

Your header seems to be a bmp. And... is thus unnecessarily large.

It took awhile to load even on my cable, and it left a rather large white gap before it filled... so yes, optimize the image?

It's no time at all compared to the wacky java menu that their school's website has. Wow.. that took a few more seconds than normal to load on my cable modem.

I have a comment, but I will adress it in a PM.
(Nothing major - just curious about something.)
Otherwise.. everything looks pretty good.

I really wish FIRST would send out an official E-Mail that says what logo to use.
Is it (FIRST sm) or (FIRST tm) or just (FIRST)????

We need some consistency across the whole (web-design) board.

[Ryan M.]

I agree that the color is a little hard on the eyes. (Although it's not black, it's actually this color (#010014)

Maybe just a touch lighter on the side column headers. But, your call. You might want to match the team colors.

[Denman]

the forums in our team were used to the point of it failing ...
basically communication is key and forums are very useful.... until they turn into spam...

[Joe Matt]

Good layout and nice execution. It gets the job done, although a cleaner and simpler web design will guarantee you a regional website win.

[Joshua May]

Originally Posted by HFWang

Your header seems to be a bmp. And... is thus unnecessarily large.

It took awhile to load even on my cable, and it left a rather large white gap before it filled... so yes, optimize the image?

Oops, I have a JPEG version of that image, for some reason I put up the bitmap instead. lol

Originally Posted by Elgin Clock

It's no time at all compared to the wacky java menu that their school's website has. Wow.. that took a few more seconds than normal to load on my cable modem.

Yeah, and that was done by our website teacher.

Originally Posted by Ryan Morehart

I agree that the color is a little hard on the eyes. (Although it's not black, it's actually this color (#010014)

Maybe just a touch lighter on the side column headers. But, your call. You might want to match the team colors.

Which color are you refering to, the text, or the black->blue fade in the background?

Thanks for all of your comments/crits guys, I'll start working on updating when I can.

[MrToast]

Originally Posted by Joshua May

Which color are you refering to, the text, or the black->blue fade in the background?

We're refering to the black(ish) text and the black(ish) borders. Idea: Maybe what you could do is make important titles in a deep blue, like one of the ones you use in your title. This way your viewers will associate that white-letters-on-blue means "title". If would also soften up the page a bit.

Just a thought.

MrToast