New Website for East Dulwich Feedback Needed

[DulwichFox]

Hi all the good people of East Dulwich Forum.

I am developing a Website for East Dulwich.

It is for information about Restaurants, Pubs, Bars, Shops, Transport, Schools, Emergency Services.

Feed back is required as to appearance of site in your Browser and Functionality.

The site is best viewed in Explorer, Google Chrome or Safari. Resolution 1600/900

The site should be viewed full screen.

Functionality to check.

Page sits centrally on your screen. (Boxes are not right biased)

Mouse over boxes on 'Shops' and 'Food & Drink' pages should drop down to reveal address and tel. nos.

and Picture of business should appear in large box.

Clicking on drop down box name should take you to website where available.

Site is in constant development and any feedback of changes, IE Business no longer running would be appreciated.

Any Feedback would be appreciated either here of preferably by the e-mail DNO Button on Menu Bar.

The Site is written almost entirely CSS and it is possible that some older browsers will not be able

to handle some of the more complex CSS Transitions.

Also there may currently be problems when viewed on A Mac.

Site can be found at http://www.dulwichnightout.com

Thanks for your help in advance.

DulwichFox :)

[louisemurray]

You might want to have it proof read before you go live - spelling of independent on first page doesnt look great

Also some of the pics look very lores to me

[charlesfare]

It's functional but looks like it was made in the days of Netscape.

[TonyQuinn]

Spung up on home page not good either....you really have to check everything, once, twice and thrice. It's a bad first impression.

[DulwichFox]

removed comment posted in error

DulwichFox

[Penguin68]

I recognise the site is in development, but to include the (very new) Patch and to exclude Franklin's seems a strange choice - you might also want to distinguish between 'pubs that do food' and gastro-pubs - or pubs where the food is particularly important. The Great Exhibition also needs some mention, again if you are prepared to include the Patch (which is further away, arguably).

Not optimising round tablets or (especially) mobiles seems a mistake - that is quite likely to be the access medium of choice. I have a 24inch landscape monitor and it only just fits to be readable and is right biased, not centred, when viewed full-screen. Some of the links do work, some don't do anything, some open the same screen as you were already looking at. Where there isn't a link it would be better to show the name 'black' rather than 'clickable blue'.

Had I been designing this I think I would have had less information per screen so clicking a link to food and drink would have taken you initially only to the categories list, and then to the (alphabetical) listings under each category - perhaps ranged under each other so that smaller screens or open windows would work. That would have made more screens for you to write (obviously) but would have made the site more user friendly to navigate. IMHO.

You do need to define 'local' and 'nearby' - at least from some nominal central point.

It might have been interesting to have seen some editiorial or philosophical statement which described why you were doing this and what your editorial position was as to inclusion or exclusion of e.g sites/ businesses.

[Pickle]

First impression is that it's very old fashioned in terms of design and navigation, which, to be honest, puts me off delving any further than the front page.

Hard to navigate on a tablet, which is another big negative for me.

[DulwichFox]

Penguin..

Several versions of Dulwich Night Out have been around for many years. It was lost when BT took away free hosting.

Optimisation for CSS Transitions on mobile devices is complex if not impossible. Some devices simply

do not support them, as do some Browsers.

Links are still being updated. Many establishments do not have their own Websites and rely on other listings

that have reviews about their businesses.

Whether entries should be listed alphabetically ? well that would be fine if everything was static.

But having to change every inclusion every time a business changed would be impractical.

The Links / The Hover Transitions to load pictures / are all referenced in different areas of code.

So every drop down would need to be re-coded to change a single entry.

All entries are liable to be removed and new ones included as moods change.

The Patch would not of been one of my choices but would seem to be a popular choice for many here on EDF

so got a mention.

I am more concerned about Functionality rather than content.

Like if you build a Television, make sure it works and worry about what programmes are going to watch later.

DulwichFox

[DulwichFox]

charlesfare Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> It's functional but looks like it was made in the

> days of Netscape.

Don't think CSS 3 was around in the days of Netscape. What Browser are you using. ?

What resolution are you viewing at. ?

Certainly on my machine everything is working fine.

Will need to view on some other machines to see where adjustments are needed.

Foxy.

[charlesfare]

DulwichFox Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> charlesfare Wrote:

> --------------------------------------------------

> -----

> > It's functional but looks like it was made in

> the

> > days of Netscape.

>

>

> Don't think CSS 3 was around in the days of

> Netscape. What Browser are you using. ?

> What resolution are you viewing at. ?

>

> Certainly on my machine everything is working

> fine.

>

> Will need to view on some other machines to see

> where adjustments are needed.

>

> Foxy.

I just meant that it looks like a website from the very early days of the internet. Not very modern or inviting.

[charlesfare]

To take your TV metaphor a bit further...doesn't matter what's on tv if it's all showing in black and white.

[grabot]

Perhaps take a look at Twitter Bootstrap. Quite a helpful framework for this kind of thing.

[DulwichFox]

The site is meant more as a Directory with links to other sites all in one place

without the need to Google everything to find out what time the Local Pharmacy opens till. (example)

Just Hover over a pharmacy and it will tell you.

Links to all major stations/ Airports . Travel Alerts / Emergency Services

There's a lot of info there and more added daily.

DulwichFox

[Otta]

Surely a good website looks decent whatever resolution people are using. If we had to adjust resolution to suit every website we visited I don't think I'd bother with the Internet.

[Otta]

I think it's quite handy, but the fonts do look quite basic and the resoltion thing means it looks off centre when viewed in firefox 1280x1024.

[fizzmoll]

You may want to consider a solution such as wordpress or bootstrap where content is separated from style and where there are defaults and stylesheets that works out of the box. Many such web frameworks will handle browsers, resolution, mobile, SKUs etc. automatically for you. This makes it a lot easier to build a site which works everywhere, looks nice and consistent. And the maintainer can spend more time on the content side and less time worrying about technology aspects. :)

[Reg Smeeton]

It looks like a low quality imitation of http://www.lordshiplane.co.uk/ (which is itself a website of limited value that I have visited only a couple of times in ten years). If I had come across your site without seeing this thread, I'd have assumed it was a here-today-gone-tomorrow website that will soon be out of date.

Is the plan to have reviews of the various eateries and schools? Without reviews, it's of little use, but I trust the reviews on the EDF (where reviewers have long track records that you can check) more than I'd trust them on a restaurant review site, where any vindictive competitor can have an anonymous pop.

Sorry to be negative, but you did ask for feedback.

[simonethebeaver]

I know you're not focusing on mobile devices, but it's almost entirely how I access the Internet, and sadly the site is pretty unusable in that format. Future proofing must include mobile/tablet functionality, surely?

[Help-Ma-Boab]

Maybe the-e-dealer will allow you to use his photies. A gallery of local beauty spots. TEDs sprung to mind but there are more Countryfile style images on the EDF.

[KalamityKel]

I presume you will be making the font consistent throughout the website? By which I mean same font and size on all pages - looks very much like a cut and paste job at the moment.

I'd consider opting for a more user friendly font too.

http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/#Guidelines might help point you in the right direction

Might also want to consider advising links navigate away from the website or make the links open in a new window. I'd go with the latter so that viewers will still stay on the site. There's nothing worse than having to go back and forth to view information.

[East_Dulwich]

Looks horrible, I think you should consider getting a professional to do it. The idea may be good but execution is poor to say the least. This days a 10 year old can come up with something better. It's just hard to even say what is wrong as it's literally everything, sorry but it's a NO from me.

[DulwichFox]

East_Dulwich Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Looks horrible, I think you should consider

> getting a professional to do it. The idea may be

> good but execution is poor to say the least. This

> days a 10 year old can come up with something

> better. It's just hard to even say what is wrong

> as it's literally everything, sorry but it's a NO

> from me.

Its a hobby project. Why would I get a pro to do it.

It works very well and fast on my own machines. .

It sits very well on when viewed at the recommended resolution

I'm not sure you are seeing the site as it is intended.

The CCS3 Transitions do not work on an Apple Mac.

Despite using

-webkit-transition: all 0.25s ease-in-out 0.25s;

-moz-transition: all 0.25s ease-in-out 0.25s;

-ms-transition: all 0.25s ease-in-out 0.25s;

-o-transition: all 0.25s ease-in-out 0.25s;

transition: all 0.25s ease-in-out 0.25s;

Some Browsers still seem to have problems with the Transitions.

It is entirely hand coded in CCS3 / PHP / HTML using Dreamweaver6.

Over 600 hits with a dozen or so Bad reviews. I can live with that.

I have had requests for inclusion when first going live before posting here.

Will take all comments on board.

Thank you for your input.

DulwichFox

[healey]

Needs alot of work. The design is all at sea.

Lose the splash page - it's annoying and dated.

Get your use of fonts and spacing consistent. This is what CSS is for.

This site doesn't need transitions.

Get some advice on colour use.

Get it working on muliple platforms. You work to reach an audience, they don't work to reach you.

Having said all of that, I respect both the effort and the spirit in which it was done!

[binary_star]

As said above have a look at Twitter's Bootstrap or Zurb's Foundation or any number of lightweight frameworks to get a fully responsive site which supports multiple platforms and browser resolutions - your users will not forgive you for 'it looks ok on my machine at the right resolution'.

[theron2]

CSS responsive design?