Music EZine

Well ... I would like comments on my music site. But please bare in mind this has not been updated for over a month and I am in two minds whether or not I'm going to revamp it.

If I do revamp it will be a simplified version of the design you will be looking at, obv with better accesability. But a review of the old design would be a great benifit for me knowing what and what not to do in the re-vamp.

Now go and be hash .....

http://www.scenesters.co.uk/index.php

the design overall is nice. now to the bad (and you said be harsh!!)

1. navigation isnt clearly active (no hover effects or anything) however it is quite obvious what is and isnt navigation.

2. some of the headings look a bit messy round the edges (main content, artitsts, mailing list etc.)

3. the page doesnt validate, nor does the css (the html has 89 errors) see report.

4. it takes a while to load, there are way too many big graphics. they really slow down the loading of the page. try using gifs instead of pngs as they are smaller files.

5. if you have read any of my other comments to other people you will know this is coming ... ditch the tables and use css layouts. it makes the code cleaner and tables werent really designed for layout, they were supposed to hold data not organise it on the page.

other than the above all seems well, make sure the site validates though.

Wow, quite shocked at the number of errors but to be fair I must admit I never check anything like that I'm normally happy as long as it looks ok. Think it will be something I'll check when re vamping this current design.

As for the too big sized images I can agree with you there and one reason why I want something simple when I revamp the site. I think I have decided that I will def be revamping just got to find that right feel now.

Tables tables tables lol its amazing how many people disapprove of them and how many disapprove off css its scary. Although when I fisrt designed that site I didnt really know much about css and have in time come to learn more and was thinking of giving my design a css protect, undecided yet.

What are the disadvantages or tables and and css and whats the advantages?

PS.

Does making sure the site validates help with search engines or something? or is that personal thing for people?

for me it is a personal thing. when the code validates it means it follows the rules and conventions of the markup language you are using. it also means (or should mean) that all browsers should display the content the same (however internet explorer doesnt always cut the mustard).

as reguards the tables vs css i guess it is more of a personal thing too. the reason i use css is as follows ... tables were origonally included in web programming when the web only displayed text. no matter what context you are talking about tables are always used to organise data in rows and columns. the sole purpose of css is to hold information about the visual aspects of objects on the page therefore it makes sense to use that to lay out the page. although in a lot of cases websites only use css to hold information such as the font size, weight, colour etc most properties can be set using css including where you want it to appear on a page.

for me the comments i made were all to do with intended purposes. use css for layout instead of tables because css is intended to control the look of objects on the page whereas tables are intended to structure data. validating unsures what you intended for the page to do actually happens because it means that everything you have written conforms with the way browsers are expecting it so it makes sure they display it properly.

hope this hels you decide what to do.

Cheers, I think I will follow them guidelines when doing the redesign, Which I have now started, I think for more of a personal challenge to learn css and valadation to be more clear in my mind everything works as it should do.

Cheers