Web redesign Ideas

[malcdawes]

Looking at all the posts on this topic has prompted me to take a closer look at our website. I say ours, I did not get involved with the design and have more say now in how it looks and what it contains. I have been discussing with the guy who did set it up (his picture is on the home page) as to how we can improve it.

If any of you have any good ideas on content improvement I would be grateful for your input.

Thanks in advance,
Malcolm

www.dtaworldwide.com

[lisastorey]

Hi Malcolm,

I use Firefox as my browser and recieved a message when I opened your site as it uses IE features.

As more and more people are moving away from IE you might want to have a look at this.

Just a suggestion.

Regards
Lisa

[malcdawes]

Hi Lisa,
Thanks for your post, I am a real technophobe - can you explain what you mean by IE features. Thanks, Malc

[lisastorey]

I'm not much of a techie myself but here goes...

Internet Explorer(IE) is a Web browser which is used for accessing websites such as this one and yours (infact you are probably using it now). This is the Microsoft developed version of a web browser.

There are other browsers available, the main ones are Netscape, Firefox (Mozilla being the previous version ) and Opera.

Your site has obviously been designed with IE in mind as using any other browser presents you a warning message stating:

'This site uses features of Internet Explorer 4. It might not look correct in Netscape or other browsers'

I don't know what the features are but the people who originally developed the site should be able to. Whilst your site might still function ok with other browsers it would put me off visting this site and I would be more like to choose another one (if I had done a search for it!)

Hope this helps
Lisa

[Webstuff]

The problem is the windows resize Javascript, I mentioned this in your introduction (sorry). As your first javascript is only currently functioning to resize the window, and its other features are turned off, I would suggest you simply remove everything between the first occurences of these two tags:


<script language="JavaScript">

...down to...

</script>


Don't forget to keep a backup copy though! If you want to keep the window resize function, leave the afformentioned tags in place, but delete everything inside them except these lines:


moveTo(0,0);
resizeTo(screen.availWidth,screen.availHeight);


Hope this helps...

[TargetTesting]

Malcolm,
The message says that you are using IE 4 features and may not look correct in Netscape and other browsers. With IE 4 Microsoft in their wisdom added some features that were specific to IE that didn't run on other browsers. I've had a look at the HTML (hope you don't mind) and it looks to be due to using proprietary tags such as leftmargin, rightmargin, topmargin and marginwidth.

This just means that your layout might not look quite right in other browsers since they will generally ignore these.

If you are going for a re-vamp, consider using webstandards such as (X)HTML and CSS. It makes the site much cleaner, easier to maintain and "generally" looks the same in all modern browsers. I went down this route with my site and I can change the look and feel in an afternoon.

In terms of your content, your homepage doesn't really say anything to me that makes me want to continue looking through the site as I don't quite understand what you offer (from your homepage).
I thought I'd get a better idea from the services link but instead just got a list of categories to choose from. Once you drill down there is good content.

When I'm at this level, I'd also want to see links to related content to save me navigating back up through the structure.

Again it maybe because I'm not in the market for your services but I don't feel that the site sells to me.

Hope you find my comments useful

Regards
Bill

[malcdawes]

Thanks all for your valuable help and feedback. I know now what the abreviation IE means; I could have worked it out if I thought about it! I will pass on your comments to my colleague who will be looking more closely at the redesign.Cheers,
Malcolm

[Webstuff]

The warning is not browser generated, its Javascript generated. Thats what the line "alert(...);" does. As I said in my previous post, its been coded for a function that your website is not using, and can be safely removed. The marginheight/marginwidth properties will not apply to the page that they appear on anyway, as a result of it being a frameset. (Just so you know...)

[lisastorey]

See...... I did warn you I wasn't a techie :lol:

[Webstuff]

Oh well, we can't all be, or I wouldn't make any money :P