Second ever finished site! Check it out!

[Squiddy]

lol so yeah this is like only my second ever completed website.

Thanx to Peg and many others for helping when i posted on here :P

The site is a gaming site for one of my soon to be clans for a game called Gears of War :P

(Sorry if it is going slow its on a crappy free hosting service, ill give it a proper domain name and hosting service one the game is out!)

Click Me...! (http://finalfaction.awardspace.co.uk)

[Pegasus]

It's not a bad site. I'm impressed. I'm not sure about your paragraph rollovers, though. It's a bit hard on the eyes to have the text change colour. I'm not much on red on black but you could get away with keeping the red text and still have the site readable.

The marquee is a sticky point with me. I don't like them. Is the current text going to stay or will you have it read something else as the site picks up?

Peg

[Squiddy]

You think the red is too bright? I spent ages going through different shades of red! lol.

but one of the good points of having the red and white is that if you dont like one you can just keep the cursor on/off it and read it like that, you think it would be better if I changed the white to a light grey?

Sorry but what do you mean by the marquee is a sticky point? I thought it owuld be a good way of being able to include more links with minimal space :P I will be using it for the more... common things so it is easier to navigate the site :D

Current text? It's font? Or what it actually says? and what part?

[Pegasus]

Mmmmmmm.... using a marquee as a navigation tool is a bit iffy. Most people like their links to stay still so they can click on them and tend to ignore the content of marquees after a while. Light grey might work better for the white text, too.

I was referring to the content of the marquee, yes. You could have gaming information or player status' on it, but not links to navigate the site.

But that's just my opinion. I don't like trying to catch marquee links. Feel free to ignore me if you prefer.

Peg

[Squiddy]

Ahh, I see what you're saying about the marquee, and I agree but I'm not going to use it for like the main links. It will be like a newspaper, it will contain little bits of interesting info, like game info e.g Game progress follow ups, like progress on Halo 3, or other bits of news in the gamign community :P but nothing like main site navigation, thats why I have nav bars at the top and bottom of the site! If it's to much effort to click them then you sir are just lazy! lol :P

Also the marquee's not going that fast is it?

Alrite, the site is now updated with grey font, I think it looks a bit better!

EDIT: You have just given me an idea though. How, with the onmouseover tag can I make the Marquee stop scrolling while the mouse is over it?

[Pegasus]

*g* Yeah, well, I've been called worse than 'sir' and 'lazy'. I'm doing just fine on the rest of it. It's just been the end of a long day, so I sometimes forget things.

Ah, the site. Those two colours, the red and the grey, are much better. Easier on the eyes.

I'm not sure how you'd stop the marquee on a mouseover. Check with the whizkids in the Client-side Scripting forum. They'd know.

Peg

[Squiddy]

Alrite thanx man :D It's a shame only one person reviewed my site... lol. Which reminds me, (I have asked everyone this) What was your favourite part? And what would you rate it out of 10? :)

I had an idea for the marquee, I'm writing a short article on why people should use Firefox instead of IE :)

[Pegasus]

Hmmm... rating would be about 7.5/10. It's not a bad site, don't get me wrong. I'm just not much of a gamer, so most of what's on the site either doesn't make sense, or doesn't interest me.

Which part do I like best? *lol* Oddly enough, I like the logo. It's got class.

Peg

[Squiddy]

That's fair enough :)

Uhm, I wasn't awar I included a logo o.0 lol. I think you mean the red cog though don't you ;)

Well thanx for your help/constructive criticism! :D

[_Aerospace_Eng_]

I too don't like the rollover on the text. What is the point? I think it is a bit useless. As for the marquee well its not even a valid tag. Try the one found here http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex2/cmarquee.htm
Hmm page layout done in tables...I think its best to start out properly now rather than learn the wrong way. Read this article (http://www.hotdesign.com/seybold/index.html). If you are having trouble understanding the content after you've read it then do a search for css layout tutorials. You'll find resources. And lastly you do have 14 coding errors (http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=http%3A%2F%2Ffinalfaction.awardspace.co.uk%2Fhome.html). Try fixing them.

[Squiddy]

Well you know, I have just spent the last 3 days without having any more than 2 hours sleep working on this website. Sorry that my second ever site isn't up to your high standards : /

I have literally this hour finished the layouts... I hadn't even thought about checking for erros yet : /

I just went through the validator(the one you linked to doesn't work), they are all erors such as... "You can not have a height attribute in a <tr>tag"..... : /

I can't use.. a <td> before a <tr>....

Many more stupid little things. And yes It's all well and nice for you to say "Well you should be using CSS Like I do" well dude im 16 I havn't even started college yet -.-

[erisco]

Squiddy, they are not Aero's standards they are W3C's standards. Maybe you should do a little research before you start being sarcastic.

The validator gives you errors the browser will experience when parsing your page. No you cannot have a height attribute in a table row tag, that is not where it is put. You cannot have table rows inside of table data either, that makes no sense logically or to the browser. None of these errors are stupid, they are what the browser requires to read the page. It would be like someone with very poor english speaking to you, you wouldn't be able to fully understand what they are telling you and thus the way you understand them will not be accurate.

I am 15, I know XHTML, CSS, and PHP. I know my way around SQL as well... all it takes is the patience and the worth-while time on reading and practising. You get into languages like CSS and PHP and you can't have these kinds of errors, especially php and any other programming language. A browser has good error handling, but you make a typo or a syntax error in php and you are going to get something that doesn't work and/or produces errors. That is the way computers are, they can't understand what you meant to put.

[Squiddy]

Well, I'm not using PHP am I. It can't be that bad or the site wouldn't be working.

I came here for you guys to tell me how my site is looking not a lecture from some one who is younger than me -.-

And if you're 15 and know all that then I can't see you doing much else but learning all day : /

[mattr12]

Whoa! Erisco, you're 15? Me too :P Anyway, I like the site alot, it looks very good, I especially liked the flash intro ;) nice job. I may suggest a 'click here to skip the intro' link, some people dont want to watch a skull spin around for a minute :P

[mattr12]

Squiddy, what else is there TO do? It's what we enjoy, thats why erisco has 2400 posts, he enjoys being here, and he learns alot from the people here. So do I, and I find it rather rude that you can put someone down for doing what they like. The people here do other things besides web design, some of us do sports, some of us hang out with friends, just like you probablly do.



It can't be that bad or the site wouldn't be working.

Have you tried it in all the available browsers? Maybe it doesnt work.

[Pegasus]

While I agree that the points made are valid, it would have been nice if you .... gentlemen.... had put your thoughts into slightly less confrontational words.

Maybe next time?

Peg

[erisco]

Squiddy, no I never said you were using PHP, but the same principles apply. You can't have errors if you want your site to be compatible with browsers, the pages will end up parsing differently because error handling differs a lot.. also it is extremely poor practise to code with errors. You cannot apply that to anything professional, and you cannot apply that style to any other language. The page only works because the browser was able to take your errors and do what it could to understand what you really meant to put. In most cases it won't know what that is accurately however.

I don't really 'learn' all day, I read a book about PHP and then it was just practising. The book took about 2 weeks to read, and I enjoy programming. Really you need to enjoy what you are doing if you want to go anywhere with it. It has taken me about 3 years with html and css however, because it was an extremely slow process as I was not aware of resources such as this. Since I joined here my knowledge of correct html, the knowledge of xhtml, and practical applications of css grew. I am sure if you take interest, try to learn a bit, be patient, and read around the forums and on other good external resources (often linked to from here), you will be well off.

Anyways about the site review,
1) Skip intro link would be excellent
2) Removal of the deprecated marquee and the addition of the proper DHTML one would be excellent, because then you don't have to chase links with your mouse
3) Removal of the hover effect on the text, would be good.

Otherwise it is a nice looking page.

matt, I only have 2.1k :P
peg, yes... yes... okay I know...

No hard feelings Squiddy, I know I can sound like a big ol' meanie :P Really I am just trying to enfore some facts you should understand before continuing with web design.

[mattr12]

I'm sorry squiddy, it's just that I get made fun of alot because of what I enjoy (web design) and I thought you were just another confrentation to put up with. No hard feelings from me either.

And thank you peg, I sometimes get a little defensive without realizing it.

[Pegasus]

No worries, guys. We all have our 'buttons', me included.

Peg

[silje67]

I'm impressed!

But the first thing I noticed, that I found annoying was the mouseover when the text goes red. My eyes didn't like that.

And I don't like the rolling text at the top there. My eyes are drawn to that, but ONLY that, and ALL the time :D I would like to see it without those two eyedisturbers, and enjoy a calm site :D

But other than that, I think you did a great job on the design for a second timer, I wouldn't have done that good..