Feedback on our site for Business Professionals of America

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UncleDavid218

2[H]4U
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Jan 16, 2006
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www.InovativTech.Pierotofy.it

Business Professionals of America is an organization aimed at teaching young people the skills to be successful in a very competitive business market.
To simulate the real world, BPA holds competition every year in topics ranging from accounting to IT based events.
Regional competition for District 5 was held the last two days (Thursday and Friday) in Grand Rapids, Minnesota.
My team consisted of two good friends.
Our goal was simple for this event, answer the prompt of "Create a website that shows how technology will affect our lives in the next 5 years"
We got first place, but if we want to go to nationals we'll need to do better.
The site was not made using any generators of any kind.
We started with a blank canvas, using ConTEXT and Dreamweaver as our text editors.
Needless to say, I'm looking for feedback on the site, particularly on the topic of content.
I'd like to know what kinds of articles you would like to see, and I'll do my best to provide them.
We are working on an in-depth article regarding the complexities of Vista, including DX10.
We may purchase a vBulletin license, and will probably add a review section.

(PS I placed in 8 different events, with 1st place in Web Design, Web Application, and Knowledge Bowl)

In case you were wondering, the reason for using an Italian host is due to our fellow team mate, Piero, being Italian (he's an exchange student)
 
I think the horizontal bars kills it. They are on the bg, the header image, and the links. The flash use is alright, but it left me thinking there was some data it was actually retrieving .... like i was waiting on a script to gather data in the alt tag.

The content area is nice and centered, but the tables seem kind of hard block .... perhaps softer.

Id definately make a new header image altogether. Reular text, bevel, outter glow over, and a stroke of white .... kind of old school.

I think the flash is the most impressive thing, but unless your a large business it seems a little unneccessary.

Not trying to ruin it, just places I see for improvement.The colors are nice, and visual images in the articles.
 
Thanks I appreciate the feedback. This is only for use in our competition, but it's a requirement that it be hosted for viewing on the net.

Keep in mind we're only 17 and 18 year olds competing.
 
Hello UncleDavid218,
I don't want to sound too harsh, but for a site with a theme based on how technology will affect our lives in the next 5 years I think you've got a lot of room for improvement.
At the very least your site should be coded with current symantec and validating code! (see the links in my sig below)

1. Your markup is full of deprecated tags and inline styles
- <div align='center'> instead of using this deprecated tag apply margin: 0 auto; to #bodymarginer to center the site.
- <div id="bodycontainer" style="width: 750px;"> is an inline style. Bad practice, much better to set the width with your CSS, that way it will be the same in all pages that use the id bodycontainer.
2. HATE the flash intro. That's just me though. I'm sure you put a lot of work into it and there's nothing wrong with using it - I'm glad to see a "skip intro" button though!
3. It doesn't validate!! I should have put this in the #1 spot. Check what the validator has to say about it.

Now for the good stuff...
I didn't see any positioning or negative margins. You can use both but they are usually unnecessary and overused. I avoid both as much as possible. (absolute positioning corrupts absolutely)
Great job on the actual content! You really did come up with some things that are relevant to your 5yr theme.
The design is good to, I like the way it looks. (Not to thrilled with the ding on the menu though, you don't know what I'm doing with my speakers when I come to your site and I don't appreciate you picking what I listen to.)

I hope you take this as constructive criticism and don't get offended by anything I've said. You can ignore any part of this post that you don't like. If you don't write validating symantec code there aren't any webpage cops going to come visit you in the night, I'm just pointing out some things a serious web designer should be concerned with.



Use the right DocType
Validate your markup
Validate your CSS
Why validating is good
Why tables are bad
 
Thanks! I don't take any offense at all.

First off, I personally hate the flash movie, too. But to be honest, it's going to stay because I want the site to show our teams skill when working with Flash 8 Professional.

More points = better chance at going to nationals! :)

We are going to validate it, but for now that was OK (regional competition).
It's funny how what you thought we needed improvement on, we also did!

The sounds, I agree are unnecessary. However, my team mates like them, and if it keeps them happy, then OK.
 
Could you move the "skip intro" button to the top on the splash page? I don't surf with my browser full screen, and didn't even know it was there until I said "they can't possibly expect me to sit through this" and tried to scroll down.
 
CSIXTY4 said:
Could you move the "skip intro" button to the top on the splash page? I don't surf with my browser full screen, and didn't even know it was there until I said "they can't possibly expect me to sit through this" and tried to scroll down.
Click to expand...

Scrollbars usually lead to more content ;) Your res must be horrible.
 
Scrollbars usually lead to more content Your res must be horrible.
Click to expand...

1680x1050 is still considered pretty good these days. Did you miss the part where I said I don't surf with my browser full screen?

The anim is 600px tall. So if my browser window is half my screen's height or smaller, I'm going to miss anything on the bottom.

Now, with all the "whitespace" around the actual content in the Flash anim, and the fact that the anim's background matches the site's exactly, what clues did I have that there was anything but more whitespace below? Hmm?
 
I hate when people misspell words on purpose for logos, company names, etc.
The least you could do is put both Ns in 'Inovativ.'

I hope the front page doesn't load every time, and the sounds are ANNOYING.

The right column should be wider. I'd say keep headers to two lines tops.

Color scheme is pleasing and easy to see. You might want to set the top margin to 0 so the content reaches the top of the browser's viewing area. You can probably leave the bottom margin as it is.

Can I assume that you'll have a better domain name later?


Flash sucks and should never be used in or to design a website. Consequently, Flash intros also suck. They're pretentious and time consuming. And cheesy. And more negative adjectives.
 
We're not sure if we're going to keep the site up after the competition or not. If we do, the domain name will be www.InovativTech.com

Thanks for the feedback everyone keep it coming, you've made some great suggestions
 
I'm not sure if anyone mentioned this (I didn't notice it if someone did, sorry).

Your flash navigation bar is confusing to me. When I mouse over one of the links, it says "receiving data" with the little spinny thing, but nothing ever shows up.
 
If you want to show off your skills with flash do it somewhere else because the first reaction of anyone met with a splash page is to find the skip button . Your flash navigation system with its constant beeping could really drive someone nuts.

Anyways I think the website header needs to be redesigned either way the scanlines should be removed. With that being said since I was bored I did a couple of mock-ups of what your header text could look like. I do have the psd if you want it.

inovativeva3.jpg

inovative2bp9.jpg
 
I didn't get that far, you p***** me off with that flash splash screen.

Then the 'skip intro' link took ages to load and you lost me, sorry.
 
The flash intro almost killed me.
I strongly dislike menus with sound.
In fact I dislike all sounds that play w/o me telling them to do so.

As mentioned above there are a lot of issues with the html.

NOTE: Since you are missing your doctype the following errors are only a small set of what might actually exists.

Code: 
line 1 column 1 - Warning: missing <!DOCTYPE> declaration

line 26 column 118 - Warning: <embed> is not approved by W3C

line 78 column 15 - Warning: <img> discarding newline in URI reference

line 102 column 15 - Warning: <img> discarding newline in URI reference

line 126 column 15 - Warning: <img> discarding newline in URI reference

line 14 column 8 - Warning: <img> attribute "width" has invalid value "135px"

line 14 column 185 - Warning: <img> attribute "width" has invalid value "422px"

line 14 column 364 - Warning: <img> attribute "width" has invalid value "135px"

line 20 column 1 - Warning: <table> attribute "cellspacing" has invalid value "0px"

line 46 column 24 - Warning: <img> attribute "width" has invalid value "32px"

line 46 column 24 - Warning: <img> attribute "height" has invalid value "32px"

line 54 column 39 - Warning: <td> attribute "width" has invalid value "60px"

line 55 column 15 - Warning: <img> attribute "width" has invalid value "64px"

line 55 column 15 - Warning: <img> attribute "height" has invalid value "64px"

line 77 column 39 - Warning: <td> attribute "width" has invalid value "60px"

line 78 column 15 - Warning: <img> attribute "width" has invalid value "64px"

line 78 column 15 - Warning: <img> attribute "height" has invalid value "64px"

line 101 column 39 - Warning: <td> attribute "width" has invalid value "60px"

line 102 column 15 - Warning: <img> attribute "width" has invalid value "64px"

line 102 column 15 - Warning: <img> attribute "height" has invalid value "64px"

line 125 column 39 - Warning: <td> attribute "width" has invalid value "60px"

line 126 column 15 - Warning: <img> attribute "width" has invalid value "64px"

line 126 column 15 - Warning: <img> attribute "height" has invalid value "64px"

Generally the site feels small, and design wise, slightly outdated.
I still can't get over the sound on this menu.

While the notebook is a neat idea, it actually hurts you as it makes the page harder to read. A solid color background with a good contrasting text (larger font 12-14) would be good.

The rss feed is pretty confusing. At first I thought it was site content until I clicked on it.

However, I do like the layout, and the colors aren't too bad for a high school level website. It feels like a lot of time and effort was put into the site, and the original content is very nice. (I did not read said content, but at least it exists).

Regardless welcome to web development and if you keep your passion high you should find a rewarding career in your future. :)
 
The content is really poor. It's very awkwardly written and would benefit from some careful copyediting.
 
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