Please "test drive" this page ...

[neveronfriday]

Hi everyone,

slowly but surely (an hour here, an hour there) I'm reshaping my website. It'll be done sometime next year.

Right now it would be great if some people could look at this page and give me some feedback on what it looks like in their browser.

I'm not making the pages standards-compliant, I'm trying to get them to look OK on all systems, using (for any of you that are interested) HTML 4.1 and CSS.

I'm interested in the following:

:::: Do you have the impression that the page breaks anywhere in your browser?

Test Page

That's all.

Thanks for your help!

Note: This is a test page. None of the links outside of those in the text work, and the various section indicators etc. a) don't work and b) don't reflect where this entry on Thigpen is going to show up on the final site.

Edited November 30, 2004 by deus62

[brownie]

Deus, looks excellent here (via Internet Explorer).

Looks excellent too via Netscape Navigator!

[Jazzmoose]

Looks fine on Firefox as well!

[SEK]

It's nice on Opera 7.54.

[mikeweil]

OPERA here, too, and looks smooth. Nice design!

[couw]

almost eleven and all's well

[J.A.W.]

Just past eleven am and it looks fine (IE6).

[Claude]

It's looks good in Opera 7.54 (also identifying itself as Opera). The link info bullets also work fine.

I generally prefer a page layout that is broader, to avoid vertical scrolling. On my 1024x768 screen here at work, there is a lot of empty space on the left and right side. But that's a matter of personal preference of course.

Edited November 30, 2004 by Claude

[neveronfriday]

Thanks everyone.

I'm still interested in hearing from Mac users with Safari etc. but I think everything should be OK there as well.

@Claude: Yes, I did design this (as I do all my sites) at a fixed width of 744px. That's about 3000 miles away from any standards compliance and lightyears from the basics of "fluid" layout propagated by quite a few known designers.

A couple of words about this:

I started the design of my site (if you look at it closely, it is really simple and doesn't have many potential CSS or XHML pitfalls) with strict XHTML and CSS compliance in mind. There are many great sites on the Net that follow all the rules to the last detail, but as I was reading and studying these past months, I also began to notice more and more hacks which were applied to these pages because of (mostly) Internet Explorer and its many CSS bugs (box model hack, for example).

I'd love to design a site which observes the following (and I will, eventually):

a) strict adherence to all the rules of CSS 2 and XHTML 1

b) fluid (meaning flexible) page layout that gives the user the final choice of screen width

c) skinable, meaning depending on what you like, you change the layout with one click

d) accessibility for various systems (for example screen readers for blind people)

It's fascinating to see what can be done today in Web Design, but I resorted to tables again because I'm not ready to program the above yet. The learning curve is VERY steep ... because of all the workarounds you have to get in there.

Cheers!

P.S.: There is a plugin for Firefox which allows you to view sites somewhat like a screen reader would see them. I'm absolutely glad I'm not visually impaired because the junk most designers produce (incl. myself, at the moment) is virtually unbearable when you get it read out to you. This latter issue will probably lead to a much simpler design in the future into which I'd like to integrate as many accessibility features as possible.

Edit: Check out these sites for what can be done already despite sticking to all those strict rules (just a few from my long list of favourites):

CSS Vault

CSS Beauty

Unmatched Style

Web Standards Awards

Edited November 30, 2004 by deus62

[maren]

Beautiful in IE!

Does this call for a birthday cake?

[neveronfriday]

Thanks, Maren!

[deadcoldfish]

If no one else has checked it with Safari, I will when I get home, of course in 8+ hours

Paul

[Brad]

I've got internet explorer and looks really nice to me.

[catesta]

[doubleM]

Looks great w/ Safari. Nice work, Deus!!!!

[neveronfriday]

Thanks everyone!

I guess I can use this as a basis for the other pages then.

Now I only need more time.

Cheers!

[PHILLYQ]

Excellent!

[Christiern]

It comes in fine on Apple's Safari browser (with OS X 10.3.6).

Esthetically very pleasing to my eyes (a sense developed by Københavns Akademi For Fri og Merkantil Kunst ). I also find the content interesting and well presented.

[neveronfriday]

Thanks for checking, everyone.

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

Esthetically very pleasing to my eyes (a sense developed by Københavns Akademi For Fri og Merkantil Kunst ).

@Chris: What a coincidence. I don't think there are many people around anymore who actually know what "Københavns Akademi For Fri og Merkantil Kunst" was. Neither did I, but there's a guy who went there whom I bought some ceramics off (I'm a sucker for many of those Danish "brugskunst" items sold at an annual market in front of the Copenhagen University) in the beginning 90s. I remember him telling me about that school. I think it was private (if my memory doesn't fail me)?

It doesn't exist anymore, does it?

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

[neveronfriday]

Well, the site front is finished. The jazz section will look and function pretty much like it, but it will take a long time to put together. I'll post here when it's done. I think I will do the password-protected private section fir4st, don't know though. Don't have much time at the moment and the Basie site needs to be finished as well, right, John & Flurin?

http://www.deus62.com/

Cheers!

Note that I added a little favicon.ico to show up in your favourites, if you should add the page at some point. If anyone can show me the Organissimo T-Shirt thread again, I'll make one of those favicon.ico thingies for these forums as well ...