New Website - critique/feedback requested

[Richard Thoms]

Hello web-gurus,

Please checkout our new website and give us some feedback.

http://www.TopServicePros.com

The premise is a website to connect homeowners to local service
professionals. Service pros can subscribe to build a personalized
custom web listing.

The /cart/ area is not fully functional yet but everything else should
be navigable. Known broken links for "servicepro: how it works" and
"media center"

Since there are no real service pros listed yet, the search won't find
much but if you Search for "Housekeeping/Maid" with zipcode 35801 you'll
see some dummy hits. Also you can go directly to a sample listing at
http://www.TopServicePros.com/1

I'm interested to hear your comments especially about navigation
(easy/confusing) and content (too much/too little).

Thanks in advance.

-Richard

P.S. http://www.TopServicePros.com will take you to an "under
development" landing page. Just click the "enter and look around" link
(or http://www.TopServicePros.com/index.php) to get inside.

--
________________________________________________________________________
Richard Thoms
President - Top Service Pros, Inc.
Connecting Homeowners and Local Home Service Professionals
Homeowners, Find a Top Service Pro --> http://www.TopServicePros.com
Service Pros, Get Listed on the Web -> http://www.TopServicePros.com

 

[Neredbojias]

To further the education of mankind, Richard Thoms

Hello web-gurus,

Please checkout our new website and give us some feedback.

http://www.TopServicePros.com

I like the background but the guy with the big, yellow tongue doesn't look
very professional.

Why do I get a horizontal scrollbar around 1024px when the content
displayed is only about 800px?

If the box _is_ 800 px wide, it should be a bit smaller for 800px screens
or, better yet, the design should be fluid.

You're using a fixed font.

Increasing the font-size in Firefox upsets the layout dramatically.

Summation: Attractive looking but inferior in actual design.

 

[Jim Moe]

Please checkout our new website and give us some feedback.
http://www.TopServicePros.com

The premise is a website to connect homeowners to local service
professionals. Service pros can subscribe to build a personalized
custom web listing.

Excellent concept.
Since this is a newsgroup about critiquing HTML, I'll stick to that.

- Passes both HTML and CSS validation. Yay!

- Uses a Transitional DTD. Should be Strict.
- Ancient tables-abused-for-layout style.
- Unreadable small font size: 12px, 75% of my preferred size.
- Unreadable small font size is in px units. Not resizeable by IE.

- The menu item borders do not line up with the curved images.
- Menu dropdowns do not work when Javascript is disabled. The main items
look like links but are not.

The layout is rather brittle. Zoom the font size and see what happens
(you'll have to use Firefox).

See
<http://www.pretletters.net/_test/common_mistakes_with_html4-01-strict_pages.html>.

 

[Adrienne Boswell]

Gazing into my crystal ball I observed Richard Thoms

Hello web-gurus,

Please checkout our new website and give us some feedback.

http://www.TopServicePros.com

The premise is a website to connect homeowners to local service
professionals. Service pros can subscribe to build a personalized
custom web listing.

Great idea. I like the picture of the person having a break with his
sandwich and thermos. He looks so typical, I'll bet if he turned
around, his butt crack would show.

The /cart/ area is not fully functional yet but everything else should
be navigable. Known broken links for "servicepro: how it works" and
"media center"

Since there are no real service pros listed yet, the search won't find
much but if you Search for "Housekeeping/Maid" with zipcode 35801
you'll see some dummy hits. Also you can go directly to a sample
listing at http://www.TopServicePros.com/1

I'm interested to hear your comments especially about navigation
(easy/confusing) and content (too much/too little).

Never use javascript for anything that is really important, like
navigation. With javascript disabled, the top menu does not work at all
<a class="item1" href="javascript:void(0)">About Us</a>. You can still
have a horizontal dropdown menu without javascript using CSS. Google
for suckerfish css. Users without CSS will see a regular list, users
with CSS will see the dropdown menu - and all users will have access to
the information.

You are also using some deprecated elements, I assume hence the
Transitional DTD. Get rid of them, use CSS instead and upgrade to
Strict.

You're using pixels for font sizing. Not good. Pixels cannot be
resized in certain browsers (IE for example), and the little old lady
who needs a plumber might not be able to see, and the guy who has bad
eyesight who wants to list his services might not be able to see "List
my Company!"

 

[Crazy Guy]

Looks good to me Richard

www.ART-i-SAN.net

 

[Barbara de Zoete]

Looks good to me Richard

www.ART-i-SAN.net

Having close to two hundred errors in your markup of this thing you think
is a page worth publishing, I don't think you have a clue as to what
you're talking about. Your comment is worthless and looks much like a
childish attempt to get your URL posted.

<URL:http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=h.../&charset=iso-8859-1&doctype=HTML+4.01+Strict>

Learn about posting properly:
<URL:http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html>
<URL:http://www.safalra.com/special/googlegroupsreply/>
<URL:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signature_block>

And in the future, before commenting on other peoples websites, you better
learn a thing or two about markup and styles. As it is now, it is of no
use at all to anyone.

 

[Charles Sweeney]

Richard Thoms wrote

http://www.TopServicePros.com

Pretty good. Good concept. Nice logo. Clean, clear and quick. For me,
the drop down menus are a pain.

 

[Charles Sweeney]

Barbara de Zoete wrote

Having close to two hundred errors in your markup of this thing you
think is a page worth publishing, I don't think you have a clue as to
what you're talking about. Your comment is worthless and looks much
like a childish attempt to get your URL posted.

<URL:http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://www.art-i-san.net% 2
F&charset=iso-8859-1&doctype=HTML+4.01+Strict>

Learn about posting properly:
<URL:http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html>
<URL:http://www.safalra.com/special/googlegroupsreply/>
<URL:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signature_block>

And in the future, before commenting on other peoples websites, you
better learn a thing or two about markup and styles. As it is now, it
is of no use at all to anyone.

I'm glad blokes don't get the menopause.

 

[Jerry Stuckle]

I'm glad blokes don't get the menopause.

Charles, I don't know which is worse. Going through menopause, or living with
someone who's going through it.

--
==================
Remove the "x" from my email address
Jerry Stuckle
JDS Computer Training Corp.
(e-mail address removed)
==================

 

[Michael Laplante]

Hello web-gurus,

Please checkout our new website and give us some feedback.

The "Join Now" page:
The main content is higher than your other pages and partially overlays the
top banner, about half the height of your horizontal menu.

Using Firefox 1.5.

M

 

[Joel Shepherd]

The layout is rather brittle. Zoom the font size and see what happens
(you'll have to use Firefox).

Why would one "have to use Firefox"?

Do other browsers allow font sizes to be changed (as opposed to zoomed,
which is something different altogether)? Does the page not fall apart
in those browsers when the font size is increased past some point?

What exactly makes Firefox so special in this regard that one simply has
to use it?

 

[JDS]

Why would one "have to use Firefox"?

Do other browsers allow font sizes to be changed (as opposed to zoomed,
which is something different altogether)? Does the page not fall apart
in those browsers when the font size is increased past some point?

Because, (1) using px for text size, IE won't resize the text and (2)
Opera zooms the whole page and not just the text size.

In actuality, though, you could say, "use a gecko-based browser such as
Firefox or Mozilla or Netscape 6,7,8 or a KHTML browser (such as
Konqueror, Safari) or any browser that resizes the text and does not zoom
the whole page)

Is that accurate enough for you?

 

[Charles Sweeney]

Jerry Stuckle wrote

Charles, I don't know which is worse. Going through menopause, or
living with someone who's going through it.

)

 

[dorayme]

I'm glad blokes don't get the menopause.

Glad for yourself or your boyfriend?

 

[Richard Thoms]

To further the education of mankind, Richard Thoms



I like the background but the guy with the big, yellow tongue doesn't look
very professional.

Hey that's me! - no not really I guess big yellow tongue means the
tape measure? I checked all the pics and didn't see one where he's
sticking his tounge out. Anyway I've got alot more stock photos of
other "service pros" that I hope to be able to make show in "context" so
that you see a maid while searching for a housekeeper, a painter while
searching for a painter ...

Why do I get a horizontal scrollbar around 1024px when the content
displayed is only about 800px?

Good eyes! I never noticed that I'll have to check it out.

If the box _is_ 800 px wide, it should be a bit smaller for 800px screens
or, better yet, the design should be fluid.

I'm actually running around 770px. I don't like fluid size because I'm
a control freak and I don't think I can make a decent layout that looks
good in both 800px and 1200px.

You're using a fixed font.

Others have mentioned that too. I did not realize it's a problem. I'll
research but what is the preferred way? % I guess?

Increasing the font-size in Firefox upsets the layout dramatically.

Another good catch! I'll have to figure that one out too.

Summation: Attractive looking but inferior in actual design.

Thanks for the feedback.

--
________________________________________________________________________
Richard Thoms
President - Top Service Pros, Inc.
Connecting Homeowners and Local Home Service Professionals
Homeowners, Find a Top Service Pro --> http://www.TopServicePros.com
Service Pros, Get Listed on the Web -> http://www.TopServicePros.com

 

[Richard Thoms]

Excellent concept.
Since this is a newsgroup about critiquing HTML, I'll stick to that.

Thanks for the compliment.

- Passes both HTML and CSS validation. Yay!

I tried!

- Uses a Transitional DTD. Should be Strict.

I had strict on for a while and could not make it pass. It's definitely
something I want to work toward though.

- Ancient tables-abused-for-layout style.

That's me all the way! This is my first major web project and I just
couldn't get a handle or control of <div> and float. It is something I
want to learn more about and convert that way. Tables were much easier
for me to understand. But I'm learning!

- Unreadable small font size: 12px, 75% of my preferred size.
- Unreadable small font size is in px units. Not resizeable by IE.

Others have commented the same. I'll fix both. Don't know if I can get
to 16px. You know I based some of this by looking at the ever popular
websites (yahoo, amazon, etc) and they run super small fonts. But I
agree that ABAP (as big as possible) should be the rule.

- The menu item borders do not line up with the curved images.

This is something I could never get to reconcile between IE and Firefox.
Firefox shows it right but IE has this problem. I could tweak it and
get the reverse behavior, but because I develop in FF so I left it this
way so that I would not have to look at the problem (I know, most of the
world uses IE -- for now!)

- Menu dropdowns do not work when Javascript is disabled. The main items
look like links but are not.

Others have mentioned this. I'm going to try to get rid of the JS and
hopefully can fix the menu item border issue at the same time.

The layout is rather brittle. Zoom the font size and see what happens
(you'll have to use Firefox).

Yep. Someone else mentioned that too. I never tried but I'll see if I
can fix it.

See
<http://www.pretletters.net/_test/common_mistakes_with_html4-01-strict_pages.html>.

Nice checklist. Glad to see I'm most of the way there.

Thanks for the feedback.

--
________________________________________________________________________
Richard Thoms
President - Top Service Pros, Inc.
Connecting Homeowners and Local Home Service Professionals
Homeowners, Find a Top Service Pro --> http://www.TopServicePros.com
Service Pros, Get Listed on the Web -> http://www.TopServicePros.com

 

[Richard Thoms]

Great idea. I like the picture of the person having a break with his
sandwich and thermos. He looks so typical, I'll bet if he turned
around, his butt crack would show.

Don't go there!

Never use javascript for anything that is really important, like
navigation. With javascript disabled, the top menu does not work at all
<a class="item1" href="javascript:void(0)">About Us</a>. You can still
have a horizontal dropdown menu without javascript using CSS. Google
for suckerfish css. Users without CSS will see a regular list, users
with CSS will see the dropdown menu - and all users will have access to
the information.

Others mentioned this as well. And I've never been happy with the
javascript menu system (it's ~25k and half the size of the total page!).
Thanks for the suckerfish css tip. I had never heard of it but it looks
like a good way to go, I'm going to give it a try.

You are also using some deprecated elements, I assume hence the
Transitional DTD. Get rid of them, use CSS instead and upgrade to
Strict.

I'll try...

You're using pixels for font sizing. Not good. Pixels cannot be
resized in certain browsers (IE for example), and the little old lady
who needs a plumber might not be able to see, and the guy who has bad
eyesight who wants to list his services might not be able to see "List
my Company!"

Others mentioned as well. Seems like a top request and one of the first
fixes I'll try to make.

Thanks for the feedback.

--
________________________________________________________________________
Richard Thoms
President - Top Service Pros, Inc.
Connecting Homeowners and Local Home Service Professionals
Homeowners, Find a Top Service Pro --> http://www.TopServicePros.com
Service Pros, Get Listed on the Web -> http://www.TopServicePros.com

 

[Richard Thoms]

The "Join Now" page:
The main content is higher than your other pages and partially overlays the
top banner, about half the height of your horizontal menu.

Are you talking about the green bar?

When I view the top banner (which in reality is from the top of the page
to the bottom of the tabs for the menu) is always the exact same height.
What is different on the "join now" page (and all /cart/ pages) is that
there is a green bar that was intended to give the user an indication
that they are in the shopping/login area.

Is it confusing? Maybe it would look better if it were dark blue?

Thanks for the feedback.

--
________________________________________________________________________
Richard Thoms
President - Top Service Pros, Inc.
Connecting Homeowners and Local Home Service Professionals
Homeowners, Find a Top Service Pro --> http://www.TopServicePros.com
Service Pros, Get Listed on the Web -> http://www.TopServicePros.com

 

[Richard Thoms]

Hello web-gurus,

Please checkout our new website and give us some feedback.

http://www.TopServicePros.com

Thanks to everyone that provided feedback. I've got a little work to do
now. Soon I'll post another request and I'll let you all into the
"back-end" to navigate and try the areas that the service pro will be
using to build their personalized custom content webpage. There's alot
more going on in there with forms and interactions with the database.

If anybody has other feedback, please keep responding to this post.

Thanks,
Richard

--
________________________________________________________________________
Richard Thoms
President - Top Service Pros, Inc.
Connecting Homeowners and Local Home Service Professionals
Homeowners, Find a Top Service Pro --> http://www.TopServicePros.com
Service Pros, Get Listed on the Web -> http://www.TopServicePros.com

 

[Michael Laplante]

Are you talking about the green bar?

Yeah, the green bar is flush with the bottom of the blue line at the bottom
of your top banner. The "About Us" "For Service Pros" sit right on top of
the green bar. These appear as tabs in other pages but here the bottom third
of the tab is hidden by the green bar -- like they are peeking out from
BEHIND it now.

It's not a show stopper, but it's noticeably different from the other pages
where the borders of the tabs are completely visible.

This table:
<table class="centershop" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">M