I'm in the process of updating my site and would sppreciate your help and feedback. The address is www.test.rescope.com.au. Also, can anyone tell me why the images (currently only in the "Earth" gallery) are displaying that way? I have entered them in text format and as you can see, it always leaves a larger space between the first and second rows of images as it does between subsequent rows. I can't figure out why.

Thanks guys.

(Using XP - SP2 - MOZILLA FIREFOX)
Just had a look, really like the theme you have going between the pages.
1. I found the left frame - when loaded almost completely cut off the round 'light buttons' had to drag the bar to see them properly.
2. I feel the words on the left side for navigation purposes are a bit hard to read, until you click on them. Then they look really good.
3. All the pages are coming up "untitled document" at the top of my browser and browser tabs. I would recommend naming them, as users who bookmark the site will have an easy reference.

Overall - A very impressive site with themed pages (nice use of colour to tie them together) use of grid layout works well to make pages 'user-friendly' Well done Sam.

using XPSP2_Avant...
-agree with mythica with myth on the navi bar...perhaps you could make it highlight the color when you hover over it.
-i would also consider about making the index(main) page white on black the layout and the images seem to suggest that that might be better.
-i don't see what you are talking about with the formatting problem Samatar.
-no other major probs except those mentioned earlier.

Mythica: What resolution are you using? I have tried veiwing the page at a few res's and haven't had the problem with the frame cutting bits off myself. I know the text is harder to read; originally the whole menu was 33% larger ut I reduced it for aesthetic reasons which has unfortunately made it harder to read. I might have to make it darker or something. I thought I had fixed the tiel thing but will have to look at that again. Thanks very much for your feedback.

Ruste: I will try the white on black to see how it looks. Possibly the formatting I mentioned could be a Safari issue, but it isn't really noticable unless you know what you're looking for (or you're very picky like me). Thanks to you also for the feedback, appreciate it.

Running gear same as Mythica
(1028x768 browser setting & I have no tool bars or whatever so I pretty much have all the screen I can get to view the page.)

Pretty much the same views too.

Mate, the writing for navigation, you really need that to be either a contrasting colour or made much clearer, I am not about to screw my eyes up to try & read it, nor will most people I think. Also, the nav buttons, some surfers may object to the size of the text, as even if they decide to enlarge te text, the one area they are trying to enlarge isn't going to change, that could cause some surfers to be very unhappy.

The horizontal scroller in the Nav frame is a really big no no. No user should have to scroll anywhere near the global nav area, ya know?

I won't go into the discussion over the use of frames, some like them, some hate them. I don't so much mind them so long as I don't have to do any horizontal scrolling when I can se them....

http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=http%3A//www.test.rescope.com.au/

1 Error...

Visually it's great in many respects, accessibility is another matter. However, users can't access or surf or view with ease, they go elsewhere.

Keep up the hard work Sam, it's coming along well. =]

Thanks Paws. As I mentioned to Myth, I don't have any horizontal scrolling on my iMac or iBook; it must be something to do with the browser, or maybe Windows. That's why I wanted to test it first. I guess I might have to get Firefox and see if the problem occurs then.

I was concernder that the text might be too hard to read (another thing I wanted feedback on). I guess I will just have to bite the bullet and change it. Thanks again.

BTW how did you guys find the page loading time? Not too long?

Update: I have tried but I can't find a way to stop Firefox or IE from resizing the left frame and hence resulting in that stupid horizontal scroll bar. Does anyone know how I might be able to do this? I'm using Dreamweaver MX 2004.

If firefox is rendering it that way I would guess it's something to do with the coding.

I don't use DW so can't help there mate.

NM I figured it out. Problem solved. Only took me about 1/2 an hour... :-P

PS looks like that formatting problem I mentioned at the beginning only occurs in Safari.

Good man. =]

Sam : I have 2 moniters side by side (off a laptop) The res on my main monitor is 1024 x 768 - which is where I viewed your page. I just opened in on the laptop moniter 1280 x 854 and it's fine there.
Loading time - fine.
I also get the horozontil bar, which can be offputting. When I did Web-Site Design, Lecturers often talked about whether or not a site would 'grab' the user. You usually have about 10-30 seconds to do so. Any problems with visibility - navigation, they go back to Google. I don't underestimate good web design, it can be really hard. Looks good Sam.

I have updated, all the probs should be fixed now I think.

Edit: The site should be pretty much finalized now. So if anything doesn't look exactly right I probably am not aware of it. I need your critical eyes once again thanks guys!

Oh, I should point out that none of the image preveiws link to larger images yet. Forgot about that minor detail ;-)

Personally I hate sites that use frames. It makes it very difficult for search engines to crawl the site and most people try to stay away from frame based designs (well most of the web designers I've chatted too). You might consider hiding the scrollbar for the left frame. That way the site will look more integrated. The scrollbar is a bit distracting to me.

Also you should provide a title for your index page. "Untitled Document" doesn't look to good ;)

Other than that it seems pretty nice. Good job!

Had another look -
1. The frame on the left is much better - loaded well and can see all the buttons. No scroll bar - v.good.
2. The nav bar words are now more visible, and though the font is really interesting, I feel they aren't quickly legible - I know what they say because I've looked at them a few times now. The new user would have to really lean in to read them - which can be offputting. (Just my 10 cents) Some users may have sight difficulties or other handicaps, which should be accounted for, as they may be potential customers. (see http://www.w3.org/WAI/ )

Hope this is of some help.

- Added title
- Scroll bars gone for good (no matter how hard you try to get them)

Thanks again guys.

Another update today:
- Changed the font on the gallery pages to one which is (hopefully) easier to read. Still have to update the navbar font though;
- All the full size images should be available now

Looks way better than the old design. Nice work. I'd steer away from frames though. In future updates you may wish to consider using server-side scripting - much more flexibility. Apart from all the obvious dynamic benefits of scripting, you can use it to include repeat code as header files in something like PHP - much easier for coding and much simpler to edit when changing items that appear on every page.

Anyway, it's looking good in Firefox 1.0, Mozilla 1.6, IE5, Konqueror 3.2 & Epiphany 1.0.7 running at 1024x768 on my Mandrakelinux platform. Incidentally, your counter script doesn't seem to deal with unique hits - when i hit refresh, it counted me again. Still, not to worry. If I were you, I'd use an invisible counter. Anyway, the sites looking good. Doesn't load too badly, but I'm on a 300k connection.

I note you've got no metatags worth speaking of - they're vital for the searchbots. Also, whilst I'm raving on about search engines, you may as well stick a robots.txt file there as well to tell the bots what they can and can't do (look it up on google). Whether you do any of this or not, there's still a chance that serach engines may link directly to pages that should be seen in a framseset. You can put some javascript in to deal with this. If memory serves, something like:

<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript">
<!-- Begin
if (window == top) top.location.href = "name_of_my_frameset.html";
// End -->
</SCRIPT>

Anyway, I've gone on enough. What do I know? The site looks fine.

Thanks CH. I have metatags on the old site I think so I can copy them from there. I'm afraid your wasting your time talking to me about scripting or code etc, I know nothing of this! I just use the "Design" view in dreamweaver to do everything. Thanks very much for your feedback and I will add that javascript - I assume I add it to the pages that should be seen in the frameset, right?

Yeah.

Dreamweaver is a nice program. Unfortunately I have converted to Linux recently and can't get the damned thing to work properly. When you go to use other editors, you realise how good that WYSIWYG editor is. Having said that, I used Dreamweaver for years and I came to realise that there was no subsitute for getting into the code and messing around with it.

Okay peoples, I am almost ready to replace the old site with the new one (finally). If some of you could do a final check for me for spelling mistakes, broken links etc. I would appreciate it. The new version is still at www.test.rescope.com.au

Oh, and I forgot to mention, if anyone would like a link to their site please let me know.