Oranges, text sizes, and cliches

written by Craig, 8 February 2007

This website has been live for a little while, so I thought I’d seek out some feedback from those lovely people at SitePoint and .net magazine plus a few friends in the industry.

Overall, the comments were very positive, which was a relief, but we have addressed some of the main criticisms:

  • The main menu is now more prominent. It’s shiney Web2.0-style but, hey, that’s all the rage at the moment.
  • The sub-menu (on the right of some pages) is a little more obvious. I’m still not completely happy with it, but it’s an improvement.
  • A few of the XHTML semantics have been modified and the code was simplified in some areas. (Wordpress 2.1 has a few updates that made some of our workarounds unnecessary).

Oversized fonts

The biggest topic of conversation has been the text size. Some people like it, but the majority say it’s too large.

Oversized fonts are another feature of Web2.0 designs. Personally, I like them; it makes the site easy to read and ensures the writer keeps text concise. We went to a lot of effort to ensure the site worked in small or large windows and the font could be resized without breaking the overall design (hit Ctrl and + or - in your browser).

So, we’re going to leave the text size as it is for now. Please have a rant at me if you think it’s the wrong decision!

Code and accessibility validation

The issue of the validation links in the footer has cropped up. I think it’s true that the average web user does not know or care about web standards, although it’s surprising how many clients mention it.

I don’t really see a problem with validation links as long as they do not become a major part of the page. Some readers may take it as vanity or showing off, but we sell accessible websites that adhere to W3C standards. Our main site should reflect that.

My favourite comment

So far, the best has to be:

The truth is though I’ve seen this all before, so many times now. It’s like a big orange cliche.

Credits

Many thanks to everyone who took time to review the site and leave comments - we really appreciate it.

A big thank you to Alastair Campbell who sent me a comprehensive email detailing a couple of semantic markup issues and potential problems with RTF documents.

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