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    • CommentAuthorfarrhad
    • CommentTimeMar 31st 2008
     permalink
    Hi,

    I am 14 and have just css'ed my website.

    Please visit it and let me know your feedback and suggestions.

    http://www.aviationearth.com

    Thank You
    • CommentAuthordave_o
    • CommentTimeMar 31st 2008 edited
     permalink
    Hi farrhad,

    congrats to the great site! The css looks very solid, although you have some redundancy in it, for example:

    h1 a, h2 a {
    color : #2b2b2b;
    background : #fff;
    text-decoration : none;
    }
    h1 a:hover, h2 a:hover {
    color : #2b2b2b;
    background : #fff;
    }

    could be reduced to this:

    h1 a, h2 a {
    text-decoration : none;
    }
    h1 a, h2 a,
    h1 a:hover, h2 a:hover {
    color : #2b2b2b;
    background : #fff;
    }

    Plus one thing: Well commented code can save your life, really. This might be no problem on small and simple projects, but think about it, when you'll design bigger sites. I'm sure you will, cause the site is great, keep up the good work! :)

    Dave.
    Thankful People: farrhad
  1.  permalink
    Good start. Consider changing the pages where you use tables to CSS - they look akward. Also in IE7, the navigation text is wider than the buttons. Finally, every page should have the page Title (like About Us), using one of your h1, h2, or h3 headings to be consistent.
    • CommentAuthormdrisser
    • CommentTimeApr 2nd 2008
     permalink
    Wow, great job, I see a lot of potential in you. What follows is nothing more than constructive criticism, so please don't be offended, my goal is to give you some "been there, done that" tips, so here goes....

    There is an awful lot of whitespace and a lack of consistency in the layout.

    Your landing page really looks good, things flow well.

    On the "Theory" page there is a lot of distracting whitespace between the list and the right column (try using a multi-column list here, A List Apart has a good article on how to do this: http://www.alistapart.com/articles/multicolumnlists).

    The "Aircraft Data" page does a better job of filling in the whitespace, but there's a lack of consistency in the line heights, the top two lists have a smaller line height than the bottom two.

    The "Manufacturers" page also has a lot of white space, but it actually works here due to the shape of the list. There's still a bit too much space between the text and the border, try shrinking the size of the table and centering it.

    On your "Downloads" page we encounter a bit more inconsistency, the tables a narrower than the ones on the "Manufacturers" page, and the alignment is no longer centered, but aligned left. There is also a lot of empty space between these tables and the right column.

    Your contact page looks pretty good, the only thing I would recommend is changing from align center to align left for the text. Centering that much text makes it harder to read.

    Double check your individual aircraft data pages, some of them made me think I might have gone to a different site.

    On a lot of the individual pages I'm seeing that you centered the text, my recommendation here is the same as for your contact page. I also noticed that a on several of these pages there is nothing in the right column, you should either keep the column on all of the sub-pages, or do away with it on all of the sub-pages.

    Also, I stay away from using tables for layout, reserve tables for data only. This isn't only a semantic issue, but an accessibility and maintenance issue as well. I realize that a lot of people use tables for layout, and in the beginning of the internet there wasn't a whole lot of choice. With the wide spread use of CSS and the improving support from the major browsers, there's really no reason to do this anymore. Break the cycle :-)

    So to sum up:
    1. Centering text and whitespace are great tools, the trick is to figure out when and how to use them. Don't over use them in your designs.
    2. Strive for consistency from page to page. Don't switch around on your alignments and use of whitespace. Stay with the same basic layout and colors.
    3. Don't use tables for layout, save them for displaying data.
    4. Check, recheck and recheck again. Make sure you've done all of the pages :-)

    Overall the design is clean, easy to navigate, and really quite beautiful. You've done an awesome job. Keep up the great work, and keep learning (if you quit learning in this business, you'll soon be left behind).
    Thankful People: farrhad
    • CommentAuthorfarrhad
    • CommentTimeApr 2nd 2008
     permalink

    Thanks everyone!

    Dave_o: Did make the changes, thanks.

    MDRISSER :

    Thanks for the awesome review!
    I agree is should be consistant.
    Will implement your suggestions.

    Do keep posting!

    • CommentAuthormdrisser
    • CommentTimeApr 4th 2008
     permalink
    You're very welcome.

    Another little tip: Pick up a book or two on graphic design principles. 99% of these principles aren't just for print design, they work for web design as well.
    • CommentAuthorfarrhad
    • CommentTimeApr 4th 2008
     permalink
    hmmm......
    Do keep posting
    • CommentAuthorbrent3721
    • CommentTimeApr 5th 2008 edited
     permalink
    Farrhad,

    One thing you should always do, especially if you're learning how to write HTML and CSS is validate your pages.

    This will show you where the errors are. I validated your page and it says there are 33 errors. This doesn't mean that there are actually this many errors, when you go through the results and fix things keep pressing the re-validate button and you will see that for each thing you fix the number will go way down. This is because if you for instance forgot to end a div you'd be creating many conflicts, so fixing one thing fixes others.

    If you start early making a habit of validating your pages you'll save yourself a lot of headaches later. Also keep in mind that when you code your first page you will be replicating all that code onto all the pages you make for the entire website, so if you don't validate the first page, you'll be copying these errors to all pages on the site, which will make it harder to fix them later.

    brent
    @
    mimoYmima.com
    • CommentAuthorbrent3721
    • CommentTimeApr 5th 2008
     permalink
    farrhad,

    forgot the link:

    http://validator.w3.org/

    brent
    @
    mimoymima.com
    • CommentAuthorfarrhad
    • CommentTimeApr 7th 2008
     permalink
    Thanks will definitely look into it.
    • CommentAuthorfarrhad
    • CommentTimeApr 12th 2008
     permalink
    Thank You for your suggestions.
    Do keep posting your feedback!
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