I finally got my site online, http://nookkin.com

I designed and coded this site entirely by myself, from scratch, including both the client-side and server-side code. It's not the first site I have made, but it involved the most coding. The code validates as XHTML 1.0 Strict and CSS level 2.1.

Could you please evaluate my site in the following areas, and tell me how it can be improved?

• design and overall appearance of the site
• client-side code (semantics, validity, etc.)
• functionality (navigation, blog, comments system, etc.)

Thanks!

i like it

menu is nice too

Oh wow I love the navigation!

The only thing I would change is either make the content on-top on that nookkin.com text in the content area or remove that text.

Otherwise it is perfect!

Pretty cool site and the menu is good as said above. I agree with sclek about the text thing, it would look better without it. A few improvements i would add is some colour, seems a bit to grey to me although i guess thats personal taste. Another improvement is make the png work in IE6, im only using it because my laptop is broken but quite a few people still use IE6 and i think it would look better if you fixed that.


I do have one question though, when i go on the download page and scroll down the content area turns yellow why is this?

Good functionality though

Edit: What is the point in the "Skip To Content" text when its only 35px below the hyperlink? (Thanks to kevin for measureing).

Well the it is harder to fix it because he would have to remove the transparency. Most people have already upgraded to IE7 because it upgrades by default on Windows XP.

I know about the transparency issue, I just didn't think too many people would be affected by it. But I will definitely fix it when I get the chance.

It IS possible to enable PNG transparency in IE6 via CSS behaviors. By using conditional comments, this "hack" will not affect the validity of the page's markup.

Thanks for pointing out the thing about the content turning yellow. Seems like a nasty IE6 bug. It's fixed now. (For some reason, adding an empty <p> element after the yellow box fixes the issue, at least it worked for me when I tested it in IE6.) This is precisely why I dislike IE, especially older versions -- it doesn't follow the rules and exhibits weird bugs.

I like the gray look -- it brings out the color in the few colorful elements that I do add (for example, images or emphatic elements such as that yellow box.). Though I can always change it if I feel like it.
I do agree about the text on the home page -- it looks unfinished. Only reason it looks unfinished is because it is. I was busy working on other parts of the site, and getting all of my scripts to work on the new server.

The "Skip to content" hyperlink is an accessibility feature for older browsers with limited CSS support, text-based browsers such as Lynx, and some screen readers. Since the dropdown menu is composed of a fairly long list of items, it makes it easier for users of said browsers to get to the content without scrolling (or listening) through all of those links. (View the page with CSS disabled to see what I mean.)

Thanks, everyone, for your input!

It's smart how you incorporated browsers such as Lynx. Just as a heads up, Lynx does not completely ignore CSS. There are some properties that are still counted and images will come up distorted. I would recommend that instead of having that link you just redirect your users to a different are for Lynx users. It's safer in my opinion although it is a pain in the backbone.

That's why I didn't set the "Skip to content" link to display:none (to hide it from users with regular browsers). Users of Lynx will still get a long list of menu items; the purpose of this link is to allow users to skip over these.

Yes, it would be pretty difficult to implement a separate version of the site, since the content is file-based (not entirely stored in the database). But if all of my content were stored in the database, it shouldn't be too difficult to do that.

Fantasticcc logo looks awesome and the overall look is too decent. But it would be too good if you jsut turn the menu headings into black bold or just highlight them with some shadow .. otherwise it's just fine