Appreciate site review

[Webnauts]

Dear co-members,

three days ago we have launched our new design, and we would kindly appreciate a site review.

We are aware that there are some things to be fixed (which we are working on), as for its markup, accessibility and usability, though we still would appreciate your review and your suggestions/solutions to make it for us possible to provide our visitors with a better user experience.

Check it out here: http://www.webnauts.net (http://www.webnauts.net/)

Thanks a lot in advance for your kind contribution, making our web site accessible and usable to all.

[iamback]

three days ago we have launched our new design, and we would kindly appreciate a site review.

We are aware that there are some things to be fixed (which we are working on), as for its markup, accessibility and usability, though we still would appreciate your review and your suggestions/solutions to make it for us possible to provide our visitors with a better user experience.

Check it out here: http://www.webnauts.net (http://www.webnauts.net/)My first impression is an easy-to-read web page with a pleasing color scheme. Looking closer, what really struck me was the the deliberate use of an off-white html & body background color (mostly when I see that it's just that designers forgot that not everyone has their windows background color set to white!) - it works nicely to offset the page content which is kept fairly narrow for easy-to-scan text lines.

That said, a few things strike me as not so nice in terms of usability and accessibility:
The top menu uses white on a yellow background - the contrast here is too low for easy legibility (curiously, when I turn off image loading, the background is purple - just what I was going to suggest you use for background instead)
The globally-set line-height of 130% ensures more leading in the body text (good) but has a negative effect on the "Articles and Tutorials" menu where we get an unpleasant flicker effect when the mouse moves over it: the menu items that wrap to double lines now have on-of-on-again background highlighting when teh mouse moves over it because the background hover color is not triggered when the mouse is on the leading. Maybe the 130% line-height should apply only to body text and not globally; the menu could then have a vertical margin to set off the items from each other without cousin the flicker effect between lines on a single item
The background image used for hn headings, sized for a single line of text apparently, "breaks" on headings that wrap over two lines (example: accessibility-statement.html)
Turning off images also has the unpleasant effect that menus like "Articles and Turorials" and "Memberships" no longer have any bullets, reducing the usability of these menus (div.side-nav ul li { list-style-type: none; } instead of using disc)
The "Memberships" menu has no hover effect at all which is inconsistent with the rest since these are links, too
I'm also puzzled by the empty alt attribute on the icons - I see them as much more than purely decorative and thus should have an appropriate alt text IMO


Content:
On the home page there is a reference to the "Search Engine Optimization Guidelines & Code of Ethics" - bolded, but without any reference - what is that code of ethis and where can we find it? There's a further mention of it on the Services page, again without any reference. A link here (both pages) would be nice - without it, we really don't see what it is you claim to adhere to :)
On the "Accessibility Statement & Access Keys" page, you have a spurious > after Internet Explorer 5+
I also wonder why there is no mention of Opera 8 on that page - that suggests they have dropped support for access keys; I think not! (though their support is somewhat quirky and - in version 7 at least - incomplete).


Tested with Mozilla 1.7 on Win2000. Hope this helps.

[Richard Waller]

Nice one

Would like your name, street address or at least home town, and country. And a few pictures (of you perhaps)

You should have all the stuiff in your META description in text right at the top. The word Webnauts should be the firsty word in the title, text, and META.

But it is looking good. Hope it does you well.

[Webnauts]

Thanks Jack for your detailed and excellent review.
I added all issues in our bug tracking system for review and assignment.

On the "Accessibility Statement & Access Keys" page, you have a spurious > after Internet Explorer 5+
I just fixed that. That was quick. :D

[Webnauts]

Nice one

Would like your name, street address or at least home town, and country. And a few pictures (of you perhaps)

You should have all the stuiff in your META description in text right at the top. The word Webnauts should be the firsty word in the title, text, and META.

But it is looking good. Hope it does you well.

Richard thanks a lot for reviewing. Though I have this info here: http://www.webnauts.net/policy.html#about

Anything against that?

[Daudio]

Though I have this info here: http://www.webnauts.net/policy.html#about

Anything against that?
Yes, the interesting info is buried underneath pages of legal boilerplate. Not easy to find, so few will find it.

Move your contact info to the top, above the 'fold' !

Even better if it, or a subset of the most important info, is on your main page.

[Webnauts]

Yes, the interesting info is buried underneath pages of legal boilerplate. Not easy to find, so few will find it.

Move your contact info to the top, above the 'fold' !

Even better if it, or a subset of the most important info, is on your main page.

I will Dave. You are right. I will do that.

[dthomsen8]

I will Dave. You are right. I will do that.

I am glad to see that you have seen the wisdom of telling users up front where you are, that is, Germany. Perhaps you can work for anyone, anywhere, given the Internet, but most people want to know where you are.

[Webnauts]

I am glad to see that you have seen the wisdom of telling users up front where you are, that is, Germany. Perhaps you can work for anyone, anywhere, given the Internet, but most people want to know where you are.

Sure I saw the wisdom. That was a fatal error. Thanks for confirming that, and for your kind review.