Web Designer at work - Site reviews please

[Barry]

Hi all
Ive been using webhosting.uk.com for AGES and ive alwasy found they very reliable and efficient. Any ways thats nothing to do with my site review lol

feed back is alwasy needed to improve my website

barryswebdesign.co.uk

I try to use pure css and XHTML but i used a favicon script from a third party and it is zened so their is one table in that section ONLY. Apart from that it is designed for FF and IE7. I dont see why older browsers from pre 2002 should be supported nowadays as all pc's that have real valid XP or 2000 or 98 should be able to update their browsers to suit.

Any ways please review and i look forward to your comments.

Almost forgot to say I am looking for memebrs for my new site here rustinutz.co.uk video and arcade website

[Administrator]

Hello Barry, Thanks for being a loyal customer of Webhosting.uk.com and we sincerely appreciate your Business! Your website is beautiful and like the background you have used for your website. I would suggest you to include some specifically designed images in your website as that helps in proving your expertise in designing. Either a high quality logo or a banner will help to change theme of your website.

[harry]

Barry to Webhosting UK Community
Your site looks good, just try to reduce length of each page, they are too lengthy.

[Pumazooma]

Regarding the poll, being a site owner myself I have access to the very useful awstats package. That tells you what proportion of visitors use what browser.

I tend to find a very distinct difference.

I have one site where the majority of the users are very computer savvy. Just over half of them use Firefox.

I have another site which isn't computer related at all and the readership is much more 'normal'. 87% of those you IE.

Your typical home computer user tends to run what they're given. IE.
Your typical computer savvy person tends to use what's best for the job.


As for your web site. Very nice. I'm not 100% sure the rustinutz link sits well with the professional image of the rest of the site though.

[Administrator]

Here's what I see from awstats for our Website :- Browsers (Top 10) - Full list/Versions - Unknown

Browsers Grabber Hits Percent

MS Internet Explorer No 1248055 51.3 %

Firefox No 981088 40.3 %

Unknown ? 51373 2.1 %

Safari No 46575 1.9 %

Opera No 44220 1.8 %

Mozilla No 23355 0.9 %

Netscape No 9538 0.3 %

Links No 7685 0.3 %

LibWWW No 4167 0.1 %

Camino No 2839 0.1 %

Others 10946 0.4 %

[delboy]

Glad to see a fellow Scot

I like your design, wish I was as good myself lol.

As for visitor browser stats my adult personals website (less than 1 month old and has had 24702 uniques since jan 1st) has these stats:

Internet Explorer: 64.7%
Firefox: 29.2%

[Administrator]

Yes. It is quite clear that IE is more popular all over and only advanced users prefer Firefox. IE is very common between newbies.

[Barry]

I dont really like IE pre 7 (and some times i dont even like that one either) and i have stopped designing websites to support pre IE7 because most people (95% ish) have XP or newer and if they have legal versions they will have installed service pack 2 and the new browser. And any way if i am trying to advance my service as a website designer, then why should any one support older technology?

Being a website designer I much prefer FF because of the source view and because of the good addons to the browser.

Now I know not every one designs websites and I know that most people wont see a difference between how a browser renders the web pages but if people are aware of the differences then it will become more common knowledge that IE is not the best browser and that we all have a good choice now.

My stats are telling me about my visitors:

IE7 36%
Fire Fox 2.0 29%
IE6 13%
Netscape 0.2%
Rest ... who knows

So yes according to the wider audience the most common browser used is still the IE but FF is creeping up there.. This is probably because of Google giving it away for free at every opportunity though which can only be a good thing.

[jon123]

I am suprised at your stats for IE6 and IE7 to be honest. Most people i know have IE6 NOT 7 as IE6 was shipped with XP and SP2. Along with the fact that IE7 update is not an automatic update as far as I am aware, you have to physically goto updates and add IE to the list.

So the question is: Is IE7 more widely used than IE7?

[delboy]

IE7 is an automatic update now, thats how I got it.

[jon123]

Originally Posted by delboy

IE7 is an automatic update now, thats how I got it.

Is it! Sorry my mistake. it was about 4 months back when i downloaded it and although it was in the list it wasn't automatically downloaded.

[delboy]

maybe your right.....

[Pumazooma]

In one of the updates it tells you that IE7 is available and gives you the option of upgrading. You don't have to.

[Barry]

Most people when offered the update must be going for it .. according to my stats its the most popular browser my visitors are using...

[Barry]

What can you suggest i do to my site to improve my visitors experience and also to make me more good hard cash?

I do think maybe the text is a little verbose but i do like to keep a lot of text on pages so search engines know what the pages are really for.

My browser is set to 1280 x 1024 so the pages don't really look that long to me and according to my stats the most popular browser size is 1280 x 1024 although there are some at 1024 x 768. I designed the site structure so that people with 800 x 600 could still see all the content and yes i know i could have made that pages spread out according to browser size but i think it spoils the look of the pages.