Hi I’ve finally started working on a layout for a redesigned website for the UUU and I was wondering if I could get a little feed back on what I’ve done so far
There are still alot of issues, the sub menus don’t quite work right in Firefox yet and I haven’t built the context box yet. But still if people would like to give me feedback anyway that would great (e.g. colour theme or banner ok? Maybe white back ground instead?).
I think it looks quite nice. Personally I’d avoid too much script-driven menus and stuff because of all the cross-browser compatibility issues, but they do look good and plenty of people use them. Also, if you’re using divs for positioning it’s a bit odd to use tables as well, but it could be just because that code was generated by a menu builder or something?
I like the black background, but I have had people moaning at me before about sites I’ve done with black backgrounds when they want to print a page. In the end I had to write a script to load the page using another stylesheet with black text on white for printing. Worth thinking about for event calendars etc (people will insist on printing them).
Don’t try to make it too flashy.
Rob
I think it looks pretty good.
The only thing I would say is that when you roll over a style under the ‘Ride’ tab, the menu that appears covers up the rest of the options in that menu. The only way to get rid of the box seems to be to click anywhere off of it, which closes all of the boxes, not just the menu for that style of riding.
If you followed any of that!
It is sort of okay, but a few things about it:
It looks a bit Commodore 64. The logo/splash screen at the top looks okay, but maybe something much simpler and cleaner, like the logo on the current site would make more sense. I think the black background and the ‘computer text’ is probably the bit that makes it look dodgy though, black backgrounds just scream teenage hacker / myspace.
Why does it have a ‘loading, click here to skip’ thing that pops up. If you’re intending to put in a stupid intro animation, it’s probably a good idea not to, they do always suck, and slow down getting to the content. The reason people come to a website is to get the information on the site, putting in intro screens just means that you put a stupid extra step in the way of them getting to the actual good stuff.
If it is just that the page takes a long time to load sometimes, then don’t bung in a loading screen, fix the page so that it loads quickly - it is just a simple page with a set of links - it should not take so long to load that a wait screen is required, if it does, there’s something wrong - check out how quick the current uuu page loads.
The mouseover and menus on the buttons are weird - they seem to take ages to fade in on my PC (which is quite a fast one), and then the button text flashes a couple of times. Can’t you use standard links, and things you click on, rather than the mouseover menus - they’re very fiddly to work on a laptop touchpad, especially when you have to get into a submenu. If you’re going to use menus, scrap the submenus - they’re not really needed, and they just make navigation fiddly, you can bring in subsections once they click through, for example hockey rules, and hockey results can come off the main hockey page. Also, menus fading in is kind of fun looking, but does make the site harder and slower to navigate.
You need to do something that works with javascript disabled - as a minimum making each of the top level menus a clickable link to an overview page for that section. Oh and have alternative text for all your images. Things like this are really important nowadays, as more people use wacky mobile phone browsers and the like. The current site just crashes on the loading screen with a tiny message at the bottom saying ‘warning, javascript is off, this won’t work’
Also, I would use normal text for the menu titles - they do weird things if you play with text size, and the pretend computer font is a bit unprofessional looking.
What content management system are you using for this? Or are you not using one? If you aren’t using one, you really should - there is no point hand coding content for a website without a CMS, it means only the web developer can actually update anything, and inevitably nothing gets updated, which was the problem with the old UUU site. We use Joomla at work. It does the job. There are lots of other alternatives. They also tend to come with templates, that you can use to make a site look professional without having all the hassle of hand coding menus etc. and which get things right, like what happens when javascript is off, or if images aren’t loaded.
Joe
I agree with most of what Joe said (that’s what I meant by “not too flashy”), but I think a CMS is a bit over the top really. The “nothing gets updated” argument was what was discussed at the UUU meeting at BUC, and is how Dan ended up with the job in the first place - somebody else I think was given the job of collecting data and making sure it gets to Dan for posting.
And I still like the black background, and I’m not a teenager, hacker or myspace user 
It’s true though that most business sites these days don’t use dark backgrounds, and some gadget freaks will always try to look at things on their phones 
Rob
Well you’ll be glad to know I’ll be starting the design from scratch. I’m working on a completly CSS based navigation system now.
I’ll bear CMS in mind, but not sure if Rich would let me implement it on his server.
Hi Dan,
Thanks for putting the page up. I like the layout, but I’m not a fan of the colour scheme. I’m with Joe on the background colour and menu text. I think a light background is a must.
I’d like a red/white/blue colour scheme because they’re the colours of the UK Unicon t-shirts. The colour scheme on the British Cycling website is along the lines I was thinking. I don’t think we need should copy their layout, it’s too busy, but the colours work.
How will the navigation work when you move from the front page? Will the menu bar across the top stay the same? I’m not sure about the drop down menus, I think a simpler system would be better.
The site needs to appeal to as many different people as possible, it’s one of the top hits when you search for unicycling in the UK, so the impression it gives is important to how people perceive our sport. How do we want to be perceived?
Have a look at other national organisations pages for some ideas, try the Lawn Tennis Association, British Gymnastics, British Swimming, British Cycling. They all look fairly official and have a nice clean look, and are relatively easy to navigate.
Thanks for all the work so far.
Paul
First impression is mostly good (I CBA to click around and look at the rest of the site right now to see if it works).
I like the image at the top, but there are two things I’d change about it:
The UUU logo at the left hand edge doesn’t stand out. Perhaps make the logo a lighter colour (red might work).
I really don’t like the “l” in that font. Looks too much like an ‘e’. Shame, because the font works quite well apart from that.
i’m not sure why you havent gone for a premade opensource CMS solution Joomla style or Xoops. It’s easier faster and looks awesome in 5 seconds…
and then you can get your users to update their own content and make it a much more dynamic site. Maybe even including a wiki for an events page so people can add their own stuff.
Havent actually seen the site though, the page was replaced too quickly 
and i think it’s hilarious that your code for your placeholder page doesnt pass w3c strict sorry i had to tell you that!
learn to close your tags in the right order!
brendan
Give him a chance - he’s keen, even if the style isn’t to everybody’s taste at the moment. And let’s face it, none of the rest of us could be arsed to do it :o
Rob
Yeah, definitely, something needed doing, and having someone who can be bothered to do it is great. As for style etc. you can never get these things right first time. I know my first web page (which thankfully is not easily findable google any more), was really really bad - whereas this is at least a basically functional skeleton site.
Joe
Hey could a few opinions about the banner on the site now?
The site still looks quite ugly as i haven’t implemented a lot of the css code yet, but thoughts?
I like the new logo/flag thing. The rest of it is looking much more “conventional” now, so should please more people. Could do with a border around the text so it doesn’t touch the edge of the coloured boxes (but you did say you hadn’t dealt with that sort of thing yet). And for some reason I feel like the linky menu thing should be on the left - but that’s probably just me!
And the text is just rubbish
Rob
It looks better than it was, so that’s good.
I do a lot of my browsing on my mobile though (Windows Mobile 6), and although it displays fine, none of the links at the top except for FAQ work on there.
STM
looks good 
@Rob - Thanks, I’ll probably re-arrange that. It’s probably more logical that way round because if the user is using a low screen resolution they will still see it.
@Semac the monkey - Interesting problem. I’m going to blame IE on that one. When you say the links don’t work… do you mean the sub menus don’t appear? When you hover the mouse over anything but “FAQ” a sub menu should appear (It’s been tested on IE7, Firefox and Opera so far and they all work).
The easiest fix I can think of is having a site map on the bottom of the page that users can also use to navigate (which I was going to have anyway). But i’d like to look into this problem more. Do you have anymore details (I assume Windows mobile uses some customised version of Internet explorer)?
Yeah, Windows Mobile uses a cut down version of IE. I think most sites treat it like IE5. Because there’s no mouse on a mobile phone I don’t have the option of hovering over anything, but the direction pad is used to move up, down, left or right to the next clickable hyperlink. The FAQ page is the only one I can select as it treats the other links as static text.
A site map page would work fine though.
STM
Ok, I’ll do a site map as well then. Thanks for taking the time to test it for me STM.
reading black text on such a bright blue backgroud hurts my eyes. in all seroiousness I find it very hard to read text on coloured back grounds unless light/ pastal clours.
Lower the saturation of every color you have on that page, that will tone down the Commodore 64 or neon-ness of the page. Go for deeper or richer tones, or the other direction with pale tones, it will improve it greatly.