Re: ExI home page okay?

Michael Lorrey (retroman@together.net)
Sun, 07 Feb 1999 00:48:36 -0500

Max More wrote:

> I'd appreciate it if a few of you could take a look at
> http://www.extropy.org and let me know whether it looks normal to you. I
> made some changes a few days ago. It looks fine on my screen, using
> Explorer 5, and also on campus using an old version of Netscape, but
> looking at it on Natasha's computer, using Explorer 4, the right column is
> squeezed way over to the right.
>

I'm using Netscape 4.5, and my screen is 17" with a resolution of 1280x1024 and 24 bit color. I usually have netscape open in a window that is not maximized, so I don't use the whole screen to view pages. Here's my input on a screen by screen basis. I'll report bugs as well as my own aesthetic critique:

Main Page:
Well organized. No overt layout bugs.
I'd recommend the following:
a) lose the table borders. One word: Yuk. b) a distinct lack of color makes it look cold and sparse. The white background and the use of small bold type can be annoying to the eyes. Thats a lot of blank real estate.
If you are seeing the right column being squeezed to the right, then you need to set specific width information on all of the cells for that column, and for the left column. I have started to use a three column layout, even when I only use the first two, with a width ratio of 2:4:1 or 2:5:1 when I plan on using the entire width of anyone's page. Because I've gotten to not like how pages display so differently at different screen resolutions, I tend to use distinct pixel widths, rather than percentiles, when I specify table width, usually at 620 pixels.

Extro4 pages:
I used the link in the left column and wound up getting the pages come up in a new navigation window. This indicates to me that you have left some <frame> related tags in the documents and they are being targeted toward a frame that is not there, so the browser is opening them in a new window. When I selected the EXTRO4 Home link at the bottom of these pages, the server could not find the page. Error 404.

membership page:
very well laid out, good colors and good use of width control.

Extropy FAQ List:
On the page for 'What does BEST DO IT SO stand for?, the page style of header, margin and footer is repeated again at the bottom of the page. The page for question #10: Do extropians live differently or is it all theory? does not have the same layout as any of the other pages. It simply has a yellow background.

Site Index:
The link to the criticism of Barlow's Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace is slightly broken. As the text breaks into two lines, the link for the second line works, but the link for the first does not.

Exponent and the EXTRO4 pages all use a neon blue background with minimal formatting or layout and little to no graphical content. Suggest that the blue header and magin style used on much of the rest of the site be applied to these pages as well.

The rest of the site is great. I'd suggest that there be a site search engine, since the site is getting rather huge. If you do, you might want to also include the websites of other extropians to help expand the knowledge base

--
TANSTAAFL!!!
   Michael Lorrey
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