Needing some advice on a website

sutty

Ok, as well as the thread about a contact form. I am looking for advice on the site I am building. Its currently up and running in a layout kind of format with no logo and images. I was thinking of doing ether clickable links for each service on offer or maybe a mouse hover over option that will bring up a small bit of detail on the service the mouse is over. The clickable link is not an issue to do. But the hover over option I have no idea how to accomplish. Please keep in mind that this is my first time doing any kind of Web design. So I am a complete twat when it comes to it.

Fix I.T. Services

Any constructive comments or advice would be welcomed.

Thanks.

Eoin

I don't know if I would use a hover over, for anything other than a very small piece of information. Why not keep it simple, and just have them as links to anchors further down the page?

John_Mc

You could use AJAX to provide the Hover functionality, it's pretty well documented and well worth learning. What development environment are you using?

The M$ Visual Web Developer application comes has AJAX integrated into it. Checkout what you can do with it here:http://ajaxcontroltoolkit.com/

sutty

Sorry, been using dreamweaver. I was thinking the hover over might be a bit distracting or off putting. But wasn't sure. What about a click link that brings up a small window with information in it? Would that just be blocked by a pop up blocker?

aidan_walsh

Opening windows and moving the viewers focus unnecessarily is always bad, IMO.
Mouse-overs are also a bad idea as they hide information in a non-obvious way, making things that look like links behave differently from links. This can make finding important information frustrating and difficult.

Why not just list your services at the top of the page and use named anchors to jump to the relevant section of the page, or use a different page to detail each service?

John_Mc

sutty wrote: »

Sorry, been using dreamweaver. I was thinking the hover over might be a bit distracting or off putting. But wasn't sure. What about a click link that brings up a small window with information in it? Would that just be blocked by a pop up blocker?

It's possible so I'd avoid. You're far better off given the links informative names and leaving out the popup/hover.

sutty

What about if a person clicks on a link and it takes them to a different page with an anchor used to bring them to the right section? Can this be done and if so what would the code for the link/anchor be?

aidan_walsh

<a href="#bit">Jump to text</a>
<a name="bit">Text to jump to</a>

John_Mc

sutty wrote: »

What about if a person clicks on a link and it takes them to a different page with an anchor used to bring them to the right section? Can this be done and if so what would the code for the link/anchor be?

On the destination page, at the destination location at the following line:

<a name="tips" id="tips">Useful Tips Section</a>

This sets an anchor point called tips. I added an id property because I remember experiencing problems with the way Firefox handled anchors and having id and name being the same fixed that.

Your hyperlink to get to that location would then be:

pagename.html#tips

The # in the address URL signifies a specific point on the page

Eoin

sutty wrote: »

What about if a person clicks on a link and it takes them to a different page with an anchor used to bring them to the right section? Can this be done and if so what would the code for the link/anchor be?

Yes, both aidan_walsh and I suggested this.

sutty

Ah now that is seeming a lot better. I might do up some tests if I can get a chance tomorrow/at the weekend.

sutty

eoin_s wrote: »

Yes, both aidan_walsh and I suggested this.

Indeed ye did, but I was more asking about a different page for the details of services rather than further down the same services page. I'd like to try keep that as neat and tidy as I can, with out people having to scroll all over the page to see what is on offer. (if you get what I mean)

aidan_walsh

Thats pretty much the same technique that I showed above. Just add the entire path or name of the page, with the hash name at the end.

sutty

Well it took me a few hours to do out the page for service details. Each service under the service tab is a clickable link to a page with discriptions with an anchor for that service. Hows that look to people?

Adam

First link is dead, serverdetails? Should probably be servicedetails like the others?

sutty

Thats fixed now, thanks for that Mirror. Was one I missed

aidan_walsh

sutty wrote: »

Thats fixed now, thanks for that Mirror. Was one I missed

Looking good. You might think about adding links back to the head of the Services page, and maybe ones to the home and business pricing under each service description as well, just as a quick method of getting to all the relevant information.

sutty

Me again, needing a bit of help on the images side of things. I've put up a logo and banner type image at the top of the index home page. I had to edit the side of the tables so that it was two gifs (a top and bottom corner) each side. In my firefox it looks ok. In one of the lads I work with its all missalined and in IE7 it is all missalined. That said IE is worse than firefox for it. Anythoughts on how to smooth this out? Once I get this page sorted I can work on the others.


Oh and on the side of meta tags and SEO kinda basic stuff. Do you need to do them for each page or just the index page?

sutty

just thought I'd bump it. Done some updates, got put in google there the other day but only if you search for the domain name? (meta tags dont seems to be working? more than likely done them wrong) I'm wanting to get rid of the links section and put in a alerts for virus warnings. I'd like to use a RSS feed to give headings on that page but not sure how to set this up.