Concern 2: Youre using a background image with a
frameset. Thats not smart. Even if you do succeed in
losing the middle vertical scroll, the two backgrounds
will never line up perfectly on all systems and all
screen settings. That dividing line between the frames
will be accentuated.
Suggestion: Go with a far more random background
pattern with very little noise, or try out a
background color or two.
Concern 3: Your navigation down the left hand side is
causing a vertical scroll. That means you have waaaaay
too many links down the left side.
Suggestion: Youll need to do one of two things. Either
greatly lessen the number of links by combining the
topics further or create a double list of links, one
next to another so you get two columns. That will
probably make your left frame much larger but at least
there wont be the scroll bar.
Concern 4: Book-marking. Lets say I like Amys poem
and want to come back to it. I would either have to
break it out as its own page and bookmark that or
bookmark just your homepage and find it each time. Yes,
I know that IE will bookmark specifically, but only some
versions. Netscape wont do it at all.
Suggestion: Im not sure. Theres no nice way to set up
book-marking unless you offer to break out the page and
then offer the bookmark. In the past I have suggested
that if you must use frames, then when the user clicks,
load a new frame page every time. That way the bookmark
will work. People havent found that suggestion very
useful.
Concern 5: This isnt a concern from your page, but it
pops up a lot so Ill mention it here. You have made a
point of designing each of your pages so that they will
display in best in 1024X764. Smaller monitor settings
will not display the same way. Heres an example:
Suggestion: Design your elements so that they display
nicely in all browser screen formats rather than the
images truncating. Thats extremely hard to do in a
frameset. Many of your other pages are text-based so
they dont run into the same problem, but this one did.
Overall: Ben…buddy…level with me here. Why do you
have a frame format? What good is it doing your site?
Whats the up side? I dont really see one. You can get
the same effect with a large table. Your background will
be smooth all the way across. Youll lose the first
vertical and horizontal scrolls. Why do you have the
frames format? If it is because you think it looks cool,
lose it. It doesnt. It looks unprofessional and people
can see that.
You have a solid page here and the information is great,
the poetry especially. You need to take a day and
redesign this site so that the frames are taken out.
Itll help a great deal.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
That’s that.
Joe Burns, Ph.D.
Always Remember: When it comes to designing your Web site, the
most important person is not you, but your user.
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