Hey All,

A simple site, but I kinda like it. I'm curious what everyone else out there thinks.

http://www.kelownasprings.com

I know if you run w3c or any of the other validators out there the site is perfect but for one item. the <embed> tag and it's attributes are not part of w3c at all. Anyone have another way to get their flash viewable in mozilla browsers and opera without using it?

Looking forward to hearing everyone's opinions.

Thanks!

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Ron Boyd
website consulting (design, optimization, marketing) :: Follow Me: @orionsweb

I like its simple, clean design. Its exactly what it should be for a golf course. It knows its audience and plays well to it presenting all the info in a clean, clear manor.

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http://www.empyrelounge.com

I agree. A nice clean simple site that provides the user all they would need to know about the course.

Unfortunately I can not offer you a technical perspective on your question. The only thing that stood out to me was your navigation bar with "Golf Kelowna!". The exclamation mark throws you off when performing a quick read of the menu options and it is the only word with an exclamation. Not sure if that was at the request of the course or the designers recommendation.

Thanks to you both, simple and clean was what we were shooting for.

The GolfKelowna! is actually a trademark or copyright or something like that(with the exclaimation mark). I tried to do it without but was told I had to keep it in there.

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Ron Boyd
website consulting (design, optimization, marketing) :: Follow Me: @orionsweb

Why do I always have to be the bearer of bad news? Dude, I think it's broken!

I've just tested it in both Firefox and Netscape 7 on a PC and IE on a Mac... and the front page of the website doesn't seem to be working on any of them. I get the bar that progresses from left to right... but no movie follows it.

Even if it did work... I wouldn't like it. I don't like waiting for Flash movies to load. I usually hit the "skip movie" button... but you don't have one. That front page where the movie should appear has no other content, so there's nothing there for a search engine to index. (Not even a description meta tag!!!) Moreover, there's no information there for me as a visitor, so you're wasting my time. Since when is that good design?

Okay, I continued into the site, and that's much better, but...

There's a bug in your page centering, so the page doesn't center properly in the browser window in IE on a Mac. The left margin gets cut off, but you don't get a left-right scrollbar. You do get a right margin.

Since my preferred browser is Netscape 7.0, I sometimes see little bugs other people here miss. You've apparantly spec'ed two different background colors in two different places. In Netscape, every time I move from page to page I see mustard yellow for a moment before the background changes to green.

Designwise: If it were my site I'd remove the subtitle "ABOUT" pretty much everywhere you've put it. On your site, it simply doesn't add value. On the "Golf Course" and "Putting Course" pages, for example, it just takes up space before you get to real content. In the navigation bar above those two pages, the link to "About" is similarly useless because all it does is move me three inches down the page to where the page content starts. From an SEO perspective, putting "about" in a header (<h2>) tag and in link text is a complete waste of time. Why not put a MEANINGFUL and INFORMATIVE title in that header tag (and score for whatever useful keywords are in it)?

The text in those "about" paragraphs is the most important text on each respective page. You might consider making them one font size larger.

I think you'd be wise to have a different title tag on every page. Every page should have a description meta tag.

It is a pretty site. Very tasteful!

Thank you!

I can't get Netscape 7 (can't find it on their site anymore) I tested in NS 6 / 8, Fire Fox, Mozilla 1.7, Opera7 & 8, and IE all work great, all ship with the Flash plugin.

I haven't tested it on Mac as yet...

Oh, test your gamma, the color you see is the background-color which was pulled from the 'mesh' image that is part of the background-image. It shows somewhere between a gold / taupey color (can look a tad pukey in some settings lol) across 5 systems here all with varying monitors and set ups (though all PC's)

The flash is only a short image scroll. Might put an alternate jpg in there, for those without the plugin. I may also backdate the export to an older version of the flash player it may solve the Mac IE issue there.

The site ranks number one and number 9 for their keywords respectively (google)and better (1 and 5) in yahoo / msn(golf kelowna / kelowna springs). we will stick descriptions and keywords in there if the client wants them but their traffic comes from existing local members anyway. If they don't want to pay for any SEO I don't want to give it away since they pay us to SEO other site's for them. Hard call I know.

I agree fully with the 'about' issues you spoke of, however client says that's what their site visitors understand, and what they want to use. I didn't push it as they don't want or need SEO on this one.

Very good eye though and I'm definitely going to track down my two Mac testers here, see if we can't get that fixed pronto! I'll also keep trying to check on the NS7 issue.

Always appreciate the time! Thank you!

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Ron Boyd
website consulting (design, optimization, marketing) :: Follow Me: @orionsweb

To have the site/page validate with flash, use javascript to place the movie.

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Los Angeles Web Design
Medical Website Design
Law Firm Web Design

Thanks!

I'm always removing so much javaScript from sites in the optimization process (usually navigation and rollovers and replacing with CSS) that that simple solution didn't even cross my mind.

Mucho appreciated!

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Ron Boyd
website consulting (design, optimization, marketing) :: Follow Me: @orionsweb