OT Questions

[Zero Piraeus]

:

A few people have pointed out some of the problems with your website
<http://www.hitwebdevelopment.com>, but ...

The gigantic .wav and .gif files really are a terrible idea.

In the first place, they're 90MB between them, which on my connection
[which is admittedly crap, but hey, I live in the third world] would
take *twelve minutes* to load on a really good day. You should be
aiming for no more than five seconds.

In the second place ... background audio? No, no, no, no. Really, no.
And while you might be pleased with the animated .gif, it screams
"nineties", and isn't going to do you any favours even if a visitor
has the patience to wait for it to load.

I find your "HIT" logo quite difficult to read - I couldn't work out
what it was at all at first. Maybe improve the contrast and lose the
drop shadows?

On to the code ... I've done some fixing up on it. You can find the results at:

  https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B-eYljKQEcnuQS1pSDdHT0VMRHM

It's a zipped hg repo, so assuming you're familiar with Mercurial,
you'll be able to see the changes I made step by step. If you have any
questions about why I changed what I did, feel free to email me
offlist.

Presumably you won't be able to use it as a drop-in replacement, given
that you seem to be working with PHP [an intriguing choice in itself,
given the list we're on], but looking through the changes might help
you out.

I haven't touched anything except the HTML (and the CSS where
necessary to get inline styles out of the HTML), and have restricted
myself to:

a) fixing stuff that is Just Plain Wrong

b) turning it into HTML5

... while leaving alone questionable practices like using empty <div>s
all over the place. Bonus: the HTML now validates :-)

If you're in the process of teaching yourself web development, I
strongly recommend a focus on HTML5 syntax. You'll find it a lot more
pleasant, it's still it's a good differentiator in the marketplace
right now, and it's what everyone will be expecting a couple of years
down the line anyway.

> I'm working on toning down the smack talk, I'm just used to a little
> witty back and forth with some seriously cruel individuals.

I appreciate that; thanks. I've worked in some fairly ribald
environments myself, but it is nice that people generally try to get
along around here.

 -[]z.