₦airaland Forum

The site looks chopped up and I don't think it makes sense, for download time reasons, for the header to be that big.

Add more content. Perhaps it will look better than with the repeated letters I am seeing there now.

and what are the "few things" so we know to avoid those?

Isn't this news like waaaaaaay old?

Nice use of table-less markup however:

1) Your photo on the main page is both too large and extends beyond the content area

2) It would better if you used one of the javascript libraries to display your photo gallery such that you dont have to keep reloading the page from one photo to the next

3) It seems the site's content was more a collection of things from either your host or other websites than things about yourself. In other words, what is the aim of the competition/your website?

4) I HATE how my browser window is forcefully resized each time I go to your site. Is there a way this can be turned off/user initiated?

5) I am sure there is more to sports than FIFA, even if you only love football.

6) there is a funny-looking tiny blue box to the top right of the home page. What is that? I browse via FF by the way.

Lesson of the day:
Never make blanket statements. Never judge a book by its cover. Always clarify yourself to avoid any misunderstanding. Don't use one experience to justify a whole phenomenon.

@HC
You are hereby forgiven. Sorry if I yanked your legs the wrong way. It's just that that statement always rubs me the wrong way.

@Abidemi
And what of if he doesn't know anything about breakpoints (I don't know that he does or doesn't but I am just asking)? Perhaps a little tutorial wouldn't be too bad here

I think we should dwell on it because in the end, you, I and others on here will LEARN something. There is nothing wrong with a battle of ideas. Sure design rules aren't set in stone but there are recommendations that if followed, results in a better user experience. That is the aim of every website.

Bottom line: Until something better comes along, table less design is the "standard" du jour. Even in the states, 99.999% job applications require you to know table less design. If you dare mention anything about tables, you might as well walk yourself out the door. Of course, once you start working, you could use tables but for the purpose of the interview, you dare not mention tables, unless where tabular data is concerned. On sites like CNN.com, even shaving off 10Kb of unnecessary code could save them thousands of dollars in money they pay for bandwidth. I know, cos not only have I interviewed with them, I have also worked for corporations where you are encouraged to do anything (within standards of course) to shave off as much unnecessary code as you can.

So come on. No need to send each other private emails. Let us all LEARN something. By the way, if you want my free Ebook, feel free to email me for it. Many have written already that some of the lessons in the book have helped them, especially in the realm of table less design.

@ko soro
He needs hands-on experience with a firm and/or as someone's apprentice (the someone in question being highly versed in the latest technologies). Sure, you can google all you want, click on the first few results, smack things together and call yourself a "webmaster" but without working with others, checking what others are doing or interacting with your peers via forums (which includes site reviews like this), the result will be what is found on his/her site.

@Abidemi

A ha!
I see you know a thing or 2 about table-less design

I blv the topic of discussion was on page layout not data formatting. I would love to debate you on what you said about tables being better for data formatting but I will let that slide. For the sake of argument, I will agree with you that yes, for tabular data, use of tables is best. Now to address your points, one at a time:

1) I don't quite understand what you mean here. Taking a stab at it, sure bad markup will affect both designs however, this isn't a debate about bad markup but good markup.

2) I agree with the last part of your statement but not the first. If you have ever encountered pages with nested DIVs (and by that I mean more than 2 layers deep), tell the developer that they are suffering from DIVitis. This disease, together with CLASSitis, is very rampant amongst developers who are still wet behind the ears.

3) Again, I don't quite understand you here. Again going out on a limb. When a disabled person accesses a page, they could care less about the "reference to data container". They want to know about the content on a page. Which would you prefer? "table row cell table row cell *content* cell cell" or "div div *content*"

4) What about datasets?

Please respond. Together, we can both LEARN something from each other. I am actually enjoying this.

nuckecy, I don catch u!

Stumbled upon one of your sites, legacy hotel a long time ago and have been trying to reach you. Even tracked down many who know you but even they couldn't locate you.

Nice work on that hotel site sha. I hope all is well.

ok folks, let us try it from this angle:

Dele:
"Hey Bode, how now? longest time. how go dey go? I just found out about this new cool search engine. It vows to beat google. It looks pretty cool sha"

Bode:
"Okay, I will check it out. What is it called?"

Dele (who probably can't pronounce it himself, gives it a shot):
"Cuil"

Bode:
"What? Can you spell that?"

Point:
It might be better than google but based on branding alone, it is going to be tough.

wow phantom! When we said paste your code, we didn't really mean paste all of it

In any event, I assume when you say, it is not showing any details, you mean the first and last name. Am I right? If not, let us know. If I am, then other minor issues aside, I noticed the following in your code which might be the reason why:

1) You have this check done twice. why?
if (!isset($_SESSION)) {
session_start();
}

2) Why would you need the following to return -1?
if ($row_user['ID']=="-1"{
Chances are that if it is not -1, the details won't show.

Get back to us please. Thanks. By the way, thanks to your indentation. The code was very easy to read and follow.

hey Yawa-ti-de, you seem fully informed and techy for a woman

@HC
Hmm, I would normally take this for an insult on womanhood but I will let it pass. Feeling a little chauvenistic today? That notwithstanding, sure, you can contact me at yawatide at yahoo dot com

Please what is wrong with using table-design?

@Abidemi_A
How about the following for starters:
1) Lighter pages which translates to faster page download times:
Have you ever been to a cybercafe and the cafe's bandwidth aside, the page loads slowly? Chances are the HTML code is to blame

2) Table design can be hard to read:
I am sure you have coded pages that have nested tables in them. How hard is it to follow, especially if it isn't indented?

3) Table design sucks for screen readers:
Have you ever tried to pass a page of yours through a screen reader. If not, here is how it sounds when you have many tables, "table row cell, table row cell, bla, cell, bla" etc. With table less designs via DIVs, you actually hear, "DIV id content, bla, DIV id navigation" etc. In other words, it is easier on those with disabilities.

4) Table-less pages are easier to render on cell phones and PDAs:
All you have to do hear is pull up a page with multiple tables and one with fewer tables or no tables at all. Then check out the respective layouts. Enough said here.

phantom,

At times like this, it helps to show us your code. Perhaps you are using the code right but within the wrong context. There is no way of knowing unless you paste something for us here.

I know there's something wrong with the site but I can't figure ou

@ko_soro:
"something"? How about "Some things"? This site is the very reason why Nigerian clients aren't willing to pay top naira for web jobs.

If the client paid more than N70K for this, then i want to know the juju the developer used to yarn the client

@gamine:
EXCELLENT site and excellent use of CSS. I am happy to see that in general, more and more Nigerian developers in Nigeria are beginning to use table-less design. Simple and crisp. Just the way I like it. In addition to what has been said above, a few issues though:

1) NONE of the forms work. Also why have 4 different forms under "contact" that could basically be combined into one, via the use of dropdowns?

2) The power grid photo used here, among other places, http://www.itsihost.com/test/geometric2/projects.html is a bit fuzzy

3) In my opinion, the link colors should be changed to a deeper blue. Perhaps the blue that is the background of the site.

@All
If you use FireFox, you could get the HTML Tidy Validator plug in, among other useful ones, which would help you take care of issues, without having to browse to validator sites. Here are some issues that were pointed out:

1) your navigation UL ha spans in them. They shouldn't. You can do <li> Home |</li> as opposed to <span>|</span>

2) You have many image tags that have no value for "name". Either you give them a name or you leave them out. Never have blank spaces.

3) On the home page, you have an empty span (<span></span>. Either you use them or you don't. If it is within some backend logic, then wrap the entire piece within the logic, not just the value.

4) use of embed, marquee and other deprecated tags.

Taking care of the above will go a long way in ensuring that your site is coded once and that once takes care of your site showing properly across the board on all browsers, PDAs, etc. This is as opposed to maintaining separate code bases of the same code for various devices. I believe it's called Progressive Enhancement/Graceful Degradation.

I know, it may sound like preaching but trust me, it is good to do the right thing all the time. Once you get a groove in it, it becomes second nature.

reasons:
1) nepotism
2) cronyism
3) using the person who gives the most kickbacks
4) the pple in charge of such projects aren't knowledgeable in web dev
5) no oversight
6) no maintenance
7) no testing

I think what you are looking for is under "privacy", not "advanced". From "privacy", I believe you are to manipulate the scroller (reading the instructions to the right as you do) until you get the level you want OR click on "advanced" and override the default cookie settings.

With many sites being ajaxified and using cookies anyways, why would you want to do that if I may ask?

Was doing some browsing when I decided to check what was up with AIT. I have always loved their layout. Then I got the "page under construction" page. i was shocked to say the least. Just to be sure, is this the right URL? http://www.aittv.com/

If yes, are they out of business, or what? If they aren't then to me, it is an embarrassment that they would allow their domain to expire.

Your thoughts/comments?

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080724185905.u4drrde7&show_article=1

Google has launched its own version of communally constructed online encyclopedia Wikipedia, which consistently ranks among the most visited websites in the world.

The Internet search powerhouse went live late Wednesday with a free service dubbed "Knol," to indicate a unit of knowledge.

While Wikipedia lets any visitors make changes to its online pages, trusting that people with accurate information will correct errors and misleading entries, Google lets folks author their own articles.

"Every knol will have an author, or group of authors, who put their name behind their content," Google product manager Cedric Dupont and software engineer Michael McNally said in a posting on the Google website.

"It's their knol, their voice, their opinion. An enormous amount of information resides in peoples' heads: millions of people know useful things and billions more could benefit from that knowledge."

People get to post their pictures and pedigrees in knols and are able to designate who can contribute to their postings.

Most knols featured at knol.google.com on Thursday dealt with medical conditions but included insights regarding unclogging toilets and improving leadership skills.

Google is the world's most used Internet search engine and a proven master at mining revenue from online advertising targeted at those making queries and using its free Web-based services.

Luring Wikipedia users to its own community-created online encyclopedia promises to be another rich vein of ad income for the California firm.

Wikipedia is consistently ranked among the world's top ten most popular websites.

@mclovin
Though I will admit that I went a tad too far, I won't clean up my act until you clean your generalization below:

Males have shown they are unreliable in terms of meeting deadlines correct attitude etc.

In a country of over 150million people, assuming there are at least 1,000 males who meet your requirements, you can't take the few who have disappointed you and use that to damn the rest.

Lesson to be learned:
Always go the extra mile in explaining yourself *the first time* so as to avoid your posts suffering the fate it has suffered here.

My advice:
Just hire the best qualified candidate. If the person so happens to be female, so be it. Perhaps you need to update/improve upon your hiring process. Perhaps you need to give them written tests (not just technical) to assess their capabilities. Looking for a female, especially the way you present your case, might even scare the very demographic you are looking to hire.

It should be obvious - in a land with no **enforceable** sexual harassment laws and where "Mr D" runs wild, they want someone to gawk at.

The project could be late and the code could be crappy, but hey, as long as they get a chance to "je isu", its all good. Might I go as far as accuse the poster of his intentions based on his username? Nah, it couldn't be

Sad indeed.

I blv mambenanje just released a web app called afrikeo. He has news feeds on Nigerian news although I don't know the sources. Perhaps you should liaison with him for an idea or 2.

I don't think you should look at what is the best but what is the best under which circumstances. I don't think you gain anything by trying to debate which is more powerful, IMHO.

Hot of the presses (and no, I didn't do it ):
http://www.vanguardngr.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=12798&Itemid=0
(article too long to post).

Then you guys be the judge:
http://www.nigerianbar.org/

@mambe

well the poster said its not complete and thats says it all, he or she is asking what we think about the design ", just the interface, " .

The above is what prompted my original response b4 smartsoft took us off course

by functionality, i mean anything other than the design. If I click on a link, where does it go? When I fill a form, how does it behave? If I miss a field on that form, do I get a warning? Those and many more is what I mean by functionality.

I wd hold off on this request till you have actual pages if I were you. What you have so far is wonderful but as I always say, if the functionality isn't there to balance it, of what use is it?

Get back to use when you have more than the home page up and running.

I will take the first crack at it since no one else seems to want to volunteer

1) Pays attention to detail
2) Constant communication, on a regular basis, with the client, throughout duration of project
3) Knows when to add just the right amount of eye candy to a site
4) Aims for quality, and not necessary perfection in code (indentation, semantic markup, code reuse, etc)
5) Is bold enough to stand up to the client when a client's idea doesn't make any sense
6) If on a team, is able to work well with other team members as well as communicate ideas between team members.
7) Is always on top of his game, with respect to the latest technologies out there. More importantly, knows when and when not to use what he has learned.
8 ) Loves what he does no because of the money but because of they actually derive satisfaction from their work
9) Doesn't necessarily know everything but knows enough of everything, enough to be dangerous
10) Isn't a loud mouth. Doesn't toot his own horn. Let's his work speak for itself.

@dual

As i always say, the requirements/design phase, based on experience, is usually about 70% - 80% of development time. The other 20% is for coding and testing. Get it wrong in the beginning and you are bound to screw up big time during development.

Just imagine this situation: you pour the wrong amount of concrete during the foundation-laying process of house-building. Rather than alert the owner of the house, you decide to continue building only to discover that the foundation starts cracking just when you are about to finish the project or the home owner discovers something that he wants changed. Either way, you are screwed. You will most likely have to start from the beginning, a very frustrating process indeed.

One more thing I would like to add, based on experience, is to add the actual content on your pages, as opposed to "Lorem ipsicum, etc". This is because, whereas the "Lorem ipsicum, etc" stuff is fixed in width, height and other dimensions, the actual text that will go on the pages, both in design and development phase will give the designer/developer the true look and feel of the pages.

Hopefully, this makes sense.

Whatz the URL? Can you at least paste the code here so all can see? We can't just give an answer based on what we imagine the problem is? For all we know, you have no link on the page.

@omnipotens

noted