I'm finally ready to reveal a couple of sites I built based on TBH. Most of the code is straight from TBH, but I have added and modified modules, since that's what it's all about.

One of the first things I did was go to a liquid layout. Down to about a 400 pixel width the page(s) resize to completely fill the browser window. I've never liked having a 1200 pixel browser showing a 800 pixel web site. But not just the center column resizes, all columns maintain their relative perspective (25%, 50%, 25%)

Another component I added was a cms module to lay across the top of all the various modules. This enables editing content of the main menu landing pages for each module and for Home and About Pages and any other site pages I drop a few lines on to implement it. This module also addresses SEO by letting the site admin create HTMP page title, page description and meta keywords. I know keywords are not used much anymore, but it won't hurt to include them. In the articles module, and others, I use the page heading and site name to create the HTML page title; and use the first paragraph of the article to create the page description.

ComputerScribe this is my site to profile me and my work

Vintage Fly Fisherman is a small e-commerce site I've created for a client that we are still flushing out, but have put on line this morning so we can both test and work with it. The site is for selling vintage fly fishing equipment using the TBH store module.

The only changes I made to the store module was to get rid of the one product photo and build a thumbnail control that accepts an unlimited number of product photos for each item. Clicking a thumbnail on the product description takes the visitor to a display page that shows the thumbnails and a larger image of the selected thumbnail.

I would appreciate it if you took a look and let me know what you think.

Steve S.

Steve,

i've had a look at your post and at the two websites. I hope you're looking for positive criticism . I would address the following:

1. Give your sidebars 'absolute' width (and base it on em, rather than px's). Content (imho) can be extended as it naturally flows across the 'page'. information/menus/sidebars should be consistant and constant. as i said, my opinion.

2. Try to break away from the default look and feel of TBH as it is very clunky and not (again in my opinion) 'organic' in it's composition. I know this is very subjective but i've never been a fan of the default layout of TBH and therefore it's always my 1st point of objectivity - and change.

3. look to 'be smart' but subtle with some little bits of ajax (or as i prefer to call it, PR ('partial rendering') as this is what 'most' folk now use it for) as this will give a little polish to the delivery as well as keep the focus on the main content area. That said, i suspect you may be using update panels on the content anyway.

4. If possible, attempt to make your content both feel like deja vu but at the same time, slightly off the wall (where appropriate). This has the effect of engaging the reader (via familiarity) but primarily bends the consciousness enough to make them want to click thro to the next sections (content IS king).

5. don't be afraid to 'drop' the polls sections, unless they positively are proving to add benefit to your site. if you do keep them, then make sure that you engage the reader in both the reasoning and any results from the poll. simultaneously, use that data intelligently to 'guide' future content (and advertisers if that be your more...).

6. If you choose not to implement any of the above, 'DO' consider implementing some rudimentary search facility across your sites. Again (personally), if i can't find it via ergonomic menuing, i'm likely to be more forgiving if there's a search facility that may take me directly down some choice avenue by virtue of a good focussed search string.

but above all, don't be afraid to label it all in *your source control app* and then just experiment with layout and features both from your imagination and from 'best of breed' on the web. this is kinda my main manifesto when i engage in a new project - i.e. don't break the mold, 're-fashion it'.

bold statements and claims, but totally doable - looking fwd to your V1.1's now!!

that said, you've done a great job on V1.0, AND, you get a great score on YSlow... so go for it... (as an aside, my 'aim' is always to 'attempt' to keep each page segment [discreet or otherwise] to <30k, tho' obviously initial css and js can bloat this by 3 fold - just my finger in the wind, despite 'fast' connections being prevalent)

[edit] - another minor thing to consider. make sure that you use 'non-tables' menu structuring. that may mean breaking away from the default microsoft menu (i use telerik which is <ul><li> specific) or use the css control adaptors... (or ultimately, hand-code them). one more thing, it's not obvious in your ComputerScribe site what the calendar does. I 'expected' it (and i may be wrong in my assumption) to filter content relevant to a selected date. it didn't filter any items on clicking 'dates'. I would explain what this feature does as it isn't immediately obvious, or remove it if it's purely a 'calendar'.

ok, going now before you 'hit me' ...

i think that's it (for now!! ) [:-)]. take care

__________________
jimi

http://www.originaltalent.com

Jimi, thanks for your well thought out and detailed critique. Yes, constructive criticism is what I was asking/hoping for. I appreciate your input very much.

I'll respond to your enumerated list of comments

1. I specifically wanted a dynamically sized (width) layout. I'm not locked into dynamic side columns, but I'm not opposed to them either. I think most people will view a site and not resize their browser so I don't know that it is a big deal. The CSS liquid layouts, with both fixed and dynamic side columns, are freely availble from Mathew James Taylor here. I'm using quirks mode on my existing sites and am investigating non quirks mode 2-column for an upcoming site, possibly with a fixed side column. One reason to pursue completely dynamic column widths is to accomodate all browsers with one page, i.e. PDAs & cell phones, as well a netbooks, notebooks and desktops. This whole train of thought could be an entire topic itself; I don't know if there is a 'right' answer, but I imagine there are lots of opinions.
2. I agree with you on the one hand, but not sure I fully understand you on the other. Maybe if I knew better to what you were referring to I'd not be quite so wishy washy on this. I do desire to put my own stamp on the sites I'm building, but am building them with the N-tier from the TBH and extending this into new modules.
3. I did incorporate some AJAX in the Vintage Fly site and agree it is the way to go. I have so far had no success in adding AJAX to the category pages, those where a drop down reloads the pages with selections based on the dropdown item selected. I think this would be an ideal place for AAX, but it didn't initially work for me and I haven't gotten back to figuring out why.
4. I think this is along the same line as #2. I agree completely, especially the part about Content is King. I think the site I'm building now will be a solid hit in this regard.
5. I agree with this too. The Poll add little to no value to the Computer Scribe site and a site I put up yesterday does not include it (I'll Post the URL after the name servers are changed)
6. Search. This is one that vex's me. Which way to go? Lucene? Fulltext search? Oh Boy, another learning experience. The site I'm working on will include fulltext search, but initially only inside one module. I recognize the importance and have the desire, but, so much to do and limited hours to do them.

I also agree with you about tables; and yes I'm using plain jane MS controls, which as you know, in many cases spit out tables. I've downloaded but not played with the Friendly Control Adapters. I've not considered third party tools like Telerik.

Currently the calendar is just a simple do nothing calendar. I have hopes of doing something with it, but haven't fully decided yet just what. If I don't come up with something, then yes, not much reason to put it on the page.

Thanks again Jimi, hopefully not just me benefitted from our exchange.


Steve

steve,

no, not just you that benefitted from this topic, i learnt a lot too. i especially agreed about point 1 being an entire topic to and of itself... the old adage of three folk in a room and four different opinions!! .

as for point 2. the organic terminology seemed to be throw-away until i was thinking about how to respond. it then occurred to me that 'nowadays' organic has come to mean something completely different to it's original discourse (organic originally represented self generating, 'of itself', low interference growth). my meaning was based on the latterday 'mis-use' of the term to represent 'home grown', best of breed, non factory... etc, etc.. hope you get my gist - i think i just about ;)

i have to be honest, when it comes to search, i still prefer to roll my own (i add an interface to the classes (ISearchable) and then use fulltext search across my databse where implemented). this gives me a few benefits, primarily in being able to exploit the dynamic nature of databse driven sites but also allows me to capture the search terms in order to analyse 'trends' of emerging search terms etc, etc and present those as weighted tag clouds etc. much like layouts, search is a topic in itself and beyond that, has just as many angles (just ask google!!).

other than that, if i'm bold enough to suggest; you might want to look to download the flixon site generator in order to get a little beyond the stages of extending the TBH structure and embracing the realms of greenfield development. on appreciating the TBH approach, i searched for codesmith templates that used the structure and found none. i then stumbled across the flixon stuff and after a discussion with the author, took 'temporary' ownership of the codebase and set about pushing it to it's 'known' limits. the result is an engine and a template driven app that can use a sqlserver database structure to create a TBH 'style' subsystem (i.e. DAL/BLL/ crud app) that can be built upon to bring in a project of medium size in record time (typically reducing the initial stages down to a few days, rather than months!!). you may have tried it already, but if not, you can find the latest version here:
Announce: Flixon Site Generator V2 now available

if you have no use for it now, then no worries, but do keep it in your 'back pocket' for the future..

again, all the best for now!!

__________________
jimi

http://www.originaltalent.com

Hi Jimi,

I'd be interested in hearing more about your 'roll your own' approach to search, it sounds interesting. I'm playing some with SQL Server's fulltext search; no problem with the contains predicate, but when I start thinking of some of the others (near and ranking as examples) my head starts spinning. Not from knowing how to use them, but from how to design an interface for the user/visitor to use that is easy and intuitive. Suffering from exteme case of analysis paralyisis

I haven't looked at the Flixon generator (did visit the site a few weeks back), but think I read a post or two of yours about it. I've also recently heard about nettiers a CodeSmith based template system for generating n-tier code from a database schema. I haven't played with it but one thing that turns me off is each tier becomes it's own project, as near as I can tell from the information on their site.

I'm also interested in taking a look at MVC when the new book comes out, even if it is in VB.

Take care.


Steve

i agree completely about the issues related to designing ergonomic interfaces for search routines (jeez, why don't they understand these Regexs :)).

the biggest compliment i've ever had was actually fairly recently when a client 'silenced' the room by saying 'well you haven't done much in the past few weeks, it all looks very simple'. i was bursting with pride knowing that i'd abstracted away 60 odd tables tables of related data into input (back of house) and feedback (public facing) screens that boiled down to (almost!) 'single' statement forms and information feedback. i simply raised my hands in the air and stated my love of the good life but at the same time pronounced my 'love' of this individual. Of course, i later ran thro' the nitty gritty with the tech 'guys'. they knew that the old 80/20 rule was being employed in it's full glory. in this case 80% of the effort was being obscured by the 20% display onscreen of a 'good' (imho) front end system.

i think what i'm getting at here is that capturing that 'simple' search form may actually entail far more effort than you imagine - in fact at a later stage you might be staggered to realise that 20% of your code is related to search functionality (be that c# or sql)!!

your own mileage may vary of course, but that's been my experience so far (as a rough metric).

__________________
jimi

http://www.originaltalent.com

as an aside. for better or worse, the flixon site generator creates the 'source' in the same fashion as TBH - i.e. app_code/BLL, app_code/DAL and a web crud UI section all in a single web project. i've re-templated this (in my own projects) to save the app_code stuff to a seperate DLL with the ui crud stuff referencing this.

just makes more sense when doing full-blown projects and is stll fairly easy to do with the existing templates.

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jimi

http://www.originaltalent.com

Jimi,

I thought I'd take some time today to look at the Flixon generator (I can't help but think of the flux capacitor in the Back to the Future movies)

Anyway, a couple of comments, When I tried to go to the home page of originaltalent.com I was immediately told I need to install Quicktime (I probably uninstalled it at some point, I get irritated with it). I did install the latest version, but can not get to your home page. The browser informs me it's transferring data for a long long time. (5 minutes and counting)

I was able to use the 3.06 zip link to download the the generator and will have a go at it.

Steve

argh -steve,

sorry, originaltalent in a state of flux (that word again!!) at the moment, so no meaningful stuff there presently. my 'current' project can be found on:

http://www.gatehousemusic.com

i'm 90% of the way thre but loads of filler text in place. would enjoy some of your comments 'batted back' at me re that one :)...

take care- enjoy the flixon 'thingiie'...

__________________
jimi

http://www.originaltalent.com