I've only had a two minute look so far at the HTML and CSS for the new look site, and I was wondering why there is a strange white gap at the top of the page, before the actual site starts.
Anyway, from this CSS file:
http://www.ebid.net/css/blueprint/ie7.css
I found these bits:
.biddetails li.left{height:45px;}
.biddetails li.right{height:45px;}
ol {padding-left:30px;}
ul {padding-left:30px;}
which could be reduced to:
.biddetails li.left, .biddetails li.right {height:45px;}
ol, ul {padding-left:30px;}
and then several commented out bits of CSS code:
/* #myebid_subs button,#myebid_subs input[type=submit],#myebid_subs input.submit,#myebid_subs input[type=button],#myebid_subs input.button { width:115px;} */
/*.tip_front {background:transparent url(/icons/black_arrow.gif);}*/
/*.tip_hint {background:transparent url(/icons/black_arrow_big.gif);};*/
/*h5 {line-height:18px;}
.f5 {line-height:18px;}*/
Are these going to be used in the future? They should be removed if they aren't in use, and aren't going to be in use very soon, in the interests of keeping the download as small as possible.
On the homepage, I found this code at the start:
<div id="container" class="ui-corner-top">
Why not just define the id "container" the way you want it, rather than having a class as well?
Then, I hate to say it, the code is worse than the old site, for example:
<div style="position:relative;z-index:5;">
<div style="position:absolute;top:35px;left:59px;width: 121px;height:100px;">
Why aren't they using classes, and instead using inline styles?
The entire homepage (I haven't looked at the rest of the site yet), is full of inline styles!
This one is very bad coding:
<div style="position:relative;" id="tip" class="tip_hint f4"> </div>
Why not just make one id with the style "position:relative" plus whatever styles are in the "tip" AND "tip_hint" AND "f4" id/classes? (I can understand using "tip_hint f4", two classes at a time, that's fine if the "f4" style adds something specific to the "tip_hint" style, but the entire homepage is full of inline styles mixed with ids and classes, this is basic CSS stuff and it's wrong.
Then we have another no-no which the old site suffered from - using a description of a property value for the name of a style:
<div class="purple fx_en" style="margin-top:10px;">
If you ever want to change all the purple text to red, you are going to have a lot of messy code to change. Plus the "margin-top:10px;" shouldn't even be there (inline style), it should be in the CSS file in the .purple style. Or make a second style called "auctionhilite1" or something.
There is a mistake here:
<div id= "dropdown-advanced-load">
There shouldn't be a space between the
id=
and the name of the style.
The auctions are laid out using tables:
<TD class="p5 bot center">
and suchlike throughout - very wasteful of space, HTML-wise, and unnecessarily complicated. These are only simple boxes that are being displayed with a photo, and three lots of text.
Anyway, I'm not a professional web designer, but the site code is full of elementary mistakes and bad coding, which shoudn't be there, and are no doubt costing Ebid an arm and a leg in unnecessary bandwidth usage, and server usage. Every extra byte of code costs server time, and costs money.
The actual LOOK of the site is very nice, but I'm surprised to see that yet again, the underlying code is not up to the standard I would expect when paying (presumably) a lot of money.