Topic: Would appreciate your comments on these pages (Page 1 of 1)

Please take a look at these pages that I've been working on for a while.

I would appreciate any comments you might have.




-- not necessarily stoned... just beautiful.

Aright then, since no one else wants to pick away at this beastie then I may as well?

Animated Intro/Splash page:
Is this part even needed? It's slow, boring and well, it still doesn't tell me what your site it about. If you *must* have a animated intro or a splash page then you should at least make it do something other than annoy the user. But lets face facts, animated intro?s don't belong on the web. They work ok for branding a TV series with it's theme song while spitting out some credits and the like but even then most TV programs try and suck you into the episode by showing you a snippet of the story before the actual intro sequence begins. Your website isn't even telling a story so I see absolutely no need for it.

Navigation:
You deserve to be shot for making a website so difficult to navigate. You only have one menu with three options yet you fail to even get that right. Yes I'm being overly harsh but this is such a critical issue when it comes to websites. A website with poor navigation is like a car without an engine, it just don't go. Your visitors will get annoyed, leave and never come back. For starters, you made me sit through that pointless and boring intro before I could even see the menu. Not cool. Then when I finally reached a part of the website that actually had content the menu was gone! How do I get back? You mean I have to use my back button? What if I don't want to go back to the last page I was on? What if I want to jump from the Introduction to the glossary?

So, I hit my back button when I guess what, I have to sit through that bloody animation again before the menu will appear!!!

Let me run though a typical user experience of your website. First, lets assume I find your website on a search engine (at least you used meta tags with descriptions and keywords). I sit though the animated intro, glance across to the 'Buy the CD button' and think, "I don't need that I already have the game, come on already, get to the point... Ohh... there's the menu, well, lets have a look at the introduction." So I click the introduction link...

I read the bit about 'Chips challenge' being a computer game... more thinking" Ok, that's fine, not everyone may know that... manual... huh? Why is he telling me about HTM something and javastuff?... what?" This meant nothing to me, only a web savvy user like your and me would manage to work out that your talking about your website. More thinking... "Ok, this guy is weird, I don't want to know how this site is made, tell me about the game...? Then you go on to introduce a bunch of stuff with really doesn't require an introduction. You don't need to tell people that level 001 is actually a "level number"... I'm sure they can work that out all on their own.

This is when I realise that this page isn't actually what I wanted. Again fail to find a menu so I resort to the back button. Huh? You mean I have to sit through this animation all over again! Arr fuck this, I'm outa here. I then close the window and go back to my search engine looking for other chips challenge resources.

As for the other areas of the site (namely the levels index) well, their not much better. You seem to have a lot of information there but it's poorly managed in terms of navigation. Almost everything I click on takes me somewhere I don't want to go. Seriously, sit down with pen a some paper and map out your navigation matrix. Show it to people and make sure then understand the links your creating on paper then make it into a website.

Introduction Page:
Can you do me a favour, go find a dictionary and look up the word "Introduction"...? The amount of information your spitting forth here could very well 'introduce' how to program in C++ and still have enough room spare to get across to the user what the page is about. If you take the time to whip up a well written and concise introduction; slap it on your first page (the one where the animated intro is now) then your users might actually stay on your site for more than 2 seconds.

Levels Index Page:
Not too bad but things could be better... I clicked on the 141-149 levels and got sent to the "purchase the CD page".... Um, you've got to be kidding? Do you seriously think someone will buy a CD from you with such a poor website let alone a manual for a um... puzzle game?...

~sigh~

Glossary:
Doesn?t exist?


Overall, it?s a rather poor effort and I have serious doubts that you could sell anything on that website let alone something worth actually selling in the first place. Although it?s not really my place to tell you what you should and shouldn?t do to try and make money but eh, each to their own I guess.

To be honest I think I?ve said more than enough to keep you busy. Although I should prod you about it being completely invalid HTML mark-up and I'm not even going to start on how bad I think the colours are let alone touch the overall aesthetics. If you manage to fix the problems that I?ve picked out above then I?ll come back and comment on how the website looks, till then I fear I may just be wasting keystrokes.

Hope it helps.




[This message has been edited by Dracusis (edited 12-30-2002).]

lotta good advice you have already so I'll be brief

If you really wanna sell it, take that line out of the intro about "not having tested it on Me or XP". Test it on those and go about your merry way, that's a sales killer. If you need a test on them I have access to both OS, holler, I'd be happy to.

Jason

Dracusis: Thanks for your comments. I will print them out and go through them mor thouroughly to try to add the imporvments you suggested to the site.

I have a question about one comment you made.

quote:

---

Although I should prod you about it being completely invalid HTML mark-up

---

What were you referring to about the completely invalid HTML. I ran these pages through the w3c page validator and made all the changes it suggested. What are you referring to when you say there is completely invalid HTML.
----


JKMabry: Thanks for your offer to test on ME and XP. I am referring to the game "Chips Challenge" when I say "I haven't run it on these operating systems".

I assume the solutions manual will run on these systems since it uses the web browser to show the pages.
----

Thanks to both for your comments, I will try to make some changes and see if I can't improve the presentation for this site.




-- not necessarily stoned... just beautiful.

I know what you were saying, get me the game, or whatever, I test it, you don't say that anymore. It's a sales killer if you hope to sell any copies.

happy new year stranger

Jason

You can download it from here.

Just download the *.zip file. Extract it to a directory and run the game from that directory. Let me know if you have any problems and I will try to help you with them.

-- not necessarily stoned... just beautiful.



[This message has been edited by hyperbole (edited 01-02-2003).]

got it and it's good on XP, I'll try to get to an Me machine in the next couplea days and let you know

Chip can't swim without flippers, grrrr. =)

Jason

You might want to include a section on the website where you can download the game too, if of course it's legal to just download it from the internet.

Oh... bout the "completly" invilad part... sorry, I was looking at the source on the levels1.html page and you didn't even have a doctype so...

Front page: http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fhyperbole-software.com%2FChipsChallenge%2F

Introduction page: http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fhyperbole-software.com%2FChipsChallenge%2FPages%2FIntroduction.html

Levels Page (No Doctype): http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fhyperbole-software.com%2FChipsChallenge%2FPages%2FLevels1.html

Wow, the memories. I used to spend HOURS in front of the old Windows 3.1 Workstation at my Dads office playing Chips Challange when he would work late (and bring me to work)...Ahhh the simplicity of it all, you werent bogged down by all of that "A.I." and "3d Graphics" shit .

Anyways, ya, pretty much what they said, except that I don't know what a doctype is, so thats why it's only pretty much what they said. I guess since I know thaT I'm going go look it up, I should of said "ditto," so I'll just say it: "ditto."

well, sent the thing to my parents who run ME, the first problem was the WEP4UTIL.DLL was missing. Tracked that down and sent it to them then it said "inaccessable CHIPS.DAT file".

I don't know if this is a WinMe problem or the classic parents-computer-is-trashed problem I'd got try to make it work myself but I'd be sucked down into a quagmire or fried computer that I don't have time to deal with right now. Maybe someone else can give it a try on ME. Sorry.

Jason