1) get rid of thsoe frames. I can't possibly imagine what you have them for in the first place, and the scroll bars they generate make a huge mess.
2) NEVER disable such basic intuitive things as the default cursor changes - your front page says "choose a version" but, I mouseover everything that could possibly be a link, and no indications arise that any of them are. To confound things even further, you have what appear to me to be two white(ish) boxes with absolutely no distinguishing marks as your links, so even if the user is lucky enough to realize that the two white boxes are links, there's no way to no what they link to....
3) If you don't have a Flash version built yet, don't make the user choose between the HTML and Flash versions!!
4) HTML version - ok, even more frames?? Ouch! Get rid of them!
5) well.....not much more to add because there's not much more there. I will say that it *desperately* needs some element of visual interest. The black white and grey you've got going is very tiring, and becomes a chore for the user to navigate through.
6) ummm wait......why do you have a Netscape icon as your favicon??
Ok, the code -
1) No doctypes anywhere.... bad bad bad
No encoding either.
2) on the pages inside the frames, you have no opening or closing <HTML> tags - you need them!
3) <font> tags?
<blockquote>, for the purpose of indenting?
Lists, set up as <p>'s with <br>'s to seperate lines, when they should be coded as exactly what they are - lists?
HTML and CSS have evolved a great deal, but your code reflects something many years old.
The code is, quite frankly, a nightmare. I have no doubt that Opera chokes on it. Mozilla and Firebird also seem to have many issues with it.
There are some great tutorials over at the Gurus Network for CSS, and some great links in the Gurus Network Links section for XHTML, and it's proper use. The FAQ here will also turn up some great resources.
thanx a lot! see, i really just spent about 3 hours to type around a bit at work and never had the time to design it even a bit...
maybe you can tell me how to replace frames with, ehm.. tables? I tried to make it without Dreamweaver or Frontpage(yuck)... I'm really better at programming Flash, that's why there's that link..
those two white fields should be buttons, but only my browser seems to know how to show... so I asked for browser-compatibility solutions...
DL-44: "6) ummm wait......why do you have a Netscape icon as your favicon?? "
good question... who knows how I can change it? I couldn't find any option in dreamweaver for this attribute!
fixed: no frames, no <font> anymore - CSS rules, doctype, non-active flashversion link(hopefully coming soon - needs time), a lot of tables ... now I can seriously start designing my page!
and you were absolutely right - there is just no use for frames!
well, I'm ready for some opinions again... code, graphics, layout, etc.
it's not even nearly finished but it should give a taste how it's meant to look like when it is...
Thought I'd just plunge in since I knew the answer to this one ... lol
Looking good, though there are a few bugs when I tried viewing it with mozilla and firebird. on the home page where you have "coming soon" the type over laps with the latest news. It's not apparent in opera or IE (yuck). I'd change the main page and get rid of the option to view it in flash ... if you dont have the option up yet make up a temporary page without the flash version option til you have finished the flash version
for the netscape favicon? It's easy enough to change. Get a icon editor like microangelo or icon cool edit and make an icon 16x16 pixels (IE wont see anything bigger than this) and then add this bit of code to your html
You don't need a specific icon editor to make favicons, just make it in Photoshop, save it as a windows bitmap file and rename the file to filename.ico
Although I must say, I'm confused about the HTML / Flash choice...
IMHO, the Flash Vs HTML debate is a lot like sex; it's not the technology, it's the way you use it. Simply put, trying to use flash for a website that displays reams of text is likely to remind your users of their first time, which is never a pretty memory to dredge up.
So, it'd be best to scrap the flash version unless you have a good reason for using it like an intuitive site structure that requires high levels of interactive scripting/animation, audio/video stuff, animated presentations etc etc... But that's not to say you won't find suitable uses for bits of flash within your HTML site, but a whole flash site would be a nightmare with such text heavy content unless you really knew what you were doing.
Alevice, bitmaps do use the same file format that icons use, is a legacy sence at least. I'll get to the transparency in a second, but AFAIK, no icon file format for any operating system uses compression.
Way back when ms created the bmp (bitmap) file format (i think they created it, it's a pertty basic format in any case) they also used this for their application icons. But they renamed these files .ico for whatever reason, but they were still just plain old bitmap files (so are the windows start-up/shutdown screens for that matter, but they have a *.system extension I believe). As the OS progressed their icons required greater features like multiple sizes and transparency, which was first done by setting a single colour in the palette that would not be drawn to the screen. Later they added 8-bit transparency like PNG images. But all of this is built atop of the basic bmp file format, which does not use compression.
You might be able to save a compressed image from your image editing program then convert it to an ico file but I assure you, the inital image compression won't be carried over to the ico file as the converter will simply read the image pixel by pixel, which subverts any compression you might have done, possibly resulting in an uncompressed image with compression uglies. So don't compress any file you want to convert to an icon (unless it's a form of lossless compression or minor palette optimisation).
So, if you're making a favicon then just save yourself the trouble and make it a windows bmp file and rename it, cause that's all those expensive icon editing programs would do in that particular case. Hell, you could even do it in MS paint!
But if you want to use the more advanced features of the ico file format then you'll need to use a program/converter designed for doing just that.
Edit: You use Corel Photopaint! I thought that program was dead... *wipes away a tear*... Oh the memories.... Arr who am I kidding. I kicked that app to the kerb the second I found a copy of photoshop and Doc's hands on tutorials some 5 years ago. Never looked back since. From my perspective of Photopaint at the time, Photoshop was a much more productive and capable program, but each to their own I guess.
[This message has been edited by Cameron (edited 02-01-2004).]
errr.... thanks since I found out how to combine flash and html with xml, I got rid of my flash-only-version idea
I'll just change the intro screen....
but an interactive photogallery, a zoomable map and every single letter animated and created through actionscript is enough reason for me!
...thx to beesa for this handy little piece of code... I read, copied, and it works... that's the way I like it!
my comment on the discussion bout icon-engeneering: I made bmps in paint, renamed them and just used them as icons, WORKING icons. the only disatvantage is there's no possibility to choose a color for transparency - only for gifs available....
who cares - damn paint ... I'm using my good ol' iconeditor
another question to the pro-coders out there:
is there a possibility to set the scrollbar visible with a CSS tag without sizing the page's content over the maximum height of the screen? I just hate those 'jumping' pages
I just installed mozilla for testing reasons(I think I have to change my standard browser ) and it really makes me stun how different my page can look like... mozilla's layout is my No1!
(fixed the overlap bug)
Abotu the compression, I think i read somewhere it uses the same type than png does. I may be wrong tho.
Regarding photopaint: PS is indeed better regarding the options it has. Photopaint 9 has several bugs that piss me off hardtime actually (alpha channels dissapear magically when you load one of them and then make a layer mask, when you undo a slight change on text layers, they can suddendly rasterize for not reason at all (thus making text editing impossible and forcing me to rewrite what i did ), and some layer parts can be copied to another layer for random ocassions). Ironically version 8 lacks any of these bugs.
The reasons i prefer Photopaint over PS are the following:
-Opens waaaaay faster than ps, which is extremely important to me, being in a somewhat old comp, and whenever i need to make a minimal change.
-Customizable workspace and shortcuts. I can add or remove menus and bars i need (or dont need), and set them wherever i need. Having shortcutted almost every common task is very wubable :P
-It does have the most commons tools PS already has (layer, layer mask, filters, curves, color adjusments, movie maker, etc), and taht being summed with point number one, is good for me.
-I can get the whole Corel Draw suite for free thanks to my uncle (but quiet you).
PS obiously has some other stuff (like more layer properties), but *I* hardly use them in real life stuff.
Kazroot - I still can see your use of CSS is almost zero to none. Most of your background properties could be easily be set on your CSS, and your use of tables for the design is sooo 1998 . there is a lot of tuts around explaining a css layout that can be handier whenrver you feel like making a new layout (you wont have to rewrite like 30 html pages!).
The color scheme is simple, but not a good simple. Sometimes when checking the site i feel tyhere is a big void around, waaaaay tooo much black, IMHO.
I dont see the need of a sitemap, as your site is not quite large (in sections), and its understnadable organized i doubt anyone will get lost.
Btw, IrfanView is a free app that has support for many images types, and let you save icons with even 8-bit transparency. Good image viewer, and opens even faster than Notepad :P
I know .ico files can contain multiple icons, but for legacy reasons they can also contain just one and in this case it's just a single bmp file. Which is all you need for a favicon. If you don't believe me try it yourself. It might not work too well for application icons in recent version of windows as the ico file format has evolved into something more than a simple bitmap since then, but it works fine for pertty much every browser that supports favicons like IE and firebird.
Kaz, the css property overflow is what you want to control srollbars. set overflow: scroll; to force scroll bars to be visible at all times (can use this on the body tag), but this will force both scrollbars along the right and bottom of the containing element. If you just want the right hand scrollbar you can use overflow-y: scroll; but that'll only work for IE5+ so it's best not to rely on it.
And yes, if you're making websites you should mantain a collection of different web browsers. I recommend you also download Opera 7 www.opera.com and if you can, test the site in different Apple Mac web browsers, which can have different issues from their windows counterparts along with a couple of browsers that aren't avaliable for windows.
[This message has been edited by Cameron (edited 02-02-2004).]
use of CSS: I'm workin hard on it... though the code shrinked to 30% I can't imagine this <span> tagging can be the right way... I think I'll do the next step and switch to xtml... who knows...
when I began coding this page I didn't have a clou what CSS can do. that's why the code is just awful... until now
regarding the lack of color: I'm aware of that but I didn't want to start the full-design of the page until the code was satisfying... don't worry it's not finished yet
concerning the sitemap: it's just for fun and there ARE more sections I din't send online yet cos' I dind't want to expand the page until the main layout isn't finished
cameron - thanx for the scrollbar tip. Opera(standard), IE(***) & Mozilla.win32(just works best) are my current browsers...
please view the code again in a couple of hours. maybe you could give me some more tips on better-coding
Kazroot - I have to ask, since I've seen several occurances of it (and figured I'd ask in youru thread rather than clutter up someone else's) - why on earth do you keep posting a message, after one you've already posted, with nothing other than "damn sig" in it???
'cos of lack of knowledge how to use a forum(but I made it so far finally):
the UBB code in my profile was wrong... so I tried and tried and for testing reasons I posted "damn sig" just to see if it worked, instead of just editing my post... would've been too easy sorry if I annoyed somebody for I know it's useless post-crap
a 'preview' of the non-submitted, just written post could prevent that (like at www.elysiumart.org)
DL-44 - since you're the one who reviewed my site first, maybe you could give some feedback a second time?
It's looking a lot better than what it was when I first saw it. Nice job man.
But that netscape favicon is mostly likely a copyright infringment. Not that you'll liekly get picked up on it, but it does kinda stand out whilst having seemingly nothing to do with your website.
thanks, Cameron!
I found out it's worth to know how to CSS
The favicon fakes me... it's working in Opera - appeared once in mozilla and IE just ignores it... I hope it'll work when I change my domain for my page still runs on a precreated member-account from my provider
[This message has been edited by kazroot (edited 02-18-2004).]
I added a styleswitcher (now, only working for 'home' page) and maybe someone'd like to give his 0,02 on it?!
the favicon appears when the intro page is loaded but hides when another is opened - maybe the <LINK ...> tag has to be written on each page?
this won't bother me in future 'caus I'll do the page in php anyway - then the problem should solve itself
From: A graveyard of dreams Insane since: Mar 2001
posted 02-19-2004 01:27
Haven't checked out the page in a long time, and I must say that it has improved a lot!
First thing I noticed was the text in the top-right corner. It doesn't really seem to fit in. Since you have a 'news' section you don't really need the 'last updated' text in the corner. The [kStyles] text might look better if you have it as graphics instead of text. Right now the sudden appearance of text up there doesn't fit in with the otherwise graphical banner.
On some pages you've got the content inside a blue frame, but on others you don't. You should stick with one of them. I would personally go for the framed version. If you decide to go with the non-frame one you should add some more padding to the left side of the content. In the 'News' section the content is hugging the left border a bit too much. Add 2-3 ems of padding there and you should be fine.
In the 'Gaming', 'About', 'Contact' and 'Music' the footer floats to the top of the page, covering the header. There are also a couple of other wierd bugs when viewing the page with either Opera or Mozilla.
The blue background of the menu and the footer seems to end a bit too abrupt. try to add some kind of fading to it or extend them the whole page width.
You've adopted CSS which is very good! But on some pages you're miss-using the tags. The first thing I found was on both the 'Friends' and 'About' section you've used <p> tags to achieve the line breaks, when you should use <ul>+<li> since you're acctually listing up facts about your self or your friends.
Keep up the great work! Looking forward to seeing how it ends
_________________________
"There are 10 kinds of people; those who know binary, those who don't and those who start counting at zero"
- the Golden Ratio -
thanks, Veneficuz!
I adopted some of your tips and changed a huge amount of CSS attributes and misused tags...
the next step will be coding it in php, 'caus there are a lot tags nd contents which are same on each page - could be simplified through one page... then the floating bottom-problem or another of this kind won't appear anymore, too (btw the 'floating' bottom was an freaked out iframe - deleted )
I 'framed' the page a bit more and played around with a 3rd style and made up the intro again
the favicon is now working, too! on all pages!
a question which should be asked in another thread but I'll ask it anyway:
how can I tell a flash movie to open a html page automatically when it's reached it's last frame??
[This message has been edited by kazroot (edited 02-22-2004).]
posted 01-02-2004 12:14
want the link? 
... now I can seriously start designing my page!
), and some layer parts can be copied to another layer for random ocassions). Ironically version 8 lacks any of these bugs.
(but quiet you).