From: below the Eternal Potty Trainer! Insane since: Apr 2004
posted 08-06-2005 13:54
No it's not here yet! Version 3 of my site is still under construction but I've uploaded a page for my alias - templar - what do you think? It's right out of the soul...
IMHO the home page is useless. The main layout is quite enough, and serves well the pages.
I like the colored background. However you should use a GIF instead of that low quality JPG.
The :hover effect that show/hide the description of the PSPong is highly distracting when the user scrolls the page with the mousewheel or when he/she move the mouse pointer. For instance when I move the mouse down and aim the image # 06 of a PSPong, the description just pop, and when I'm leaving it, the mouse pointer happens to be on the image #19 ( the row below the # 06 ).
The "Do the righ thing" link might be better below "The Gibrish Box", and a footer might be welcome but other than that, it's good.
I like the overall design.
From: below the Eternal Potty Trainer! Insane since: Apr 2004
posted 08-06-2005 15:42
I used the JPG because it was smaller in size. GIF was too low in quality and too large when I set to full quality.
I've placed the FF link there because I wanted the site too look a bit different. Every site has links like those below the nav or in some colomun I've positioned it with percentage instead.
Having problems with the :hover? That's weird I've tested that in Opera, IE and FF and I don't see anything like that when I use my wheel. Oh well, I'm working on a better way to describe the serves, maybe I'll try some pop ups...
... overall the site was just meant to be plain, weird! Do you think I've succeded there?
When I scroll with the mousewheel, it scrolls by many pixel therefore I don't always have the :hover effet but of course it always when I mouse the mouse down to go and click on the link to an image of a PSPong.
I mean the :hover effect of the PSPong descriptions works, but it's annoying
Ok the background is ~4Kb bigger in GIF, but it's 10 times smaller in PNG8 with no perceptible loss of quality from you original PSD.
Hmm... honestly, it took me a while to figure out that there was a menu in that big gray space in the upper left. There are no visual clues to indicate that it is a menu (the numerals are not sufficient in my mind). It should be immediately obvious that this is the menu and this is where you need to interact with the page, and right now it is not obvious.
quote:I used the JPG because it was smaller in size. GIF was too low in quality and too large when I set to full quality.
Huh? GIF doesn't have "quality settings." GIF is a lossless compression scheme, meaning that what you end up after you save as a GIF will be exactly what you had before you saved as a GIF, except compressed. JPG, on the other hand is a lossy compression scheme, meaning that you lose color information in the process. If you save it as a GIF, the colors are guaranteed to be exactly what you specified them to be. If you save it as a JPG, not only will you have to deal with artifacts, but the colors themselves might change as well.
As for the actual image itself, it's colorful and funky (and would look a lot crisper and nicer as a GIF ).
OK, now I'm past the "root" page, and I don't really see the need for it. I agree with poi here--why don't you just scrap the "root" page and go with the other three in a consistent design?
Not sure if this was intentional or not (it's hard to tell with all the "cool" spellings floating around these days), but the proper spelling is "gibberish."
How 'bout changing the "bout" page title to something like "PS Pong"? "Bouts" itself is not very descriptive, and could refer to a wide variety of activities.
Again, I agree with poi on the annoyance factor of the popup descriptions. Either leave space for the descriptions in your design, or float them. Don't make the rest of the content jump around them. You're liable to induce seizures like that.
Why does the text in "How to Pong" highlight when you mouseover it? My cursor changes to a "help" cursor, but no further information is provided. Either something is broken or that is just a completely useless bell and/or whistle.
That's about it, I suppose. A bit of tough love for ya.
[Edit: Ooh, I just found this gem in another thread...
quote:Besides that I utterly hate spalsh pages, even though I used to make them in the past they seem just plain stupid to me now!
Hate to break it to ya, templar, but what you've got up there in your root page is more or less a splash page--it serves no purpose. ]
Suho1004: I'm probably ( well certainly) wrong but I think he talked about the Lossy slider you see in PhotoShop when you "Save For Web", or maybe he reduced the number of colors too much. I tried with 16 and the result looked rather good, though there was no anti aliasing.
Oh. Well, I usually do everything by hand... I've never used the Save for Web option.
I just wanted to point out that GIF isn't lossy, and with enough fiddling with colors it should be possible to get a good balance between size and number of colors. Considering how important that graphic is to the design, I think it would be worth it spending the extra time optimizing it. I would definitely not entrust it to an automatic process.
For the record when I use an 8bits image format I often try to save it as a GIF and a PNG and optimize the files with GIFOPT and PNGCRUSH.
The gain on GIF is tiny. Generally I just remove the animation settings that are useless.
The PNG compression algorithm in PhotoShop is far from optimal. I've seen some 8bits PNG being compressed at 75% with PNGCRUSH. For 32bits PNG it's usually 10-25%.
From: below the Eternal Potty Trainer! Insane since: Apr 2004
posted 08-07-2005 11:48
Hey I'm still working on it! I've decided to go for a GIF at 100% all the other images are small and since I'm not using any thumbnails I don't suppose one slightly larger image should make any difference.
As for the 'splash' page it's not one! I never intended for the root page to be a splash page, I'm still working on that thing. Thinking of adding some content below maybe some nice links or a little more gibrish aka gibberish!
Now the navigation, yup that is an issue, maybe I'll make a little bar below saying "THIS IS THE NAVIGATION STUPID!!" or maybe a little floating arrow... nah I think I'll go for the bar!! Now the nav text that I didn't like either need to look at that but I like 'bouts' for the pong section, that stays the rest needs a look through!!
quote: Suho1004 said:
Why does the text in "How to Pong" highlight when you mouseover it? My cursor changes to a "help" cursor, but no further information is provided. Either something is broken or that is just a completely useless bell and/or whistle.
I want the site to be weird, stupid, funny, yet true so you'll find it quite wacky the colors the insanity that's me so it's in the site! As for the hoverings well just to make sure the person reading the text doesn't forget where he/she was
Hmm... honestly, it took me a while to figure out that there was a menu in that
big gray space in the upper left. There are no visual clues to indicate that it
is a menu (the numerals are not sufficient in my mind). It should be immediately
obvious that this is the menu and this is where you need to interact with the
page, and right now it is not obvious.
It worked perfectly to me. I tend to look for part of a menu (or the whole of it) on the top left of the page... and found it. I also like it, it's different.
And 'The Gibrish Box' on the 'more' page should be spelt 'Gibberish'. Proof reading, ain't it fun?
Beat you to it, Skaarjj. You didn't think a spelling freak like me would let that slide, did you?
quote: templar654 said:
Now the navigation, yup that is an issue, maybe I'll make a little bar below saying "THIS IS THE NAVIGATION STUPID!!" or maybe a little floating arrow... nah I think I'll go for the bar!!
Gosh, templar, you're just so clever and funny, aren't you? You asked for feedback, I gave it. What's with the childish insults?
Or is this just you sticking your foot in your mouth again?
Okay, them you should probably note that calling your visitors stupid is not conducive to having them come back again. Your site can get 1000 hits in a day, but if none of thme come back again, what use is it?
Suho: Sorry, mate, must have missed that in your post.
But Templar, I'm quite serious; you need to either proof read your stuff or get someone else to proof read it. Bad language skills can kill even the best of sites. If 'Gibrish' is everywhere, then damn well change it to 'Gibberish' everywhere. What's the use of leaving one big glaring mistake to ride through your entire site? And the menu-bar up the top si the perfect example of mystery-meat navigation, and that is not a good thing. You need to give your visitors some idea of what each one represents before they mouseOver the button
Skaarjj: No worries. Just a little friendly ribbing, that's all.
quote: Skaarjj said:
you should probably note that calling your visitors stupid is not conducive to having them come back again.
Yep. That about sums it up.
Templar (and I'm being perfectly serious here), you really need to think about how your words and actions are going to make people feel. Calling your visitors stupid may appeal to people who buy "Whatever for Dummies" books, but most people are going to be turned off by it, even if only unconsciously.
Think about how I felt when I read that comment. You were basically telling me that I was stupid because I couldn't find your navigation scheme right away. Not the best way to win friends and influence enemies.
I know Suho, my friend. I'm a spelling freak too, and a semi-professional proof-reader to boot Not always the greatest at doing my own work, but stuff like that bugs me, so I'm always going to pick up on it, even if it's only in my own head.
From: below the Eternal Potty Trainer! Insane since: Apr 2004
posted 08-09-2005 12:19
...
*again finds self in ackward situation... deja vu?*
Sorry if that hurt or something, I'm keeping the bar though, and via a little childish javascripting will also add about 100 or so possible out comes to be written there on refresh and among them that line will also be entered, so there...
... plus I'm adding some more background images which can be changed now you might be thinking that normally people add different skins to the site but this guys adding different bg's!! Well I find it different... and besides I've got to fill the root aka splash page somehow!
quote: Skaarjj said:
But Templar, I'm quite serious; you need to either proof read your stuff or get someone else to proof read it. Bad language skills can kill even the best of sites. If 'Gibrish' is everywhere, then damn well change it to 'Gibberish' everywhere. What's the use of leaving one big glaring mistake to ride through your entire site? And the menu-bar up the top si the perfect example of mystery-meat navigation, and that is not a good thing. You need to give your visitors some idea of what each one represents before they mouseOver the button
Okay okay I'll copy everything I wrote into word and check those spells :S and I've changed the nav text, will upload today or tomorrow...
Proof readingi s not just a matter of spell-checking. It's also grammar, sentence structure and using the correct words in the correct context. An example:
Out light sprang web crack mirror bent.
All correctly spelt, but it doesn't mean anything.
posted 08-06-2005 13:54
with no perceptible loss of quality from you original PSD.
Do you realize this is this very attitude that encourage the browser vendors do not spend some ressources to support some file formats and standards.
need some more fixes eh...
