more of a question

Re: Another update.

The issue is that, apparently, no one here understands jack about web design. Go load microsoft.com, yahoo.com, google.com, et al. Compare the similarities and then you have a better idea. I was completely lost when I loaded the site with this new color scheme.

This is the problem in the past. Everyone is obsessed with this 1996 kiddie web design crap. The second I ask someone to clean it up, I'm the uncooperative bad guy.
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Re: Another update.

> This is the problem in the past. Everyone is obsessed with
> this 1996 kiddie web design crap. The second I ask someone
> to clean it up, I'm the uncooperative bad guy.

I had the original scheme up, and the immediate reaction from the few I showed it to was "I hate the white. Make it look like the old ZD." So I did that, and opened up the link to the public. Thankfully, since it's all CSS, it's easily updated.

Note that I never called you uncooperative - Kitsune asked if the concept would allow for user-selected "themes", and I told him that would be up to you. One one hand, you may not care. On the other, you may want a consistent site look and feel, and user-selected themes might get in the way of that.

Notice that doesn't make you a "bad guy". It just asks you to make the decision of whether to allow that feature.
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Re: Another update.

> This is the problem in the past. Everyone is obsessed with
> this 1996 kiddie web design crap. The second I ask someone
> to clean it up, I'm the uncooperative bad guy.
>

That "1996 kiddie web design" by a morbidly minded teenager is part of its charm. The freaking website is named after someone who named himself ZOPHAR, an evil villian in a cult classic Sega CD RPG and/or someone who mourned with Job. Clearly packardmelan is trying to bring the former aesthetic into a more streamlined, modern context, and I think he's suceeded well, with some kinks that need to be worked out. This is an EMULATION website, it's not Microsoft, Yahoo, it's Zophar's Domain, one of the oldest emulation websites on the Internet. Your primary audience will be teenagers (kiddies) and old schoolers who will feel right at home and nostalgic with the "1996 kiddie web design" aesthetic. You may not like it, but will those who visit Zophar's Domain? I think they will.

I have not heard one negative comment from anyone besides you. Your opinion is surely one of the most important ones, but no one else seems to think of it the way you do.I think we are closer to seeing a functional ZD again than we ever have been, and I think moving forward is more important than getting caught up in the details. Why worry about keeping your lawn trimmed when your house is on fire, you know?
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Re: Another update.

> This is the problem in the past. Everyone is obsessed with
> this 1996 kiddie web design crap. The second I ask someone
> to clean it up, I'm the uncooperative bad guy.

Which is why I asked if they could be user-chosen. If a person wants to use a scheme from 1996, let them. If a user wants to use the one you like, let them. If you want to use one of your own, well, let you. Or something.

It's best to allow people to choose, because certain themes just don't sit right with people. For instance, that other theme this board had... the one with uh, brownish (?) colors? I can't read anything on it. It makes my eyes hurt because of my less-than-average vision. But this scheme is fine, and is probably the only reason I logged on while I was banned a long time ago.

*shrugs* I'm not calling you a bad guy. Nobody is. I'm just stating an opinion, and giving feedback.
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Re: Another update.

> And if you have any questions, just let me know.

Exactly how large do you plan on making the "Categories" column? I mean, the current ZD side bar goes waaaay down the page. If you put all of this in one column (even in one collapsable column), it's going to be an unorganized mess. It's simply too much information in a single column and a bad way to go about organizing ZD's large file archive.

I would suggest mixing this categories column with some bread crumb navigation. Yahoo's been using it for years because it works. The files on ZD can be faily easily categorized so that the the crumb trails make sense. This would keep the categories column trimmed up since it would only need to show you the children of the current category, and not all of the categories at once.

As for the already mentioned style-switcher, I would say definately go for it. I can agree that there is a certain charm to ZD's dark theme, but I can also agree that black backgrounds on websites are a bad idea (and very 1996, if you want to put it that way). Style-switchers are extremely easy to implement and there are plenty that are already written. There's really no reason not to use one.

As far as the layout is concerned, I don't really like it. It's too closed in. There should be some more open room (or at least the illusion of it). You don't need to define the columns and files in such an obvious and jagged way. As long as there is some kind of header and the text below it wraps at the length of the header, the column structure will remain, but open up the page a lot more. Look at a http://sourceforge.net/projects/scummvm/sourceforge page</a> to see what I mean.

Also, as a more nit-picky issue, clicking on the "view full info" links seems to actually show you less info.

Sorry for all the negative criticism. I hope you find it to be at least somewhat constructive <img src=smilies/magbiggrin.gif>
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Re: Another update.

> Here's my concept.
> http://www.zophar.net/zd-concept/
> Basically? Poke around. Play. Tell me what's missing, and
> tell me what you hate about it. Don't forget to tell me a
> little bit of what you love too.
> And if you have any questions, just let me know.

okay, as for the layout, it looks nice, I like it. As for the source, it irked me and I'll tell you why.

There's too much of it.

the titles in the "A" tags aren't needed. I've been brousing ZD for a while; I know what the menue does. I don't need a description of where it's going each time I move the mouse. If there are people that really need such guidence, then maybe a "first timer" page needs to be made.

Also I took a look at your CSS sheet and it just looks like that there is way too much "ids" being defined. If possible, that needs to be condensed and simplified a bit more. You know put a lot of the similar elements into one "ID" and such (maybe I'm wrong, but that's what it looked like to me)

looking at this thread, I can see that Swampgas' main concern is bandwidth. You need to make this shit as condense as possible. if you have 100 extra byes of uneeded clutter on your page and let's say a 100,000 unique hits a day, that's around 10MB of wasted banwidth, and well, that adds up you know? Just something to keep in mind. Hosting ain't cheap, and we all know that the new site redesign is going to increase bandwidth whether we like it or not (unless you design it smaller than what it was originally, but I doubt it.)
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Re: Another update.

> Exactly how large do you plan on making the "Categories"
> column? I mean, the current ZD side bar goes waaaay down
> the page. If you put all of this in one column (even in one
> collapsable column), it's going to be an unorganized mess.
> It's simply too much information in a single column and a
> bad way to go about organizing ZD's large file archive.

Each category can be collapsed, and each category can be clicked on. Meaning, you can click on Emulators for Windows, go to a page, click on Consoles, go to a page, click on NES. As the categories fill up, I'll probably default to that side bar to being collapsed, so you can click and expand the tree, or just click on the initial category.

> As far as the layout is concerned, I don't really like it.

That's fine. The templating system can alter the layout in any way. All I did was edit the CSS file for colors. This is really preliminary. :) It's a concept, for the moment - more of a "This could work", rather than something ready to go live. I also want to stress that I just got started with it today, and as I learn more about the ins and outs of the template system, the more I can alter and adjust as we need. :)

> Also, as a more nit-picky issue, clicking on the "view full
> info" links seems to actually show you less info.

It's basically the same amount of info, laid out differently. That's a cheat, because I didn't fill out any "long descriptions" for the files. As I figure out what I want on those, the current files will be retrofitted.

> Sorry for all the negative criticism. I hope you find it to
> be at least somewhat constructive

Sure.
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Re: Another update.

First off, it's not MY CSS file. It's a CSS file I've been editing, based on a default template that came with a pre-packaged download engine.

I can't stress this enough.

I also can't stress enough that these templates link to ONE CSS file, and it's not even a particularly large one. And, the majority of the site layout is done in colors, rather than graphics. Meaning, the bandwidth use would actually be fairly low.

I'm not sure what "source" you're viewing. The scripts are PHP, and you're viewing rendered HTML. ;) I could strip out the CSS file, and I could strip out the default template. There's a lot of customization that can be had.

And wait - "A new site redesign would increase bandwidth whether we like it or not"? What are you saying here?
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Re: Another update.

> First off, it's not MY CSS file. It's a CSS file I've been
> editing, based on a default template that came with a
> pre-packaged download engine.
> I can't stress this enough.

I see. Well still I think it could be simplified a bit more, but like I said I could be wrong. I'm not an expert on this.

> I also can't stress enough that these templates link to ONE
> CSS file, and it's not even a particularly large one. And,
> the majority of the site layout is done in colors, rather
> than graphics. Meaning, the bandwidth use would actually be
> fairly low.

yeah, I noticed that too. I mean thre isn't a large graphic anymore. It's been replaced by a relatively small banner 12 KB as opposed to 16 KB which is good.

> I'm not sure what "source" you're viewing. The scripts are
> PHP, and you're viewing rendered HTML. ;)

oh yeah... heh. Like I said I'm no expert on this. :)
still the "titles" could be removed, right? and I'm pretty sure that some tweaks to the PHP scripts will yeild smaller output :)

> I could strip out the CSS file, and I could strip out the default template.
> There's a lot of customization that can be had.

leave the CSS script in there. custom style sheets are sexy ;)

> And wait - "A new site redesign would increase bandwidth
> whether we like it or not"? What are you saying here?

well you know, adding a few things here, adding a few things there, that sort of thing. I think what made the old design so nice was that it was simple, both in design and code. Sure it's outdated, but it works. I believe that all swampgas wants are 3 important things

1. that it's small and won't consume bandwidth
2. that the design is clean and easy to follow
3. and that everything is 100% functional.

That's it. I could be wrong though, but that's what I'm feeling from him *shrugs*
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Re: Another update.

> oh yeah... heh. Like I said I'm no expert on this. :)
> still the "titles" could be removed, right? and I'm pretty
> sure that some tweaks to the PHP scripts will yeild smaller
> output :)

The alt field in img tags is *required* for XHTML compliance, however alt doesn't behave in Firefox the way it does in IE (more specisifcally: alt behaves properly in Firefox), hence to get the layout to behave the same in both browsers and give all site visitors the same experience, title is required for Firefox.

also, a few hundred extra bytes of text would be negligible unless the user were running on 2400 baud modem. Clearly such a person should punched in the face. With a combat knife.

...That would really be more of stab, wouldn't it?
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This arguement is quite silly. I've been in a similar situation before. This I what you do. You take the people that DO want to work on the site and go start a NEW, GOOD, site. Screw Sam, and HIS whining and reluctance to lift a finger on ZD and screw YOUR whining about him not doing it and start a new site to replace it!

Get a few people together and it's really NOT that hard to recreate databases and archives. I did it for ROMhacking.net. The emulator database IS bigger than my archives, but if you allow a good number of people to help, you can have the archive rebuilt in no time.

Also, take it from me, any new site of larger magnitude in a fickle community such as this is going to have to have user selectibility for themes. It doesn't matter WHAT theme you come up with, people will hate it. So, you provide themes selectability and tell people make their own.

So there go. Quit wasting your time argueing here and start working on a new site. Start writing some scripts and setting up your database. Put feelers out for anybody interested in hosting such site or look into hosting options yourself.

Whatever you do.. just start doing it. And start showing people results, and more people will join you and befor e you know it, you HAVE yourself a site. People respect people that are DOING things more than just talking about them.

Put your heads together,come up with features you want to will make this site BETTER than ZD. What is wrong with ZD? Why did it die? You best make sure you try to address those issues with a new site. Try to do something different and better.

You can also improve upon the GOOD things ZD has. The carry on in it's honor.
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Hah.

I love you <img src=smilies/liefde.gif>
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> You take the people that DO want to work on the site and go
> start a NEW, GOOD, site. Screw Sam, and HIS whining and
> reluctance to lift a finger on ZD and screw YOUR whining
> about him not doing it and start a new site to replace it!

Viva la revolution!

It's the first thing I thought of when I read that.
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Re: Another update.

> The alt field in img tags is *required* for XHTML
> compliance, however alt doesn't behave in Firefox the way it
> does in IE (more specisifcally: alt behaves properly in
> Firefox), hence to get the layout to behave the same in both
> browsers and give all site visitors the same experience,
> title is required for Firefox.

Interesting, but I never mentioned alt titles in images though. :)
I was referring to the titles in the links on the left menu (hover your mouse over them and you'll see what I mean). It's not even consistant. The links on the top don't have them.

> also, a few hundred extra bytes of text would be negligible
> unless the user were running on 2400 baud modem. Clearly
> such a person should punched in the face. With a combat
> knife.

The loading times weren't the issue. I'm talking about bandwidth here. I'm pretty sure that the cost for running this site comes out of Swampgas' pocket. The more bloated the site is, the more bandwidth it's going to comsume, thus the more money Swampgas is going to have to fork out to keep the site going. It is in his (Swampgas) best intrest to keep the site bandwidth to a minimum, which is probably why he mentioned google, yahoo, etc. when it comes to good website design.

I dunno, that's just how I see it. I could be wrong though.
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Re: Another update.

<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr>

It is in his (Swampgas) best intrest to keep the site bandwidth to a minimum, which is probably why he mentioned google, yahoo, etc. when it comes to good website design.

<hr></blockquote>
Google has good page design? The main page is a whitesheet background, one image, one edit (input) field, two buttons, and the copyright on the bottom.

Yahoo (taking forever to load) has a fuckton of links to its own shit, a whitesheet background, and the whole color scheme is pretty pastel, with links and content all over the place (which is why it takes forever for the page to load).

All in all, I don't even remember what my point is anymore. <img src=smilies/cry.gif>
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