My WipEout Site

[dodriscollie]

Check out my WipEout site. It's very new, so it'l be updated regularaly. Please tell me what you think.

http://wipeoutonline.n3.net/

[Vasudeva]

Just went to visit it. It looks reasonably well, and suitably sobre. Nice selection of fonts and frames, too.

However, it's Assegai and Icaras respectively, and not Asseqi and Icarus. I only visited the Wip3out section so I can only comment on that one, but I'd recommend you to report your sources. Some people may take offence at reviews being taken from another site without due credit.

Otherwise, keep up the good work!

Peace,
V.

[dodriscollie]

Thanks Vasudeva, I fixed the spelling mistakes straight away. I got the review for Wip3out from some website (I'm only 15 - I couldn't be bothered spending so much time writing a review) I can't remember.

[Lance]

.
when i go to the address you gave, it shows me a blank page. only by moving the mouse around in the dark till the little white hand shows up was i able to find the links. when i checked out the wip3out page and clicked ''back'' [an image which did not load] it went to the page marked with the index.html extension, thEn the page showed. as to the wip3out page itself, by the time i could see all the images except the one for ''back'', it had already loaded just over 100 kilobytes, but continued to load until the count was over 300 kilobytes without showing any additional material. please check your code. and btw, have mercy on people who do not have broadband connections; any page that loads more than 90 kilobytes total is too time-consuming. this is why i switch off images, and why i avoid sites built on homestead [homestead has tons of their own code that is unrelated to the users content]

the page layouts look good, nice colours and text and picture placement
.

[dodriscollie]

I use a 56K modem and it all loads perfectly fine at quick rate. I did not design the site for broadband users. Give yourself a little time at least for the page to load. What browser do you use?

[dodriscollie]

lol Now that I think of it you didn't see anything on the main page because I was uploading the site (thats why you saw the image after you cliked back - which did not load either bacause it obviously wasn't uploaded). I was doing a lot of uploading today, but it's all up now.

[Lance]

.
it's because you are using flash animation that the load is so lengthy.

i use Opera 6.03. perhaps you have a different definition of quick than i do. or possibly the tripod server that is working for you is better than the pathetically hobbling ones we have in the u.s.. in any case 300 megabytes for a page load is more than i prefer, but you are free to do as you wish. :)

i just tried it again to check the actual rates, times, and total load. the index page [80+ kilobytes] works correctly now that you've reuploaded. the wip3out page loaded at the rate of 2.8 to 2.9 kilobytes per second. more than 333 kilobytes, one minute and 58 seconds loading time. after showing 13 of 14 images completed at the stage of about 147 kilobytes loaded, it continued loading to the maximum size without showing anything else. an additional 186 plus kilobytes consumed by the flash animation of curlysaysgo plus whatever part of the first 147 that was also part of the flash.

perhaps i can use my webfilter to disable flash. or simply disable images altogether. and load only the non-animated ones, though that would detract somewhat from the appearance of the page
.

[Consortium]

Dodriscollie,
I won't comment on the design, but I thought I'd let you know that, other than the first page, your HTML doesn't validate as HTML 4.0.1 Transitional, which is the doctype declaration on your first page. Mostly, it's the Flash stuff and a lack of "alt" tags that's mucking it up. After the first page, the pages don't even have doctype declarations, so it's impossible to parse the code beyond that point.

For such a simple site, it wouldn't be too hard for you to make it standards compliant, especially since the CSS *does* validate. You don't have to use some dodgy proprietary editor if you don't want to, either - there's stacks of standards-compliant CSS/XML templates you can download and just do a little hand-coding on with a text editor... that is, if you are interested in making your site work on all browsers and platforms (as much as that can be done).

And before you say "Put your money where your mouth is, bud!", yes I am currently re-building my personal site in this same fashion (due to the fact that the HTML 4.0.1 Transitional tables are breaking under some Windows browsers. The new one will be in XHTML Transitional and will use CSS for layout as well as formatting. It's going to be fast and lean!), so I am in the same boat...

Well, actually, my boat isn't mired in the Sargasso Sea of Tripod Pop-up Hell like yours is, but that's another matter entirely... :wink:

Cheers,
c.

[Consortium]

Helpful info and free CSS layout templates here:

http://www.glish.com/css/

Enjoy!

c.

[Lance]

.
dave, if there were a version of the Proxomitron [new build Naoko 4.3 ] for Macs, i would send you the addy. it blocks not only pop-ups {Opera 6.x blocks pop-ups] , but also banners, invasive javascripts, referrals, javascript cookies, et cetera et cetera. tripod is a total bxxxh about those, even worse than angelfire. angelfire is worse about third-domain cookies, though
.

[dodriscollie]

Lance: 300 megabytes! The entire site is only 6MB. That extra 147KB is actually a video clip of Wip3out that playes in the left frame. The video format is Windows Media 7.

Consortium: I don't know much about HTML, or what ever the hell you were talking about. I just use DreamweaverMX to create pages. Popup hell? I get only three popups in the entire site.

Lance: I had no choce but to use this server because it's free. My old server which was BRILLIANT (totlaay free, infinate space, no banners/popups) is now suddenly gone to a slow rate thats unusable.

[Sven]

If you used a Mac you could have an iDisk! =)

[dodriscollie]

If you used a Mac you could have an iDisk! =)

What do you mean?

[Lance]

.
dodriscollie: whatever the total size of your site, when it comes to speed and efficiency, the size of an individual page download is the primary factor, and that is more than 333 kilobytes just on that one page. btw, the windows media animation is the one thing on the site that i don't see. the curlysaysgo animation completed and started running at approximately 135 kBs loaded when i checked your site today. [total load time today was 2:12 cos the server had a higher load than the previous times i tried it] but the wmv file never appeared. the current settings on my browser and webfilter should be allowing this to appear. possibly this is one of those MicroSoft anomalies where only their products will show their proprietary formats. although, when i alternate click on the image box where it's supposed to be, my browser shows the ''load image'' option instead of ''reload image'' which would seem to indicate that even after it had dled the 333+ kB, the wmv file was not part of it. when i clicked load image, the browser tried to load, but after just over 5 minutes, no data had yet been transferred. hmmm... do you use Internet Explorer as your browser? and if so, which version. i am told that IE 6.xx does a reasonably good job of supporting official W3C standards, though it still has some user-security problems.

oh well.

i apologise for any excess of analysis, but you wanted to know how it worked for us. this kind of detailed feedback is really the only way to find out.

we should probably put up a warning on this board that the place is full of professional webdesigners. :D
[btw, i'm not one of them, i'm just a bit of a techie] when you ask questions, you may get more advice than you bargained for. :)
anyway, i wish you good luck on producing a great website.

___lance
.

[dodriscollie]

The video runs in the left frame. It'll need to load only once. I use IE6, but it runs fine in IE5 or above. I think all these problem are happening because you're using Oprea. I should put a message on the main page that says "ie5+".

[Lance]

.
warning warning! soapbox alert! read only at peril of boredom at continuing discussion of the probably not gonna get resolved.

well, i suppose i would say that even one download of something that doesn't work is too many. :) messages to use IE won't make it work for everyone, not even for IE 5+ for MacIntosh which is completely different from the Windows version. if it seems too much effort to make it work for everyone, consider how you would feel if the internet worked for every country on earth except Ireland and it's neighbor, Ulster, because they used a different, but better, communication system. [yep, i'm promoting worldwide standards again, not to mention Opera and Mozilla :D ] okay, the comparison is a little extreme, but you get the idea.

okay, i'm done. not gonna say no mo'. nope, not a peep. no way
.

[AmishRobot]

Lance, you're a good man for using Opera! :) If a page doesn't load in Opera or Mozilla, it's from MS mucking up the W3C standards.

dodriscollie, I unfortunately don't have time right now to take a strong look at your site, but my first impression is that it has nice fonts, good use of color (especially in relation to the images used), and a few minor technical problems. The design is a bit straightforward, but hey, you're dealing with a game where design is an integral part, so you're going to get graded a bit harshly there. :) I didn't have the speed issues that Lance had, so maybe his connection was choking somewhere, or maybe Opera didn't like the code... I don't know.

I would recommend losing Flash. It does nothing to serve the end user, only takes up extra bandwidth, and besides, moving images on a page are distracting. Maybe if you were doing an animation of the Adventures of Curly, it would be worth it. ...That actually sounds kinda cool... ;)

If you're serious about learning web design, I strongly suggest that you learn to code for all browsers, and use the W3C html validator. The world is full of hacks who can use FrontPage. Remember, the best web design tool out there is notepad. :) There are a lot of us out there who use different browsers, and telling us to use IE will only make us move along. Opera is by far my preferred browser. I'm writing this on IE right now becuase... well... I'm a hypocrite!

(and to infox: if you're wondering how I'm writing this, all I can say is thank god I set up a dual boot!)

[Lance]

.
[at this point lance already goes back on his obviously not meant word]

i like his basically straightforward design. straightforward is good! the problem on his wip3out page is that there are two (!) animations, one of which is in a MicroSoft proprietary format, and it just doesn't work even after it's loaded. but even if it did, it's a bandwidth gobbler that aside from the already mentioned issues like respecting the available time of your viewers and working with W3C, will cause his website provider to shut down his site for bandwidth violations if the site becomes even moderately popular. supposedly those site providers are giving free sites to get people to look at the adverts, but if too many people look, they close it down till the next month. weird logic in my opinion, but there ya go.

it's his first website and dodriscollie is naturally enthusiastic about animations. the tricky bits have a certain attraction till you realise the consequences. on my first one, i used a javascript routine to cause mouseover events like dynamic switching of images and links to move through different opening paths to a main index like 10 pages away down one path, one click away on another, and off to new second website by a third. it seemed kinda cool at the time, but i was still on webTV; what did i know? it probably drove potential viewers crazy. after a while i put in a stable bypass to the index, then a bit later removed the junk altogether. that sort of process is probably something almost all of us go through
.

[infoxicated]

Agreed - my first web page was on the now deceased Globe.com and it was horrendous, even by my standards!

It had animated gif's a go-go and the whole page looked like a pinball machine there was so much movement going on. I kind of learned over time that you have to come closer to standards and create a design which is easier on the eye with a nod to useability.

WipeoutZone isn't as close to standards compliance as I'd like it to be (so nobody go and validate it to humiliate me!), but I have to at least try and cater for older browsers which aren't standards compliant. (I've even had to turn off the compression feature on the forums as it's not supported in certain browsers on Unix systems).

The very best thing you can do with a web site is make sure the initial download is under 30k. That's still a ten second download on a slow dial-up, but you only have about 15 seconds to deliver your first impression and make people want to stay. Piss them off with a huge download and you'll be very lucky if they hang around.

Once you have an audience of sorts, then maybe you can risk pushing up the front end download time, although on principle I'd never go above 100k - that's just being silly. :)

[dodriscollie]

it's his first website

Whoa! I have others...

http://tramore-online.n3.net/ - Website for my town.
http://poweremulation.n3.net/ - Emulation site
http://carbery.n3.net/ - My own house, which is a B&B
http://dod.n3.net/ - My personal website

And one more thing. Is there any PDFs/Text files to teach you HTML?

Hmm...

<html>
<head>
<title>This Is How Much I Know!</title>
</head>

<body>
<fontface="Arial" size="2">This the the main body. I know some other stuff, like applying colours</font>
</head>
</html>

[dodriscollie]

Agreed - my first web page was on the now deceased Globe.com and it was horrendous, even by my standards!

It had animated gif's a go-go and the whole page looked like a pinball machine there was so much movement going on. I kind of learned over time that you have to come closer to standards and create a design which is easier on the eye with a nod to useability.

Hey there! I have only two animations on the entire site! One of them goes away after you leave the main page of the Wip3out site.


The design is a bit straightforward

How do I make it, er, advanced?

[AmishRobot]

Agreed - my first web page was on the now deceased Globe.com and it was horrendous, even by my standards!

It had animated gif's a go-go and the whole page looked like a pinball machine there was so much movement going on. I kind of learned over time that you have to come closer to standards and create a design which is easier on the eye with a nod to useability.

My first page had the navigation controlled enirely by Flash. Thankfully the animation was subtle, but it was also pointless. Huge waste of bandwidth, and guaranteed to shut out some users entirely. It came down a week later.


How do I make it, er, advanced?

I'd love to tell you, but that's why I dropped out of my web design classes. I only got so far as to recognize the problem, not to fix it! :lol: Sorry!

Okay, so that's not exactly fair. Here's a couple small pointers I can give. Look at Inofx's front page. He has consistent navigation across all screens (which you seem to have largely done), and he's used the extra space within the navigation by filling it with text and images in case the eyes get bored. All unneccessary information (a relative term, I know) is kept here, off to the side. There's good use of negative space between elements. It's made to fit multiple monitor resolutions. Most importantly, he's wrapped the text around the images, so they pull the eye over without forcing them to stop reading the text. That was my biggest complaint: you have text >> image >> text. It's somewhat jarring to the reading process. If you put images like they are after text, it's best to use them to break seperate text elements.

A good place I found for html tutorials is webmonky.com (http://www.webmonky.com). There are a lot if you look. The W3C (http://www.w3c.org) is a good place for reference, but rather confusing to try and learn from.

[Sven]

If you used a Mac you could have an iDisk! =)

What do you mean?
If you have a Mac computer, you can set up an account for free at apple.com, and it will let you have an iDisk, among other things. the free iDisk is basically 20 megs of webspace.

Sorry man, but I don't often go very far into web sites that have popups =P. maybe I'm just spoiled like that...

I use Netscape composer to make my web pages ( www.team-ir.org ), so I know basic html, but use composer to do tables and such.

[dodriscollie]

Most importantly, he's wrapped the text around the images, so they pull the eye over without forcing them to stop reading the text.

Whoa! You're being all arty! So you mean put the text on top of the images?

[Lance]

.
sorry about late reply, i didn't get up till 1750. [i went to sleep after 0930]

Rob, i was wondering why the gzip seemed to be gone. i miss it a bunch already, it made the site really quick.

dodriscollie [um, do you have a shorter name we could type? :) ], sorry, i thought you said it was your first site, maybe you said it was your first wipeout site and all that stuck in my head was the 'first'' and the ''site''. anyway, ''handwritten'' html is definitely the best way to go; the programs like Frontpage write code several times larger than it should be, and in Frontpage's case, it uses MicroSoft proprietary formats that don't work with standards. it's more fun to write icode directly anyway. and it makes you feel more in control, because you are.

james, i think that's webmonkEy. if you use webmonky, it goes to one of those self-serving lycos advert pages that don't even tell you that what you were looking for doesn't exist.

sven, in the Mac world [which i kinda wish i were in, btw] are there any browsers with built-in pop-up killers? how about separate webfilter programs? i checked to see if Proxomitron had a Mac version, but they don't. i have um.... [ grin ] x number of sites on Angelfire, which i left because of the pop-ups, but shortly after that i discovered webfiltering, and i never have to see pop-ups [or banners] at all. if i go to an angelfire or tripod or geocities or whatever site, all i see is what the website creator wrote. it's great. no irritation, no time wasted downloading junk.

i need breakfast

cheers
.

[dodriscollie]

anyway, ''handwritten'' html is definitely the best way to go; the programs like Frontpage write code several times larger than it should be, and in Frontpage's case, it uses MicroSoft proprietary formats that don't work with standards. it's more fun to write icode directly anyway. and it makes you feel more in control, because you are.

I think "handwriting" a site is very time consuming and tiring. I would prefer to use a WYSIWYG any day. I use Dreamweaver MX by the way, which I love. Even a HTML page that contains loads of usless charters doesn't make a diference - even you're 28K modem would transfer a large HTML page instantly (I'm talking about the page, not the images/stuff that has to be downloaded). Dreamweaver doesn't add usless tags/charters anyway.

I would love an iMac too ;-) With an iPod ;-)

[dodriscollie]

Speaking of usless HTML tags/charters, when I was in the extreamly dark days of getting my new PC a few years ago, I used to use Microsoft Word 2000 to build web pages. What a horrific program to use to build web pages. About 1000+ usless HTML tags/charters (literally). Heres a sample of a page with NO content (BTW, I made this page in Word 2002, not 2000, but it's still just as bad ;-)):

<html xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office"
xmlns:w="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:word"
xmlns="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40">

<head>
<meta http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=windows-1252">
<meta name=ProgId content=Word.Document>
<meta name=Generator content="Microsoft Word 10">
<meta name=Originator content="Microsoft Word 10">
<link rel=File-List href="Doc1_files/filelist.xml">
<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<o:DocumentProperties>
<o:Author>David O'Driscoll</o:Author>
<o:Template>Normal</o:Template>
<o:LastAuthor>David O'Driscoll</o:LastAuthor>
<o:Revision>1</o:Revision>
<o:TotalTime>0</o:TotalTime>
<o:Created>2002-07-12T22:52:00Z</o:Created>
<o:LastSaved>2002-07-12T22:52:00Z</o:LastSaved>
<o:Pages>1</o:Pages>
<o:Lines>1</o:Lines>
<o:Paragraphs>1</o:Paragraphs>
<o:Version>10.2625</o:Version>
</o:DocumentProperties>
</xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:WordDocument>
<w:Compatibility>
<w:BreakWrappedTables/>
<w:SnapToGridInCell/>
<w:WrapTextWithPunct/>
<w:UseAsianBreakRules/>
</w:Compatibility>
<w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel>
</w:WordDocument>
</xml><![endif]-->
<style>
<!--
/* Style Definitions */
p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal
{mso-style-parent:"";
margin:0cm;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";}
@page Section1
{size:595.3pt 841.9pt;
margin:72.0pt 90.0pt 72.0pt 90.0pt;
mso-header-margin:35.4pt;
mso-footer-margin:35.4pt;
mso-paper-source:0;}
div.Section1
{page:Section1;}
-->
</style>
<!--[if gte mso 10]>
<style>
/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-parent:"";
mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin:0cm;
mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";}
</style>
<![endif]-->
</head>

<body lang=EN-IE style='tab-interval:36.0pt'>

<div class=Section1>

<p class=MsoNormal><o:p></o:p></p>

</div>

</body>

</html>

[Lance]

.
because i'm so efficiency-mad, we probably will not see eye-to-eye on this issue anytime soon. :D
it's one of those choosing between Plato and Sartre things, or um... somethin' :)

yikes, that MS word construct looks a bit like what Homestead does to their poor webpage writers. well about 2 or 3 percent as much as Homestead puts on. i've unthinkingly loaded one of their sites a couple of times and waited 2 minutes for anything to show up when it turned out to be one paragraph by the author and no pics! now i tend to look at the addy i'm about to go to, and just not go there if it's Homestead.

anyway,
cheers

[Sven]

sven, in the Mac world [which i kinda wish i were in, btw] are there any browsers with built-in pop-up killers?
Yes, OmniWeb (http://www.versiontracker.com/moreinfo.fcgi?id=3253&db=mac) is one, and there are probably others available.

as for the html, netxcape does put a whole lot of garbage in the source, but it's so much easier to use that for doing tables especially.

[JABBERJAW]

Zoolander backs away slowly :o :D

[Vasudeva]

Choosing between Plato and Sartre? Horrible choice, but interesting pair in comparison. A little too totalitarian in my opinion though.

Just my 2 cents... :),
V.

[Lance]

.
'' or um... somethin' ''

:D
.

[dodriscollie]

Lance, just one small question: what the HELL is you web site about?

[Lance]

.
a large chunk of the one you're referring to is 3 small galleries of pics based mostly on those i took with a digicam. pretty much all of them were then radically altered by me with an image editor. the rest of it is creative writing, using metaphors. the sets of links are japanese words [in romaji] each letter of which leads to either an index of a subject category, or within those sub-indexes, to a specific writing. the writings themselves are all in English. to give you a start, 'ai' means 'love', 'yume' means 'dream', 'ten' means heaven, 'sensenkyoukyou' means something like 'stark unreasoning terror'. [ :D ] the overall title means 'the wedge of love' or ''love's wedge''. the meaning of some of the writings will be fairly clear, but on many of them, you just have to let your mind go to free associate in order to get an idea of what is meant. all of the writings are very short. the image pages have either one or two pics per page, one of the pics being a link to the next pic in the gallery. the whole site is less than one megabyte.

the site provider is shutting down the free servers due to spamming by some of the users. i havent been able to change the site for quite a while due to the upload/edit facility being shut down to stop the spammers.
.

[dodriscollie]

Then we'll all stop and shed a tear,
when Lance's web site dissappears. :cry:

:wink:

[Vasudeva]

Poetry - love it. Life doesn't get any better than this :-D.

V.