UOX3.org Concept Site - Feedback please :)

Post by **Xuri** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 12:19 am

Sat around playing with Dreamweaver today, came up with this:
https://www.uox3.org/concept

Any thoughts?

Sydius · Post by **Sydius** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 12:37 am

I like it.

giwo · Post by **giwo** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 1:05 am

Very nice work Xu,

Some (hopefully) constructive criticisms:

The Double-logo seems a bit much to me

I'm a lefty, so I preferr left-handed menus, but that's just preference

The whole thing seems a bit squished, I notice it's a percentage you have it set at, maybe at 5% or something?

Post by **Xuri** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 1:13 am

Thanks =)

Yeah I've noted the double-logo thing myself, not sure what to do with it though. Removing either one makes it all seem so...empty. I don't know. https://www.uox3.org/concept/index2.html and https://www.uox3.org/concept/index3.html - which version is preferable to the double-logo?

Since the menu doesn't extend all the way down (by design), it would make the news articles/other content on very weird if placed on the left hand side, as the text would break down and left around the menu, if you understand what I mean by that.

The squished thing: What exactly do you mean? The page is currently set to max-width 1024px, and has some padding around the left/top/bottom edges.

Post by **Xuri** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 2:53 am

Thanks for the additional feedback over ICQ, giwo

I think I have a concept I might stick with now hehe.

Maarc · Post by **Maarc** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 3:33 am

It's a little on the busy side, though not sure what you can really do about that. I see it says CSS and HTML 4.01 compliant... ever thought of XHTML?

As a possibility to try and reduce business, perhaps you could have the same colour background for the news item title, same as the date, and you could remove the underline then, as it still stands out. And maybe a touch more spacing between news elements (like an extra 12px or something).

Just some thoughts, but good idea. Are you going with plain old HTML? Or are you looking at doing something like PHP?

Post by **Xuri** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 4:02 am

What makes XHTML so special?
I'm just beginning to come to grips with CSS (and HTML 4.01, lol), so I'm kind of sticking to what I know already

The problem with having the same colour background for the news item title as for the date, is that I can have more than one news item each day. Right now the date background works as a seperator for the various news-days

I've shortened the line underneath the news item titles, let me know if that looks better

When you say more spacing between news elements, do you mean between the end of a news section and the next date line, or between two news sections right next to eachother?

For now the plan is to stick with plain ol' HTML yeah. I dislike quite a lot of the "php-sites" out there, at least the ones using pre-made templates with lots of useless links that have no relevancy to the rest of the page whatsoever hehe..

giwo · Post by **giwo** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 4:27 am

I'd have to agree with your final point, Xu.

Most sites seem to have an overload of links / worthless additions (makes for a very busy site, which makes it feel like you have to work to find anything).
I'm all for simplicity in web design (or at least in appearance).

I, personally, have no clue what XHTML even is, DHTML was just becoming popular (which is basically just the use of css and js in a website) when I got out of the game.

The nice thing about a php backend is ease of news updating, plus you can tie it to the board.

Maarc · Post by **Maarc** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 4:52 am

Basically, nothing really. XHTML is essentially the standard that came after HTML 4.01. They're teaching that now rather than plain HTML. In essence, it's very similar, it's a variation on an XML document (don't have to have the XML declaration). But basically, it's a cleanup sort of thing to the HTML standard (all tags must be lowercase, all attribute values should be quoted, all tags should also be closed). It's a lot for parsing consistency, and relies heavily on CSS for positioning and so on.

I can dig up an example site I did which used XHTML and PHP for Uni if you want.

By asking if you're using PHP, I'm not suggesting you use the templates or what have you that you can find on the 'net. I was just thinking you could probably write a few small pages that deal with your news submission/retrieval, so that it only gets the last 5 news items, that sort of jazz. Not suggesting much, just whatever you feel would be needed for your purposes. I agree that many of the sites feel too plasticky.

And yes, the line not stretching across does work better, I think.

And yes, for spacing between news elements, I mean spacing between one news item and the next (on the same day), and even, one news section and the next date line. I look at everything at 1600x1200, so I don't like to see stuff cramped together too much

Post by **Xuri** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 8:05 am

I practice (for the most part) lowercase tags, quoted attribute values and closure of tags already heh. I'm guessing XHTML doesn't support stuff like target= in href links though, correct? I'm not a big fan of that heh..

Having some php for news-posting/displaying would probably be nice, yep - though I'm not sure how I'd set that up.

I'll peek at the site in 1600x1200 when I get back home and see what I can do to give it some more room.

Post by **Xuri** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 8:08 am

What the heck..!? The site works perfectly in Opera, FireFox and IE in both my Win2k & Windows Server 2003 machine - but I'm at school (school? what the heck should I call it, school sounds so...childish =P Aalesund University College) now and it's screwed up here! Bah!

The first date&news item doesn't appear until below the menu! ARGH!

Maarc · Post by **Maarc** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 9:02 am

Nope, it does support target stuff, I've used that as well.

Don't you just love browsers?

Post by **Xuri** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 10:22 am

Browsers suck donkey balls! GAH! Especially IE 6.0. DAMNIT!

I don't have it on either of my two computers at home, so not sure what to do to fix it...sigh.

Post by **Xuri** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 11:43 am

Ok, I officially HATE IE! If the blue bar behind the Date extends to the left border of the menu to the right, IE moves the Date-line and everything underneath below the bottom border of the menu.

Did that make any sense? Sigh. I think I'll add a javascript check for browser-type, and if it finds IE 6.0 - it'll just close the page and spam a new window saying "GET A REAL BROWSER, YOU FOOL!".

EDIT: Okay, I've found a solution I can live with which appears to work fine in both Opera 7.54, FireFox 1.0 and IE 6.029. With my luck though, it'll probably break in IE 5.5 now - can't test until I get home. ;P

giwo · Post by **giwo** » Fri Feb 11, 2005 5:40 pm

What happened to the Shardwire.org Voting button?

Post by **Xuri** » Fri Feb 11, 2005 5:53 pm

Good question! I'm not sure where to place it though. I guess I could uglify (or beautify, if you happen to like the voting button picture) the bottom of the menu or something.

There we go. One voting button in place.

giwo · Post by **giwo** » Fri Feb 11, 2005 8:09 pm

Well, I'm not particularly fond of the voting button... I mostly just enjoy voting for UOX3.org (epsecially since I can do so from both work and home

)

giwo · Post by **giwo** » Fri Feb 11, 2005 8:11 pm

Another minor bug.

Your index page is now index.shtml, the "Back to UOX3.org Main Page" link on the forums points to index.html, thus you get a 404 error.

Post by **Xuri** » Fri Feb 11, 2005 9:23 pm

Fixed

giwo · Post by **giwo** » Fri Feb 11, 2005 9:36 pm

Links Page:

UOX3 @ Sourceforge and OpenUO @ Sourceforge open www.vg.no

Thanks for putting the link to UO AoS there, btw, that makes life easier

Also, just a personal prefrence, but is there anyway you can have the links only open a new window once? IE Click UOX3 @ Sf, makes new window, that window navigates to the proper page, click OpenUO @ Sf, it uses the window UOX3 @ Sf made, navigates it to the new page.
I know this is possible, but I don't recall anymore exactly how to manage this.

All-in-all, I love it.... I'm just bored here at work

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UOX3.org Concept Site - Feedback please :)

UOX3.org Concept Site - Feedback please :)