review the redo plz...

[Ben Rogers]

According to the advice of you guys, I've redone my site (http://www.geocities.com/otacon2662/ for the intro which is a under construction page right now, or http://www.geocities.com/otacon2662/projep/ for the homepage) with 100% CSS, new colors, more styles, and more thought put into design :)

check it and review!! also i fixed the games enough so that theres no error pages i didnt make.

[spufi]

Check your site in Firebird. Not that I thought it looked great in IE....

Again, you are going to get people who will complain about the colors being hard on the eyes. If not, I will. :)

[Ben Rogers]

that's why i have multiple color schemes. if u dont like 1 go to another 1. and if singed, wet, and forest hurt your eyes, then choose black and white. also pick which one looks best to you.

in addition, plz tell me what looks bad, not just it looks bad. and i cant look at it on firebird, i dont have itm all i have is ie6.

[Paul Jr]

Originally posted by omega
tnd i cant look at it on firebird, i dont have itm all i have is ie6.
http://www.mozilla.org/products/firebird ;)

[Ben Rogers]

Dial up.... would take hours for me to download any browser. takes around 30 seconds for each page to load up.

[Paul Jr]

Originally posted by omega
Dial up.... would take hours for me to download any browser. takes around 30 seconds for each page to load up.
Hmmm... what do you get connected at? I've also got dial-up -- and bad dial-up, I should say. Usually connected at 31.2 Kbps.
But you should look into testing in another browser besides IE.
Dial-up shouldn't be a problem, either, unless it's worse than mine. :p I've got IE 5.01, IE 5.5, IE 6, Netscape 7.1, Opera 7, Mozilla 1.5, and Firebird 0.7.

[Ben Rogers]

no, you're pretty much the same. also, i tried downloading netscape a while ago... 5 hours later i was just like "screw this." anyways... im thinking of getting out of web design... my pages are horrible according to u ppl, and im not getting anything for it.... maybe ill get back into writing and just lave my site running, adding story chapters to it from time to time.

[PeOfEo]

hold on ill post the screen shot

[spufi]

For the record, Firebird is a stripped down version of the Mozilla browser and is a 6MB dowload. If that takes you more than five hours on a 56K connection, then your ISP sucks.

More on colors later.

[iniquity101]

i dont like all the lines and everything that clutters your pages...never heard the phrase "the simpler the better"?

[PeOfEo]

I would ditch the background and go with a small tiled image or a solid color. Having huge background images, that the user has to download, is not exactly a good idea ever, especially when your host is qeocities and your bandwidth is capped.

[Ben Rogers]

Originally posted by spufi
For the record, Firebird is a stripped down version of the Mozilla browser and is a 6MB dowload. If that takes you more than five hours on a 56K connection, then your ISP sucks.

More on colors later.

my isp sucks? gee, how did you know? -.-

[Ben Rogers]

Originally posted by iniquity101
i dont like all the lines and everything that clutters your pages...never heard the phrase "the simpler the better"?

differences in style there... i like the busy look, and i did that on purpose- why else would i make a div 3 times as long as it needs to be? anyways, i was wondering if i could get a thorough visual analysis of mysite... ***** all you want, and ill just say thanks and not argue.

as soon as my site looks good according to you, I'll be leaving this forum and leave my site be, adding content like an actualy webmaster should.

oh and all that *****ing i did earlier? i was in a bad mood. always am :p

[PeOfEo]

the busy look just looks like chaos to me. Keep it tidy, keep it simple. If you want busy put entertaining content on the site. Content > layout.

[Ben Rogers]

Originally posted by PeOfEo
I would ditch the background and go with a small tiled image or a solid color. Having huge background images, that the user has to download, is not exactly a good idea ever, especially when your host is qeocities and your bandwidth is capped.

i might do that, take out the bg. tiled images always bug me tho... ill instantly hate any site that uses them. except penny-arcade.com. theyre special :P

[Ben Rogers]

Originally posted by PeOfEo
the busy look just looks like chaos to me. Keep it tidy, keep it simple. If you want busy put entertaining content on the site. Content > layout.

i plan to work on content as soon as i get a solid visual design, like i said.

[PeOfEo]

well good luck with that 16.6 megabit (pretty sure its bit) / day bandwidth cap per day on geocities. Your site will be hitting that cap after a few hits with big images like that. If you want to do that, find a new host.

[Ben Rogers]

ok, ill take out the background. its the only image hosted on my site besides the 1kb darkening image- the fictionpress.com 1 is hosted on fictionpress.com and is used cuz theyre a good site with "written" content, and the javascript.internet.com thing is because i got my games there, and thats hosted there too.

[Paul Jr]

Originally posted by omega
the fictionpress.com 1 is hosted on fictionpress.com
........
the javascript.internet.com thing is because i got my games there, and thats hosted there too.
Isn't that called bandwidth theft?

[PeOfEo]

useing multible sources can be very bad, looping in multiple servers like that will just increae the site load time. I did not say get rid of images on another server, just make them lean if you host them on geocities because I know that geocities caps stuff low.. I see the little out of bandwidth mesages at member sites here all the time. I host images off of webmatrix on comcast, but that is because I pay for that server space since they are my cable provider I get a butt load of space on their servers.

[Ben Rogers]

no i use the fictionpress image to link to fictionpress, and same with the javascript.internet.com... you should click them, there's some good stuff there. i dont think theyd mind my attempts to get them visitors.

[Paul Jr]

I got this out of your source:

<img src="http://javascript.internet.com/img/tjsbutton.gif" alt="The Javascript Source- where I got the above games." />

You are linking to an image that is not on your server. Everytime someone visits your page, a request is sent to javascript.internet.com's server for that image. I am quite sure that's called bandwidth theft.

[PhillMc]

I see improvement :). Offering the user a choice of how they want the site to look I think is always a good thing. (Advice: Change list of Color Schemes to a combo box, links are running into your body text).

The colors are toned down a bit (only a little bit) and is not as hard on the eyes, but I still favor subtile colors (as do most ppl)

There is one fundamental LAW each programmer (software or web) should follow. K.I.S.S (Keep It Simple, Stupid). Meaning, the simplest way is almost always the best way.

Like I said, it's improved, but still needs work :)

[Ben Rogers]

ok well that works... was gonna ask if i did anything right. the right intrinsic for an action to happen after selecting a dropdown would be onselect="... right? and also, ill just make a style with a simple layout, and a style with bland.. i mean subtle colors. also what exactly do you mean by subtle colors, because i have a thing against white backgrounds.... like black, shades of gray, and white text? that sort of thing?

[Bigjohn]

Originally posted by Paul Jr
I got this out of your source:

<img src="http://javascript.internet.com/img/tjsbutton.gif" alt="The Javascript Source- where I got the above games." />

You are linking to an image that is not on your server. Everytime someone visits your page, a request is sent to javascript.internet.com's server for that image. I am quite sure that's called bandwidth theft.

just my 0.02, but it's not theft if you're crediting someone and including a referral link.

[PhillMc]

Originally posted by Paul Jr
I got this out of your source:

<img src="http://javascript.internet.com/img/tjsbutton.gif" alt="The Javascript Source- where I got the above games." />

You are linking to an image that is not on your server. Everytime someone visits your page, a request is sent to javascript.internet.com's server for that image. I am quite sure that's called bandwidth theft.

I'm not sure, but I know they will be pretty pissed to know that you are taking bandwidth from them each time someone visits your site. It would be best that you download/save the image and post it directly onto your site. (Unless javascript.com has given you permission to use their bandwidth, which I doubt).

[Ben Rogers]

actually they have given me permission.

http://javascript.internet.com/link-us.html

that should explain it.

[Daniel T]

javascript.internet.com has givin him permission, as is explained in the link he posted above (http://javascript.internet.com/link-us.html)
-Dan

[Ben Rogers]

Originally posted by Bigjohn
just my 0.02, but it's not theft if you're crediting someone and including a referral link.

thats what i think as well... theyll see that image when they go to heir site anyways...

[Paul Jr]

Lol. :D In that case, I crave pardon. I was not aware of that. :o

[Ben Rogers]

youre fogiven, pardoned the whole schpeil :)

[PeOfEo]

#1 look at this
http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=http%3A//www.geocities.com/otacon2662/projep/
fix it. Not specifying a doc type means the browser goes into quriks mode. That is probably the single biggest error you can make in web design. If you dont specify a doctype dont call it a website, call it... something else.
#2 when I validate it with a 4.01 transitional doc type here is the lengthy error list
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.geocities.com%2Fotacon2662%2Fprojep%2F&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=HTML+4.01+Transitional&verbose=1
#3 find a new host, geocities is about the worst host out there. They have no server side language support, rape users with ads, and they are coughing up invalid code in their ads. Even though it is free I would still call it a rip off, thats how bad they are. They are stealing your time and you users time with ads and pocketing the penny for every hit you get or however much they make.

[Ben Rogers]

well they are free, i dont have to pay anything, provide email, have a built in ftp program that you just click, browse, and lcik and your done, let you edit the pages while on the server, and have a near 100% uptime. the ads are the only downfall, but hey they gotta make money, too right? also i got the page to validate with an xhtml strict, but that was offline without the ad code. also i dont know of a free web server with no errors in their code.

[PeOfEo]

There are better hosts with less abnoxious ads. If they are going to have so many ads they better atleast give you server side scripting options. Also ftp is a benefit not a downfall. Also you do not need a program to use it. Windows has built in ftp. All you have to do to access a web hosts ftp folder is in a regular folders address bar type
ftp://you@you.host.com orwhatever it is, it will prompt you for a login which you can store. You copy and paste like a normal folder. You can upload as many files as you want at a time. Forms suck.

[Paul Jr]

Originally posted by PeOfEo
Forms suck.
Lol. :p

Although Geocities' form of uploading files is not a bad thing, I don't see how it's any better than an FTP Program. And I also don't see what's so bad about using an FTP program? FTP Programs allow you to do much more than just upload 20 files (Geocities' max) files at one time. I don't know what I would do without my WS_FTP LE. ;)

[Ben Rogers]

i like the forms. all simple and stuff. and i have NO idea what youre talking about, maybe because ive always used GeoCities. and name one of these hosts plz :):)

[PeOfEo]

If you use ftp, you will never go back to a form based upload. It is just like going into any other folder on your comp, except this folder the ftp folder, exists on the internet. I have a shortcut to it on my desktop for speed.

[spufi]

Originally posted by PeOfEo
If you use ftp, you will never go back to a form based upload. It is just like going into any other folder on your comp, except this folder the ftp folder, exists on the internet. I have a shortcut to it on my desktop for speed.

Agreed. I was working on a site for a friend and for some reason I couldn't use FTP just yet because not everything was set up. I then went and logged on to their control panel to manage their site and I so wanted to beat my head into a wall after that.

[Ben Rogers]

well theres ftp on t35.com but i couldnt get onto it, my computer wouldnt let me ("access denied") i'll have to try again later...