Personally, I'm quite application-o-phobic. Hell, I'm still like a cat to water with photoshop. So, everything I make is done with code and basic paint programs.
Basically, it's a megaman fansite with a nostalgic design. It's a lot more busy, unlike the plain solids which everyone else seems to go with (but probably a bad thing).
BTW, What would you guys say is the best application for painting animated gifs and making pixel-by-pixel drawings? Everyone points to photoshop, but I don't really want to conform to such a crazy, high end program.
PS. don't forget to click on the lil' bat and megaman. I did that with some java knowledge I got from a cereal box.
Last edited by urquanmaster; 11-05-2005 at 10:21 PM.
Your site took a LONG time to load. You should probably validate your coding (http://validator.w3.org/), as well as look at the file sizes of your images.
FYI - no text was visible on your navigation menu. When I put the cursor over an image, white text did appear, but it took close to 3 sec. to do so. Your visitors may not be that patient.
KDLA
FYI
* My screen resolution is set at 1680x1050
* I'm accessing your site through a T1 line
* I'm probably viewing it using Firefox (unless browser is specified)
Is that your own server? I say that because I've never seen a big service running ubuntu before. Is it hooked to the net over DSL? It's really slow.
"Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it." Brian W. Kernighan
It didn't suit my tastes at all I'm afraid. I didn't check out your other stuff, just Megaman, so maybe the rest is better.
It took forever to render and never did fully. I never got any navigation text. I'd try to tone it all down some. Way down. The reason it's taking so long no doubt is you're using HUGE bitmap images. The site simply is not optimized for the web.
Ya, It's my own server running off the new Ubuntu breezy badger. I really like this new distrobution and recomend it to everyone. It is 64-bit capable and has a really good download manager. The whole setup is very choice.
I also prefer having my own server sevenfold to any hosting service because I don't have to deal with middlemen. It's wholy mine and I can do whatever I want with it.
Right now, I'm just running it off a normal connection out of my house. It's pretty slow, which really REALLY kills the whole amusement factor.
For the megaman site, I Thought that having nothing show up in the menu windows untill you hover your mouse over it was a good idea, but i guess the loading times just kill the experience.
When I actually get my stuff together and start a hosting service, I'll go with a more professional connection.
Oh, and hey, I just re-did my whole mainpage with css and php. It's so much more fun to add to now that I don't have to deal with that table nightmare. I just copy a new php template and away I go.
edit: I updated the links and took out that awful intro page. you might have just gotten a Css extension before.
Last edited by urquanmaster; 11-05-2005 at 10:46 PM.
Yes, I'm very impressed with the new ubuntu as a desktop.
"Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it." Brian W. Kernighan
The site looks good, but it does take a long time to load... and thats not just because its hosted on your home connection... the bmp's are huge, and the graphics are very simple (as in use very few colours etc as they are 'retro') so they could be compressed very well as either gif's of png's - paint just isnt capable of making graphics for the web... if you like open source stuff use The Gimp.
Also, if you want to host your own server, you should look into co-location hosting.
Urquanmaster, I don't understand how on earth the same person created the matrix page and the megaman page and the hidden grotto main page,,? The main page was built much better than the other two. Years better, really, in terms of experience. I'm assuming the design itself is part of a template? And avoiding middleman !> slow page time. Sorry.
On the main page, under 'developer trash,' you misspelled the word "engineering." I also stopped downloading them immediately when I saw that they were in a *.zip format. Why not provide a master link to each section and then small links to the rest of the examples within the package?
If you want some advice on your megaman page, do drop the bmps like everyone else has said.. your frameset is slightly annoying.. the little icons at top appear to be randomly placed.. unless that's the title thing that's still loading. Also, the little robot dog extends off the page. Okay, just kidding about the randomly placed icons. The green jungle scene just loaded. It looks pretty nice. Your page now *looks* a lot better to me.. but again, having a frameset is annoying.. no one uses frames anymore. Second scrollbars are just plain annoying. And please save off your bitmaps w/ photoshop (open them, alt+shift+ctrl+s, you can save them off as *.gif or *.png for web use.)
Well, think I'll take it as a compliment that you think I made my main page from a template! I'm glad it looks that professional. But, not only was it built by me alone, the main site was the first webpage I ever made. I've just had a lot of time to mold it and shape it for the better. Before, the formatting was all done done by tables (what a nightmare!) and I revised the whole thing with CSS just recently.
The matrix site is knowingly bad....very bad. It was just the outcome of learning and practicing examples from the book I was reading.
For the megaman site, it was basically the result of me finishing my HTML book and then building a webpage on the spot. The whole scrollbar thing was me experimenting with different types of navigation, instead of just having one uniform scroll. In hindsight, I can see why it's annoying because not all people have 1280X1024 resolution. Having a site with a scroll inside might be OK if there wasn't that dog sitting on the right which creates more scrollbars. I think I'll either remove him or put him under the navigation menu.
If it still looks bad, I'll probably just drop the whole scroll frame and let the content drop off the page...
Oh, and I'll DEFINATELY be creating pictures with gimp in the future without those bmp's.
Last edited by urquanmaster; 11-09-2005 at 03:20 PM.
A freeware program that I recently downloaded from Download.com is Ai
Picture Utility v8.1. I really like it. You can convert mostly anything in it. Does let you work with BMPs.
After reading recommendations on GIMP in the forum, I decided to give it a try. Never could figure out how to install it. Required too much.
Good Luck -
KDLA
FYI
* My screen resolution is set at 1680x1050
* I'm accessing your site through a T1 line
* I'm probably viewing it using Firefox (unless browser is specified)
They release one twice a year and the version is related to the release date. 5.04 was April 2005, 5.10 is October 2005. You can download the DVD and get both the live and install version together. The default desktop is Gnome but you can get a KDE version they call kubuntu. They're both quite nice. Though I'm mainly a KDE guy I like the app mix they have on ubuntu better than what's on kubuntu. Of course you can run them both and switch between if you want to.
"Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it." Brian W. Kernighan
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Originally Posted by ray326
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