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New site, NO CONTENT, Unfinished

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Rick Stirling polycounter lvl 18
I've developed on my Mac using Firefox as the testbed. There are few HTML/CSS Validation errors I need to fix (but Golive is downloading all my code at the minute).

I just need a few folk to check it on PCs using Opera, IE etc to see that it looks correct.

On a good browser the nav tabs and main drop shadow should be semi transparent (except the active/hover tabs). On IE 6 the CSS should degrade to use 1bit GIF alpha.

http://www.rsart.co.uk/

Oh, and the gallery will be handled by The Gallery. Very little content, and it's not using my stylesheet yet, and the php will be hacked:

http://www.rsart.co.uk/rsartv3/gallery/main.php

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  • MoP
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    MoP polycounter lvl 18
    Noice. Looks fine in PC Firefox here, mostly ok in IE6, as you mentioned the main drop shadow looks dodgy in IE but not bad enough for anyone to really notice if they don't know what it's meant to look like smile.gif
    The buttons also aren't semitransparent in IE, however the text goes red on rollover.

    The nav buttons aren't meant to be working yet, right?

    I like how you're not sure what's going in the right-hand box wink.gif ...why is it even there?!

    Anyway, looks pretty clean and working to me. Get it finished! smile.gif
  • Rick Stirling
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    Rick Stirling polycounter lvl 18
    Cheers!

    Nope, nav buttons go nowhere yet.

    Thanks for the red text I navigation - I'll bun in extra stuff in my stylesheet as soon as Golive is unlocked.

    I do know what is going in in the right box - at the time I hadn't sorted out what bits were going where. It'll only be on the front page probably - its just a nice little content holder.

    I'm looking at some more php fucntionality - Ideally I want a content management system, so the content page page will be dynamic and just link to the latest stuff.

    The links will be the same - I'll be able to log in and add them to categoies, they will automagikly update.

    If anyone is using IE7 beta, all the semitransparent stuff and drop shadows should look right to them.
  • Gmanx
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    Gmanx polycounter lvl 19
    Rick, have you seen the IE tab plug-in for firefox? It's dead handy for web authors, you can switch back and forth from firefox to IE in the same tab. I noticed atrait away that the top buttons have odd square edges in IE.

    https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=1419
  • Rick Stirling
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    Rick Stirling polycounter lvl 18
    Square edges? What version of IE are you using? 6+ uses gifs with alpha, 7+ uses the PNG files.

    I'm on a mac, so I CAN'T embed IE, since the last Mac IE was 5.5, a disaster. No bugger uses it, they either use FF or Safari for the most part.


    Doesn't work with Firefox 2.0a anyway smile.gif
  • MoP
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    MoP polycounter lvl 18
    He's right actually, it seems IE6 isn't using the transparency at all. Here's a screenshot:

    rsart.jpg
  • Rick Stirling
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    Rick Stirling polycounter lvl 18
  • Rick Stirling
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    Rick Stirling polycounter lvl 18
    It's not using the correct images either. GRR!
  • MoP
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    MoP polycounter lvl 18
    Heh, I know how you feel... trying to get my site to look right on IE6 was like getting blood from a stone ... it's still not 100% right actually but AFAIK there's no way to fix the problem with mine in IE6. Fortunately it's not really noticeable unless you have Firefox and IE open side by side.
  • Rick Stirling
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    Rick Stirling polycounter lvl 18
    THere was a CSS bug, fixed in FF now, and hopefully in IE.
  • MoP
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    MoP polycounter lvl 18
    This is what it looks like now:

    rsart2.jpg

    Any reason why Home is capitalised but the other buttons aren't?
  • Rick Stirling
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    Rick Stirling polycounter lvl 18
    Cos I typed it wrong.

    Thats not important - why is the text red, and underlined? Those links are supposed to be white. Why is the home tab missing?

    What browser are you running for those grabs? Erik did some grabs for me in IE 6 and they don't look like that - they like nicely degraded gif images.
  • MoP
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    MoP polycounter lvl 18
    Internet Explorer says it's version 6.0.2900.2180 ... so... IE6!

    However Internet Explorer seems very variable! Looking at my site on IE6 on certain computers causes rollover errors (as Thnom posted in my thread a while back) ... I still didn't figure that one out. Stupid browser bug I guess.
  • hawken
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    hawken polycounter lvl 19
    nice florals wink.gif

    works fine on my mac, except the buttons don't go anywhere
  • Sage
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    Sage polycounter lvl 19
    Hi, nice site Rick. I had problem with your site in IE 6 similar to Mop. The alphas work but the home button doesn't load. The text on the button turns red after they have been visited and they get underlined as well. In Firefox I noticed that the images of the button get a border after they have been clicked on. I think you have to specify border = 0 to get rid of that. I did that for my site since that was happening and it stopped after that. Look forward to seeing it finished.

    Alex
  • Rick Stirling
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    Rick Stirling polycounter lvl 18
    Cheers Hawken. Nope, the nav goes nowhere, I had to get the front page working on all browers before I ported the design over to the other sections.

    Sage - you've nailed the red problem for me. I hadn't defined the a:visited colour for the nav bar. That's hopefully fixed now.

    border = 0 is a depreciated HTML tag - everythng is done in CSS now. But they don't get a border for me in Firefox, unless you mean the selection marquee? That was jut becasue after the click, it wasn't loading a page. I've forced it to reload the current page, so that should be gone now too.


    here has been no formattng doen on it yet, but yesterday I uploaded all my desktop grabs : http://www.rsart.co.uk/rsartv3/gallery/main.php
  • Rick Stirling
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    Rick Stirling polycounter lvl 18
    Just one bug left - IE not loading the navbar gif image - but that seems like a corrupt image problem.

    FIXED.

    Found nother underline bug though. Roll on the mandatory IE7 rollout.
  • hawken
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    hawken polycounter lvl 19
    if you're having problems with the navigation looking odd on other browsers, why not just do the whole thing in flash?

    Flash is built for this kind of thing, where as sadly, a combination of css and javascript, is not.
  • Rick Stirling
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    Rick Stirling polycounter lvl 18
    Cos then I'd have to learn flash.
  • hawken
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    hawken polycounter lvl 19
  • KDR_11k
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    KDR_11k polycounter lvl 18
    Flash won't work on most embedded devices. Do Intel Macs and 64bit Windows have Flash yet?
  • hawken
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    hawken polycounter lvl 19
    erm yes

    http://www.flashinsider.com/2006/03/15/flash-player-for-intel-macs-updated-and-released/

    I doubt vista ships without it.

    flash is viewable by 98% of internet users or something rediculously high like that. What do you mean by "embedded"? Works on my phone even... and my dreamcast!
  • Gmanx
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    Gmanx polycounter lvl 19
    I don't know why flash gets such a bashing. Maybe it's all those long drawn-out 'I'm-so-up-my-own-arse' intros and such. At a basic level I'd agree that flash is very handy. I've been animating with it since version 1.
  • MoP
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    MoP polycounter lvl 18
    Yeah, I think the problem with Flash is that a lot of people don't know how to use it effectively. I've seen a whole ton of Flash websites, and only a few actually warranted the use of Flash at all, and those were the ones designed by big, pro design houses for the most part. In the hands of a master, a Flash-built website can be stunning. In the hands of most other people it just looks shit.
  • rollin
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    rollin polycounter
    there´s always something between.. mop...

    but back to topic: the site is nice but i miss some more identity.. i realy like the pattern in the background.. would be nice ( e.g. ) if this "idear" is picked up by the page itself. but maybe this is not the direction you want to go.. but thats the problem.. i don´t know in wich direction you want your site to go.. so i looks a bit .. confusing?!
    but nevermind.. just trying to explain what I think smile.gif

    ps: ie is da fuck wink.gif
  • lio
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    lio polycounter lvl 18
    Even though it´s not really related to the topic and noone asked me I´ll throw in what I hate about bad flash websites where the entire site is made of flash and not just a few buttons:
    the browser 'back' button never seems to work...it always takes you back to somewhere where you didn´t want to go and that really turns me off...
    Just needed to speak that out in the open once smile.gif

    The site in question displays fine here (using firefox 1.5.0.1) it looks good in IE6, too except that none of transparency works (buttons and shadow) - the fonts and all the rest looks the same in both browsers...I tried something similar a while back (where I wanted text to "fade in" by overlaying the bottom of the frame with a semi transparent version of the background) but the only way I could get it to work was using 1bit gif transparency which ended up so ugly that I dropped the idea again - it´s a shame that the browser most people are still using can´t display some of the standards properly...
  • notman
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    notman polycounter lvl 18
    Tested in IE7 and it works fine... transparencies and alignment. Only difference I noticed was the text was underlined in IE7 (until you hover).

    The design looks good btw smile.gif
  • Sage
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    Sage polycounter lvl 19
    [ QUOTE ]


    Sage - you've nailed the red problem for me. I hadn't defined the a:visited colour for the nav bar. That's hopefully fixed now.

    border = 0 is a depreciated HTML tag - everythng is done in CSS now. But they don't get a border for me in Firefox, unless you mean the selection marquee? That was jut becasue after the click, it wasn't loading a page. I've forced it to
    http://www.rsart.co.uk/rsartv3/gallery/main.php

    [/ QUOTE ]

    Rick I still see the selection marquee thing when I click in Firefox. The funny thing is that it doesn't happen in IE 6. I just thought you might want to know. Things seem to work correctly in IE 6 smile.gif Things are looking good. Oh I never use CSS since when I learned html and web design they never fully worked so I never bothered with it. wink.gif I was wondering if you thought the constant loading of a new background theme got a bit distracting. I don't mind it if it loads a new theme everytime I load the entire site once, but I just noticed that it changes everytime I click on a link on your site. I started thinking that maybe it's too much... I don't know if it bothers me so I was wondering what others were thinking about it. I like how it looks though, nice work.

    Alex
  • MoP
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    MoP polycounter lvl 18
    AFAIK there's no way to get rid of the selection marquee when someone clicks a link, Sage... that's common behaviour in all HTML/CSS stuff, I think the only way you can get away from that is by using Flash.

    I'm kinda agreeing on the changing background though ... it seems a tad too much, alternating every time I click something ... kinda detracts from the consistency of the site a little, maybe? Might just be a taste thing.
  • Blaizer
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    Blaizer interpolator
    Hey Rick,

    I don't know if you used this for the png issue, anyways here is:

    http://webfx.eae.net/dhtml/pngbehavior/pngbehavior.html

    It works fine and it's quite easy to use.

    BTW nice site laugh.gif
  • Rick Stirling
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    Rick Stirling polycounter lvl 18
    My background will be changing, I like it.

    The way the site works is that on every page the header and background are pointed to a rotate.php in a folder, and randomly choose an image from the folder.

    Distracting? One wallpaper is more distracting than another? No, I do not believe so. Primary red to green, yes, but grey on grey to grey on grey, no.

    As for use of png file, yes I have reseached it.

    Basically, IE is a bad browser, and all the hacks get worse, I am using TRANSPARENT png as LINKS and as BACKGROUND images - IE <7 dies, unless my HTML was encoded for it. At one point you say - IE FUCK OFF.

    Why should I make the lowest common denominator of STYLE (not content) a browser that hs failed to meet the ideals of an 9 year old specification.
  • MoP
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    MoP polycounter lvl 18
    Exactly Rick! Stick it to the man smile.gif
  • poopinmymouth
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    poopinmymouth polycounter lvl 19
    What exactly is your intention with this site?

    Right now it looks like a very standard, very boring, blog. Run of the mill. If I didn't know you designed it, I'd say it looks like a downloadable template. The backgrounds don't really seem to add anything, maybe you are going to eventually make them personal art, or photography? If you are planning to stick with wallpaper esque designs, it's going to be boring.

    When I look at your portfolio, I should think artist, and more specifically, Rick Stirling. Right now I think random webblogger #4532.

    Try getting something unique or with personality, format for 1024x768, and figure out something that works with IE, especially since it's still the worlds primary webbrowser.

    It's technically ok as far as making a website, but if you're going for something interesting or engaging, I'd say it needs more work.


    poop.gif
  • Rick Stirling
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    Rick Stirling polycounter lvl 18
    I utterly disagree with everything you just said.
  • hawken
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    hawken polycounter lvl 19
    [ QUOTE ]

    Basically, IE is a bad browser, and all the hacks get worse, I am using TRANSPARENT png as LINKS and as BACKGROUND images - IE <7 dies, unless my HTML was encoded for it. At one point you say - IE FUCK OFF.

    Why should I make the lowest common denominator of STYLE (not content) a browser that hs failed to meet the ideals of an 9 year old specification.

    [/ QUOTE ]

    yes and no.

    IE sort of went it's own way and made up it's own standards while no one else was looking. PNG support has been a long time coming because actually, it has rather crappy gamma support. I guess someone somewhere exported the microsoft logo and was prodded in the head by a superior for having the colours come out too bright in 24bit.

    I used to make sites for IE only, not really caring what it looked like on others because IE has all the bells and whistles. Now that other browsers have caught up and possibly surpassed IE, I make my websites work in IE and CSS2/XHTML compliant browsers. Mostly I focus on firefox but also keep a keen eye out to make sure my basic layout doesn't break in IE.

    I think you need to drop the idea of haing "transparent this or dynamic that". Doing so will just drive you nuts when it comes to cross-browser compatibility. Saying "fuck IE" is really saying "fuck all the potential clients that look at my site".

    Simplicity can work in your favour, make things simple, drop things that don't work in IE/FF/opera/safari unless you can make a unified and stable fix within a few tens of minutes of tinkering.

    My homepage is fairly complex but its "simple complex".

    My suggestion for making the menu in flash still stands, it would save you a lot of time and headache, even not knowing flash I'm sure you could make the menu in a day.

    Wallpaper rocks, right on for keeping it!
  • Rick Stirling
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    Rick Stirling polycounter lvl 18
    Ah, but what I did in this case was elegent degrading - so IE7, Firefox, Safari, Opera et al get the bells and whistles.

    IE6 gets the same site, the same content, but doesn't get see through buttons. It uses 1 bit gif alpha to punch the corners off the tabs.

    So it looks the same in all browsers, but some look better than others.

    At the minute everything validates xhtml/css wise, and is easy to maintain.

    For the most part the css is named in a generic way - not stuff like .redtext or .thetopleftbit. There are few names that I will change however.

    I love the wallpaper, I will be putting in credit to the site who provided them - http://www.theinspirationgallery.com/wallpaper/damask/wp_damask01.htm
  • noritsune
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    noritsune polycounter lvl 17
    my feeling on the wallpaper is that the designs and colors are, while pretty, very soft and passive and easy to ignore, bordering on uninteresting. That said, I think they are beautiful patterns with a lot of potential to kick ass. I just dont see them being used in a situation which subverts or challenges their passive quality, or provides an exciting contrast to that passive quality in any way. make any sense?
  • Rick Stirling
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    Rick Stirling polycounter lvl 18
  • Serp
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    Serp polycounter lvl 17
    It takes 5 clicks to get to one of your models.I can't decide wether this is a joke website or not. That desktop picture of a woman smiling with a watermelon on her face says yes and so does the advert with Rhinos humping eachother and the photo of a ceiling. Is it? becuase if it isn't than I'm being very rude and I'm sorry.
  • Rick Stirling
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    Rick Stirling polycounter lvl 18
    smile.gif

    What do you think the point of it is?

    If I had made a site to show off my 3d models, it would not have looked like that.
  • Rick Stirling
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    Rick Stirling polycounter lvl 18
    You're not a fan of my photography or my desktops then?
  • pior
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    pior grand marshal polycounter
    Hey Rick! It's cool that everything is css ready for future changes. So handy! Cool backgrounds, nice photography flair, yay!

    Yet I think it's a bit of a shame than such a flexible structure design is used to power something that is very familiar looking - macish/blogish/dottedlines layout.

    Could you clarify if this is a blog or a portfolio? I cannot really tell atm and most of the crits and comments I wanted to formulate might not apply, depending if it is the former or the latter.

    (but in any case... the white 1 pix outline is not fitting the 5ish pix margin that is all around the main page, just outside the green outlined boxes)
  • Rick Stirling
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    Rick Stirling polycounter lvl 18
    It is a blog site, trying to use are much "web2.0" as possible. Horrible buzzword.

    The gallery will hold my artwork, but since thats on the server, when I do my portfolio site I can use a different system to pull in the content.

    The content will follow - it's going to collect all my games industry essays and tutorial amongst other things.

    The 1 pixel border - gah! thats my background image, I need to adjust that! It's leaking a little smile.gif I sized up the site, and missed the size of the background.
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