New look baby, yeah!

Details of updates to SFXB
AndyThomas
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New look baby, yeah!

Post by AndyThomas »

I've been deep, deep into HTML handcoding land this weekend and as a result the entire site has had a revamp.  Now, at this point there are still a few things I need to tinker with, mainly to do with the flow through the site and some new scripts I've added, but it should operate largely as before.The major change is that the width of the pages is now "fixed" for a 800 screen.  So, as with this forum, if you're looking at the site in 1024 by 768 you won't get the full stretch.  As I've come to appreciate with my new kit, it can be a bit tricky to scan across the whole monitor in 1024 just to read one line of text.When I get into the office I'll have a look at the site on 800 by 600 and decide if it's OK - I know the pages are going to be taller a lot of the time because of the three column approach, but I suspect it'll also make them easier to read.I've also listened to comments here and tweaked the navigation options.  Now, when you go into a subsection, you get its navigation options as you did before but the other options for the main section remain below the subsection pages.  I think this will answer the main issue with the older version of the site.  You'll see that I've also upped the number of drop down menus so you can now bounce around all the major sections from any page on the site - it had gotten to the point where the one menu just wasn't enough.  If you click on the ====== lines you can get to the index page for each section, BTW...So, quite a radical change from my point of view!  I'll be gradually swapping out more ads over the next few days - now that I'm buying games again I'll start adding in some ads for ones that I like...I hope the content contributors will appreciate that between this revamp and the pause due to new kit arriving I'm a little behind on actually updating/creating content - but I'll now be getting on to making the additions to Genesis, adding graphics to Paul Green's interview and putting together a reference pack for you 3D types.Well, there you have it... feedback on the new look, and in particular any problems, will be greatly appreciated...  
Andy Thomas - SFXB Webmaster and Forum Moderator
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Bradster
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New look baby, yeah!

Post by Bradster »

Aha! I real man like myself-- one who makes pages with RAW HTML CODE, not some nansy-pansy Wussy-wig editor. :biggrin: It looks very nice so far. I'll report any other bugs as I find them...(Edited by Bradster at 10:05 am on Mar. 4, 2002)(Edited by Bradster at 10:06 am on Mar. 4, 2002)
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Bradster
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New look baby, yeah!

Post by Bradster »

Okay, i had found a bug in the javascript, but it appears to just be an issue with this beta version of a browser I'm testing (that's what I edited out of the previous post). Everything's working fine in the "standard" IE and Mozilla.(Edited by Bradster at 10:08 am on Mar. 4, 2002)
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New look baby, yeah!

Post by Bradster »

Okay, this one's been verified. In both Internet Explorer (for Mac, yes, it uses a different rendering engine than the Windows version) and the recent cross-platform nightly builds of Mozilla, the new menus are misaligned. See below:I'll check the code in a few minutes and try to find a fix.
AndyThomas
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New look baby, yeah!

Post by AndyThomas »

Ah, that's interesting. Good to have a Mac user trying these things out. It may be to do with my placement of the closing <form> tag - if I put it inside the cell it renders a line break after the forms which I don't want, so I put it in the "void" between the cells which removes the problem but which may be causing the effect you're seeing. I'll have a look at it too - is it just the first one that's misaligned?
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Bradster
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New look baby, yeah!

Post by Bradster »

Quote Quote: from AndyThomas on 8:54 pm on Mar. 4, 2002Ah, that's interesting. Good to have a Mac user trying these things out.Ah, not just a Mac-user, but a rabid supporter of the Open Source project Mozilla. :biggrin:Yeah, it appears to be a mixup in the closing tags for form and td. There's also an extra p tag in there for no apparent reason. The first menu is done right; it's the others that are out of order.I'm glad my Mac-only browser "OmniWeb" has an auto-highlighting syntax checker. ;)I'll post a fixed version in few minutes...(Edited by Bradster at 9:41 pm on Mar. 4, 2002)(Edited by Bradster at 9:50 pm on Mar. 4, 2002)
AndyThomas
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New look baby, yeah!

Post by AndyThomas »

Yes, that's what it is - odd that IE on a Windows system didn't misread it actually, I'd have expected it to... It's probably because that was the one I was trying things out on, and forgot to put the fixed version on the prototype. I'll be doing another upload tonight so it'll be sorted then. Thanks for the spot Brad...
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Post by Bradster »

Okay, I fixed it. I tweaked a couple other things (just in that menu area) to be much more multi-browser and cross-platform friendly too.Download the fixed page from here.
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New look baby, yeah!

Post by AndyThomas »

Mhhmm, yup, right, ah. Yes, I agree on the table height think - I've already tweaked that. I'm not sure that the valign=center will make any odds - forms never seem to behave like that on Windows, but it's logical. The only problem is that you have, quite correctly, put the closing form tag after the closing select tag. But were you to look at that under Internet Explorer 6, you'd see that it forces the equivalent of a <p> underneath the form. Which I don't want! So although it's bad code, strictly speaking, my trick is to move the form close tag to a position where the <p> can't actually render itself. I know of nothing that says there should be an automatic <p> after a form, but I've seen other sites tackle it this way so I'm just going to cross my fingers on that one! Thanks for looking at it Brad - come the morning (my time) my tweaked version will be up. I was quite rushed over the weekend, thinking it all through and implementing it, so I'll probably be tidying it up all this week. I need to fix the Next and Back functionality as my next task, and I may well be doing more graphics for the navigation side of things now I have PSP7 - but easier to do buttons etc...
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New look baby, yeah!

Post by Bradster »

Wow-- that is indeed rather strange about IE on Windows. In Virtual PC I'm still running IE5, but I just checked and the bug appears there too. Well, leave it to Microsoft to make the most widely-used browser not follow HTML standards. ;) I'll see if I can find another workaround.Quote Quote: from AndyThomas on 10:47 pm on Mar. 4, 2002I'm not sure that the valign=center will make any odds - forms never seem to behave like that on Windows, but it's logical.Oh, the valign isn't exactly necessary because the default behaviour is to already vertically aligned to the center. However, if someone uses a custom CSS in their browser to adjust their default behaviors, the valign tag should override it. I think.... I may be mistaken, though, because I haven't worked with CSS in over a year.
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