pet project done!

[Mark A. Boyd]

richard posted in alt.html:

So WTF am I supposed to do people?
Draw viewers a frickin road map to the scroll bar?

Do you often visit sites where clicking something doesn't appear to change
anything?

Like sheesh, it's as if you people never saw a web site with a scroll
bar before.

If you don't understand the "below the fold" concept, I'm sorry I mentioned
it.

Yes I have tested the site in varying fonts and font sizes just to see
how it would look. I am aware of the problem and am trying to fix it.

I don't expect viewers to have such extreme fonts.

Speaking for myself, just the default font and size for FireFox 2 on Windows
XP.

Your CSS suggests the larger font size to use (twice with different specs for
..a1).

I hope you don't get bent all out of shape for my mentioning it.

 

[Chaddy2222]

Some day in the future, you're going to read this exchange, and feel
terribly embarrassed at how childish it is.

richard, every constructive input directed to your pet project has been met
with your defenses. Can't you stand the heat of well-intentioned criticism?
Notwithstanding the incredible risk I perceive I face, I'll attempt to
convey good news and bad news to you.

The good news is that other than neglecting the Fifties, the real birth of
the 'Oldies,' your site idea and service is good. (You might enjoy the files
in <http://www.edbjay/top40_1930-2000.zip>. Lists all the #1 hits from 1930
to 2000.)

The bad news is that if you want to be proud of your site, you are not close
to being finished. IMO it's an error in judgment to not use strict. (Think
standard...not quirks.) But, I like your IFrame reasoning. Then, there's the
esthetics...the site sucks, big time. In a nutshell, your content appears
good, if but incomplete; it's now time to pay attention to artistic design.
Good luck.

I think your comments are fare on this Ed. But as an example what do
you think of my main site.
In other words, do you think it is as bad as some people think it
is.Keeping in mind that it does meet the needs of the target market.

 

[dorayme]

browsers
don't do nearly as good a job at resizing as an image-editing app like
Photoshop or Gimp will do.

In general, no. But the common man would be hard put to tell the
differences if the images were sized down by up to 75% (perhaps even
more) by many modern browsers.

 

[richard]

richard posted in alt.html:


Do you often visit sites where clicking something doesn't appear to change
anything?


If you don't understand the "below the fold" concept, I'm sorry I mentioned
it.

I know what you meant. When I see the scroll bar doesn't go all the
way to the bottom, that tells me there is more than I can see. Isn't
that the basic reasoning behind a scroll bar?

Generally, when I view a site, I have a look down the entire page
before I go clicking on anything.

Speaking for myself, just the default font and size for FireFox 2 on Windows
XP.

Your CSS suggests the larger font size to use (twice with different specs for
.a1).

I don't try assigning fixed font sizes except where I feel it's
necessary. I mainly rely on em's for sizing. I don't like reading
sites that use fixed sizes like 8pt or less. I try to let the user use
his own.

I also avoid setting font families unless I want to try for a certain
look.

KISS. Keep It Simple, Stupid.

I hope you don't get bent all out of shape for my mentioning it.

Just an average day.

 

[cwdjrxyz]

http://oldies.1littleworld.com/

Well I finally got the last section of it done this morning.
The top 100 charts show cashbox and billboard side by side.

I'll now be working on a way to show a calendar within the song names
list so you can see how they ranked each week.

You appear to have been working on your site, so what I say may or may
not still apply.

A line of code "<div><li>Billboard" appears after html is closed. I
assume this is garbage that got in by accident. If you remove it from
the source code and validate at W3C using direct code input, the page
will validate as html 4.01 transitional and as css.

You can also validate as html 4.01 strict at w3c using direct code
input and overriding the transitional Doctype. Here you get about 7
errors as strict. There are a few "strict" things such as name not
being allowed. However the main errors are related to iframe, as html
4.01 strict does not allow iframes or regular frames either. In other
words, you can not use iframes in html 4.01 strict if you wish to
validate. However iframes still usually will work in 4.01 strict if
you do not mind the validation errors related to their use.

I am not going to mention anything about how the page looks, just the
above technical comments concerning code. You have had plenty of
comments from others concerning the looks of the page.

 

[Travis Newbury]

In other words, do you think it is as bad as some people think it
is.Keeping in mind that it does meet the needs of the target market.

"Bad" is in the eyes of the beholder. To me, I think the site looks
childish and amateur. It looks like a site that I would expect to see
from a 6th grader. Graphically it is even worse. But that's me.
Others find the things I like in a site to be very distracting. They
might say your site is awesome.

Bottom line, does your site do it for you and your target audience?
If so, then good job, that is what you are trying to accomplish. With
the exception of code specific issues (which are measurable) asking
how someone likes your site as meaningful as asking someone what their
favorite color is...

Then arguing with they about why they are wrong...

 

[Travis Newbury]

Is *any* web site ever really done?

Aren't those lyrics from a Chicago song? Does anyone really care?

 

[Sherm Pendley]

I think your comments are fare on this Ed. But as an example what do
you think of my main site.
In other words, do you think it is as bad as some people think it
is.Keeping in mind that it does meet the needs of the target market.

Good color choices for the most part. Many people forget (or never
knew) the concept of a palette, with the result of an "angry fruit
salad" look of every color in the rainbow.

The exception being the footer - it's a little too low-contrast to be
easily readable.

There's one validation error, but it's for an id attribute in a meta
element. Given that browsers are required to ignore attributes they
don't know about, I don't think that's doing any real harm.

The footer is indented at the right and left by a tiny amount - just a
pixel or two, I think. That gives the impression that you tried to
make it aligned with the body margins, but failed somehow. Also, (and
this is related) the left margin of the body text does not line up
with that of the nav bar.

One principle in graphic design is establishing lines for the eyes to
follow. The body text and nav bar text should share the same left
margin. The left and right borders on the footer should line up with
either the borders of the body and navbar, or with the text margins in
those elements.

The logo looks like something one could do in about 30 seconds with
one of the GIMP's logo maker scripts. The border on its right and
bottom looks like a failed attempt at a drop shadow.

Overall, it strikes me as being made by someone with a reasonable
intuitive sense of what looks good and what doesn't, but no formal
training in graphic arts or design.

sherm--

 

[Sherm Pendley]

Aren't those lyrics from a Chicago song?

I can't recall the lyrics to a single Chicago song, so I have no
idea.

sherm--

 

[Ari Heino]

Perhaps that would be better served as a separate page rather than in a

I prefer the iframe as then you don't have to hit the back button or
close out another window. Things may change in the near future as I
have changed this thing a dozen times at least.

Doesn't this prove that even you are unsatisfied with the current solution?

 

[Ari Heino]

But the common man would be hard put to tell the

differences if the images were sized down by up to 75% (perhaps even
more) by many modern browsers.

Yeah, but it's still a bad idea to waste bandwidth to load a 1024 x 768
px image and then shrink it to eg. 400 x 300 px. It's very annoying.

 

[richard]

Some day in the future, you're going to read this exchange, and feel
terribly embarrassed at how childish it is.

richard, every constructive input directed to your pet project has been met
with your defenses. Can't you stand the heat of well-intentioned criticism?
Notwithstanding the incredible risk I perceive I face, I'll attempt to
convey good news and bad news to you.

The good news is that other than neglecting the Fifties, the real birth of
the 'Oldies,' your site idea and service is good. (You might enjoy the files
in <http://www.edbjay/top40_1930-2000.zip>. Lists all the #1 hits from 1930
to 2000.)

I'm not interested in #1 hits alone. The basic idea of my site was to
present ALL of the tunes and artists from every week and year. As
there is an interest in the mp3 groups for this.

Cashbox is the only site to list the entire years by week as well as
by year. Billboard does not list by the week.

And yes, I will include later not only the fifties, but the seventies
as well.

The bad news is that if you want to be proud of your site, you are not close
to being finished. IMO it's an error in judgment to not use strict. (Think
standard...not quirks.) But, I like your IFrame reasoning. Then, there's the
esthetics...the site sucks, big time. In a nutshell, your content appears
good, if but incomplete; it's now time to pay attention to artistic design.
Good luck.

As I have said, I've changed the look a dozen times already and may
change it again.

I've seen many sites that list year end charts but so far, have never
seen any site that lists ALL of the songs for an entire year in
alphabetical order. My main idea behind this was to give the mp3
groups some sort of reference for collecting purposes. So that they
could see that a certain tune actually had several releases by
different artists. For instance, "Look for a star", was performed by 5
different artists in the same year.

I also intend on including a lot more information about each
tune/artist. Sort of a one stop thing instead of hunting through
numerous sites for it.

 

[Neredbojias]

I can't recall the lyrics to a single Chicago song, so I have no
idea.

Waiting for the break of day
Searching for something to say
Flashing lights against the sky
Giving up I close my eyes
Sitting cross-legged on the floor
25 or 6 to 4

Staring blindly into space
Getting up to splash my face
Wanting just to stay awake
Wondering how much I can take
Should I try to do some more
25 or 6 to 4

Feeling like I ought to sleep
Spinning room is sinking deep
Searching for something to say
Waiting for the break of day
25 or 6 to 4

25 or 6 to 4

 

[dorayme]

But the common man would be hard put to tell the
differences if the images were sized down by up to 75% (perhaps even
more) by many modern browsers.

Yeah, but it's still a bad idea to waste bandwidth to load a 1024 x 768
px image and then shrink it to eg. 400 x 300 px. It's very annoying.[/QUOTE]

Yes, any message that strikes at the limitations of the official church
message is immediately followed by further enunciations of the church
teachings. There are many bad things in the world and there are a
million ways that it is wrong not to prepare pics for the size needed.
But why waste an opportunity to discuss the advantages of getting the
pic down to close to what you want and tweaking (down only) by HTML in
various situations?

 

[Chris F.A. Johnson]

browsers don't do nearly as good a job at resizing as an
image-editing app like Photoshop or Gimp will do.

I have found that a browser will do just as good a job as an
image-editing program will do without any tweaking. Whether an imae
resizes well depends on the quality og the image itself more than
the software used to resize it. An image that doesn't resize well
in a browser generally doesn't fare any better with Gimp or
ImageMagick.

 

[Sherm Pendley]

I have found that a browser will do just as good a job as an
image-editing program will do without any tweaking.

That's a good point. I'm used to working with designers who'd always
adjust the smaller version after resizing it, to make sure that small
details don't get lost. Some would even make a simpler version of the
large image, that would still "capture the essence" of the image when
it was reduced in size.

An image that doesn't resize well
in a browser generally doesn't fare any better with Gimp or
ImageMagick.

Yeah, it's not that the image-editing app gets it better on the first
try. It's just that, if you rely on the browser to resize it, you
don't get a chance to check the results and make any necessary
changes.

sherm--

 

[Chris F.A. Johnson]

That's a good point. I'm used to working with designers who'd always
adjust the smaller version after resizing it, to make sure that small
details don't get lost. Some would even make a simpler version of the
large image, that would still "capture the essence" of the image when
it was reduced in size.


Yeah, it's not that the image-editing app gets it better on the first
try. It's just that, if you rely on the browser to resize it, you
don't get a chance to check the results and make any necessary
changes.

If I'm going to allow an image to be resized by the browser (and I
do find using % widths very useful), I check with a program such as
ImageMagick's 'display' and see how it resizes over as wide a range
as a browser is likely to need. If it doesn't look good, I don't
use it, or create a better version (which is often a trade-off
between quality and file size).