Takozushi Watch Aug 24th!

[Mitsukara]

For what it's worth, some of us still use 1024x768 on a CRT, too, though... <<

[Coda]

Some netbooks run 800x600, too. My Internet Tablet runs 800x480.

[Relee]

In regards to site design, there are art sites and there are business sites. You made an art site. This good, because it is presenting art. I like it. It's a part of the experience. The website you make for your blockbuster film is different from the website you make for your film studio. One is made to enhance the film, hype it up and give people information within the context of hype and celebration. The other is a slightly dressy information dump.

The only thing that I wonder about is, aren't you going to be drawing Takozuchi in the style of a scroll painting, instead of a Kamishibai story? I bet you could do a really neat Flash-based Kamishibai, and integrate it right into the website, but I really doubt you want to. XD

[Alfador]

Well... the interface looks very nice and has a lot of character, but the thought of actually using it to navigate around brings me no joy. The inconsistency is one problem (clicking the news link brings me to an entirely different and unfamiliar interface). Another is that all the labels are together below all the buttons (rather than one label underneath each button), which is bad UI design. Potential easy fix for the latter: just make it so the labels are also links; a little redundancy never hurts. As for consistency, what would make the most sense to me would be if the different items (news etc.) loaded in the same Kamishibai panel where the comics will be displayed.

Hmmm... I am conflicted here.

I am aiming to achieve the emotional effect of a child trying to choose a candy they want in an original 1930 Kamishibai show (This? This? How about that???) as a feeling applied to navigating the interface. My hope was that initial confusion would give way to confident choice, but that the initial confusion would exist, if even for a moment.

I comprehend that this is bad interface design from a purely utilitarian view; the real question is whether my violation of utility is so terrible that it makes the site painful, rather than thematic and emotive. I am fearful that attaching links to the menu names will be so obvious and convenient that no one would think to click on the candies, and miss out on the very effect I am trying to achieve - which is read the candy menu, then actually select the treat.

I also wanted to have each location (rather like an adventure game, in my thoughts) have a slightly unique way of interaction - though following a general rule that the odd item out is the way back - in the news area it is the fan on the wall, in the omake area, it is the hanafuda card next to the go-board; each the odd item out.

I wanted to give a bit of the feeling of navigating locations: the Kamishibai bike in the park, the alcove in the wall of the home of the kamishibai-ya, the floor of the Kamishibai-ya's house, and so on.

I don't want to annoy, but I do want to achieve something more daring than easy utility.

Thoughts?

My thought is, if there's some way you can have popup text as you roll over the candy, so people can see exactly what they're going for without having to look away from the candy (to look at the status bar). Image alt-text works in some implementations, but I'm not sure how reliable it would be...

[Alfador]

As it is, the forum topbar shows 3/4ths of Chou and Uni at the far right on my gargantuan widescreen.

Zombie Jesus.

I made that Chou and Uni bar to be beyond anything I can actually see at one time. The Takozushi site is likewise beyond my screen capability at 1440 across. I can't even set my screen that high; I did it for Stephen who has a fancier monitor than me.

If I make things any bigger, they will rapidly exceed 200K in size, which is the largest object I have allowed myself, due to trying to make it possible for folks with slower connections to be able to see the site at all. As it is, Takozushi presents problems for Anna in Germany, and I am trying to shrink things to make it easier for her and others.

It is problematic.

Yeah... my LCD's native resolution is 1680x1050. What my thought was, instead of creating ever-increasing width images to satisfy the cravings of the wide-monitor crowd, it might be a good idea to have one decent-looking image that looks at your resolution the way you want it to, at the file size you want, and then a small, tesselatable image to be repeated off to the right so the background looks continuous even for possible far-future full-wall 1048576x655360 screens on which the actual website is a small portion of the upper-left corner--during, of course, the few milliseconds before the auto-zoom function on the viewer's cybernetic optical implants auto-corrects the image size.

[Alfador]

you might want to make some kind of repeating background at the far right, so those of us with monitors that are What-a-HUGE won't have whitespace at the far side

I've probably said this before, but gah-WUH?!? How big IS your screen?...
Can you... can... can you see us?! (waves experimentally toward screen)

1680x1050. *waves back*

[Anna]

My Monitor is also 1680x1050. But my browser does not fill the whole place.
I don't like to read my prefered news sites always at the left corner of my screen.

Ahm, Jennifer, would you be so kindly and change on the standard background from black into a kind of grey or grey blue or so,
getting a black page is a bit... hm, shocking? frightening? wondering? strange?
Ah, forget it, do what you want.
black is beautiful, or so...

I've got DSL 6000, that's fast, I have to wait a second befor the picture arrives, but a second can be damn long.
And the web rush hour in Germany gets also it's credit.

[Plasman]

Can you... can... can you see us?! (waves experimentally toward screen)

1680x1050. *waves back*

(...quickly puts pants on)

it might be a good idea to have one decent-looking image that looks at your resolution the way you want it to, at the file size you want, and then a small, tesselatable image to be repeated off to the right so the background looks continuous...

That's going to be difficult considering the image she's chosen. Okay, she can copy a few extra trees, but what about the bicycle wheel?
Also, remember that the image is already the assigned background/wallpaper of the page; how will she implement an additional repeating section on the side if something's already occupying the place of the background? (Then again, she could always put the existing setup within a big single-cell table, and apply the repeating background to the "proper" backround. ...There, now, is that confusing enough? )
Or, you could just resize the browser window, like Anna does...

Meh... you can't guarantee a perfect display with every viewer. I don't think we've even explored the horrors of cross-browser compatibility yet.

Ahm, Jennifer, would you be so kindly and change on the standard background from black into a kind of grey or grey blue or so,
getting a black page is a bit... hm, shocking? frightening? wondering? strange?

The first thing I see before the page loads is ominous, bright red numbers saying "12 DAYS"... oh, and Website Development News. It's like being in Ringu.

[Jennifer Diane Reitz]

Ahm, Jennifer, would you be so kindly and change on the standard background from black into a kind of grey or grey blue or so,
getting a black page is a bit... hm, shocking? frightening? wondering? strange?

I have made the background the dominant color of the page now, in the case of the bike, the sky. Tell me what you think.

[Anna]

Ahm, Jennifer, would you be so kindly and change on the standard background from black into a kind of grey or grey blue or so,
getting a black page is a bit... hm, shocking? frightening? wondering? strange?

I have made the background the dominant color of the page now, in the case of the bike, the sky. Tell me what you think.

Yesterday and the day before it was black, (and before it was white), I couldn't read your little info, because it was in black too.
Now, the sky colour is purrfect. There is no more shock effect.
Thank you!


(Ok the next one will ask about bourdeaux-red, or jaffa-oranged-yellow, or Los-Angeles-greybrown-dust, let's wait and see...)

[Ashes]

The new website is absolutely artful and gorgeous. Great job Jennifer!

[sampaguita]

My Monitor is also 1680x1050. But my browser does not fill the whole place.
I don't like to read my prefered news sites always at the left corner of my screen.

Maybe the main sitegraphics and such could be centered? Might make things a little wonky for people with smaller screens though.

[Ashes]

My Monitor is also 1680x1050. But my browser does not fill the whole place.
I don't like to read my prefered news sites always at the left corner of my screen.

Same here. Same resolution, and my browser window doesn't take up my whole screen either. By default, on a Mac, windows don't take up the whole screen. That way they're actually windows and not ... walls or something. I like being able to see three IM windows, my buddy list, and my browser all at the same time with none overlapping (and a lot more with a little overlapping).

[Plasman]

I can see the application fort a huge screen now; I'm too used to alt+tabbing and working around, and my screen is way too small to bother with shrinking my pixels beyond something like 1024x768. Anything higher, and I can't tell if there's stray pixels on my graphics or if it's just a dusty screen...

Finished basic archive background and method. Archive is based on 'chops' or personalized signature stamps. Result is kind of moody, as befits an archive, I think.

I see what you did there; you've made it so that the "grid" is also tile-able, ie. you can expand it so you can add extra cells. Well done!
Also like the new BGColour (which still makes black text readable before the page graphics load properly).

[Jennifer Diane Reitz]

Finished basic archive background and method. Archive is based on 'chops' or personalized signature stamps. Result is kind of moody, as befits an archive, I think.

I see what you did there; you've made it so that the "grid" is also tile-able, ie. you can expand it so you can add extra cells. Well done!
Also like the new BGColour (which still makes black text readable before the page graphics load properly).

Actually, nothing on the site is like that. The tool I am using is based around rigid absolute positioning. This permits incredibly precise and beautiful work, but nothing can expand or shrink. Everything is like a screen from a video game, exact.

[Cardboard Box]

I'm assuming that all web page editors have a "raw HTML edit" mode somewhere. so, I'd suggest...

1. Select a neutral background colour

Then add a gradient to the left and right edges to blend the content into the colour that Alfador and similar HRBs will see.

2. Center the page with CSS

A la peanut butter sandwiches:

Code: Select all

<div style="margins: 0 auto; width=YOUR_REQUIRED_WIDTH">
... All the garbage your editor barfs up between the <BODY>...</BODY> tags
</div>

That should help. Hopefully.

[Jennifer Diane Reitz]

A la peanut butter sandwiches:

Code: Select all

<div style="margins: 0 auto; width=YOUR_REQUIRED_WIDTH">
... All the garbage your editor barfs up between the <BODY>...</BODY> tags
</div>

That should help. Hopefully.

I don't... understand even the slightest part of this stuff. I can't do HTML at all. Not even a little bit. This is why I have to use a WYSIWYG editor always. I can't do even simple things in HaTeMaiL.

I've tried. It just all goes funny and I am utterly lost and then I want to scream and run and run and run.

Like math. And all forms of programming. And using the advanced functions of a remote control for anything.

I, who can envision empyrian, majestic demesnes of multiversal glory, run aground, stopped solid, by any amount of code.

Code is the garlic to my vampire, the water to my Elphaba.

[Plasman]

Wow, not even a little bit of code?
I once tried using a WYSIWYG HTML program, but it added a whole mess of extra stuff I didn't want, and so I had to open up the pages in Notepad and edit it the way I wanted (which defeated the purpose of using the program anyways).
The best resource I've found for building webpages was a copy of HTML for Dummies. Yeah, I know, basic stuff, right? but it's handy for looking up the stuff I can never seem to remember.

[Anna]

How did you programing your PC games?
There is also some code necessary, not HTML, but something which must be a bit more difficult.

Fascinating, the universe and the life are full of miracles.

[Relee]

I'm pretty sure one of her spouses did the programming for her games.

As for me, I use http://www.w3schools.com/ for my HTML needs, and various other needs.


And yeah, Absolute Positioning is harsh. I was experimenting with various positioning types in order to make the frontend of a web-game but I couldn't get the GUI to scale to the player's screen size choice.

There must be a way but I gave up before finding it. I might try again one day.