New Suggestions For DCHomebrew Site

[quote author=curt_grymala link=board=homebrew;num=1085357014;start=15#29 date=05/31/04 at 02:16:07]I like Metafox's idea better, too, but there is one fundamental problem with it, as far as I can see:

You have to choices on how to accomplish it:
a) You can set up a different HTML page for each screenshot, so that you would end up with 4 different pages with the same content (with different screenshots) if you have four screenshots of the project.
b) You can use javascript to create some sort of image changer script, but that will be completely ineffective for a large number of people that have javascript disabled in their browsers.

I like your idea about putting the description below the screenshots. I will see what I can do about working that out (stupid nested tables. they're such a pain in the butt to fool around with).[/quote]You also have c) Set up a PHP/CGI script that loads an image on a new page using the existing template - meaning you don't have to manually create a new page for each image. You still will technically go to a new page (ie. when you click on the arrow you go to http://www.dchomebrew.org/3dinvaders...dinvaders2.gif).

This is the best idea in my opinion - and the one that I was touching upon when I first brought up the arrow idea.

unfortunately, i know nothing about cgi or php, so i'm going to need to leave that up to someone else. good luck everyone.

BTW - I played a little bit and made it into an SSI file to see how it would turn out. I also used Christus's suggestions on this new template, to see how it would look with his ideas.

Here is the page: http://www.sesonsite.com/Ten-321/DCS...SSITemp1.shtml

Here are the individual files, if you want to edit things the way they are (right-click on these links, and choose "Save As"):

http://www.sesonsite.com/Ten-321/DCS...B/DCHBTop.html
http://www.sesonsite.com/Ten-321/DCS...CHBBottom.html
http://www.sesonsite.com/Ten-321/DCS...SSITemp1.shtml

It looks cool Curt. I like this last template. I was thinking about the screenshot things, the easy way is using javascript... and its client side code, you dont need to reload the entire page just to change a picture. I think most people still use javascript. ActiveX is crap, and ppl always turns off, not javascript.

I think you are slightly wrong about the javascript thing. You have to remember the audience that we are targeting with this site, and I am pretty sure that quite a few of the people in this scene have javascript disabled in their browsers (I know for a fact that burnerO keeps it disabled on his browser, and I will probably disable it on mine once I eliminate javascript from the other sites I have designed - that's my next major project).

However, I remembered that there was a topic along these lines in the HTML support forums that I visit regularly. Someone wrote up some PHP and some Perl code that should be easily modified to do what we want. Here is a link to the topic:

http://forums.htmlcenter.com/showthr...;threadid=1019 <-- That's a link

If I get a chance later today, I will play around with it a little to see if I can get it working. I will probably mess with the Perl script first, since I know a little more about Perl than I do about PHP. If anybody else wants to mess with it, go right ahead.

EDIT - Once I get it all straightened out, I am probably going to re-do the entire page to get the nested tables set up a little more efficiently, and to try to make it a little easier for people to create new pages from this template. I may end up using quite a few SSI calls, to break the site up, so that the only thing included in the template are the actual SSI calls, and the information that people will need to edit. We will see how it goes.

I have a fantastic form handler that works in PHP (instead of working in Perl/CGI), that I may be able to use to set up a submission form of some sort, so no one actually needs to edit the HTML itself. We should be able to set up the form so that people can simply fill it out, and it will email the completed page to the recipient of choice.

I re-did the layout (should look the same, but I just cleaned up the HTML code). Just thought I'd post it here. I have not split it up into SSI sections yet. I worked all day cleaning up the HTML to make it a lot easier to work with. I did not get a chance yet to play around with the screenshots, yet.

Anyway, I fixed one or two minor aesthetic errors, and really cleaned up the code. All of the specific information for the project is now contained within one table (it was contained within three or four different tables, and the sub-menu was in between two of those tables).

Here it is: http://www.grymala.com/~curtiss/DCHB/Template13.html

Hey - I just had a thought that would make this think look a little nicer. Does anybody have any suggestions on how to get the right-hand side of the main table to match the bgcolor of the "submenu" IFrame? Unfortunately, I don't really know how to achieve this without messing up the appearance of the title of the main content table. If anybody can play with it and get it worked out, that would be cool.

One more update:
http://grymala.com/~curtiss/DCHB/Template14.html

I'm not sure the colors are dead-on, yet (I'm color-blind, so it's hard for me to tell), but I got it basically looking how I want it. Now I just need to work on the Screenshot script.

You can also use a CSS to make scrollbars gray on IE. Like this forum. WinXP uses colorful themes so its not as Win98 gray thing, and they look a bit off the site look. Just a thought...

I was planning to mess with the scrollbars once I got the layout completely down. Unfortunately, though, that doesn't effect any of the scrollbars within Mozilla. We still get the same crappy scrollbars. That's one of the reasons I keep forgetting to do that, because it doesn't effect me at all. I will probably get that done this evening.

a new layout would be nice. what exactly happend that all the links went bad? ???