Web Development

[karakth]

FreakTrap I\'d suggest logging into the #planeshift on irc.freenode.net server to talk to the devs there about completing the intro and getting a bit of flash on the site.

I personally wouldn\'t mind some flash.

[hook]

ok, here is IMO a very good reason why there should be no flash navigation, only intro

PlaneShift is cross-platform, needless to say some browsers on some platforms cannot use the flash plugin. Especially I\'m here refering to only-text-based browsers like lynx and links, which are usually very popular with coders. What does flash-navigation mean for a lynx-user? simple: he can\'t navigate through the page ...which is pretty much a pity, don\'t you think?

I\'m not saying that we should also ban the flash intro ...quite the oposite - i\'d love to see that intro finished off and updated ...but the thing is: you can skip the intro, but you can\'t skip navigation.

so my suggestion is:
don\'t bother with the flash nav, but rather concentrate on making the intro better.

p.s. most of the time i use mozilla and konqueror in my linux and have no problems with flash ...but still I like keeping pages w3c valid and lynx-compatible (alongside other browsers, of course)

[SaintNuclear]

Originally posted by FreakTrap

Why have flash nav? To make the site look better?
Why would the site have to look better? Is it a game that the PS Team are working on, or a website?

Exactly why you should have flash... who wants to look at a page that dose nothing? mabey you do, but i know i wouldnt enjoy it....

Why does a page have to do anything? A site for a game is made to be informative, to tell you about the game, and that\'s it. The fun should be in playing the game, not the site.

besides, who said the PS team had to all turn into web developing zombies? they are workign on the game

I didn\'t say they should go into web-developing-zombies. I said that they\'re making a game, not a web site, wich means the game should be cool, not the site.

thats why you would want the site to look better, people look at the page after 3 years like i did a few days ago, and seeing that nothing has changed.

No one looks at the site. They look at the content.
People check the news every once in a while, go to the forums, and that\'s it. No one cares about the site, no one tries to see if it was changed.
They don\'t care about the site not because it looks boring, but because they really don\'t give a damn. By putting fancy stuff that takes a long time to load and aren\'t compatible with as many browsers as possible you won\'t make people love the site and spend more time in it (actually, they will, because they\'ll have to load the nav before they\'ll be able to do anything. but they won\'t stay there more because they want to), only more frustrated at it.

i allmost left after i saw the in complete intro ( has stayed the same for over a year!) and the exact same layout from 15 million months ago!

I agree that they shouldn\'t have used an intro if it\'s not complete (what\'s the point?), but why do you expect the site to change? And you say that I\'m trying to make them web-developing-zombies...
The site does what it should do, why change it? To attract people that play a game because it\'s site is \'kewl\'? This isn\'t the devs\' focus group AFAIK.

the site is peoples portal to the communit, and how do you expect the community to grow if people think that its the same thing happening as it was 2 months before when they checked in??

Right, a site is the portal to the community. But if someone came to the community, liked it, and stayed, I doubt he\'ll leave in two months just because the site haven\'t changed.

[FreakTrap]

ok, you say a game dosent need a good website, yet look at any great game that has 10k+ members, and tell me they dont have a great looking website... A website is ment to deliver information in an enjoyable menner, not like opening a book and reading black and white text, but to be something that looks appealing to the readers eyes. A game isant nessicarly  made by its website, but a website is allmost alyas the first impression, and evryone knows first impressions are alyas the most importiant of knowing someone..

   Quote:
    the site is peoples portal to the communit, and how do you expect the community to grow if people think that its the same thing happening as it was 2 months before when they checked in??


Right, a site is the portal to the community. But if someone came to the community, liked it, and stayed, I doubt he\'ll leave in two months just because the site haven\'t changed.

what im sayign is for people who the first time around didnt really get too into the game, but for them to one day think back, and reber this game, and decide to visit the site again, he/she would probally be more likely to look around at a new layout, even if it had the exact same content... i know you guys are worried about people who use browsers that dont support flash, and thats understandable, and can be accomidated for, yet im here to provide options for developent. im pretty good with action scriptiong and just wanted to try to make this page a little better.

[SaintNuclear]

Look, I won\'t bother making a post like my previous one again, because you obviously don\'t get it. So I\'ll just get to the point.


* The nav shouldn\'t be changed. Because it does what it should do in the best possible way. Anything more than that would contredict the next two points.
* The site shouldn\'t have anything that makes it more cumbersome to load than it is now. It\'s not adding anything good, only frustration.
* There shouldn\'t be any uneeded annoying features (yes, javascripts and flash are uneeded annoying features). It\'s not adding anything besides incompatibility.
* The site is about the game, not the game about the site. This means that the site is there to deliver information about the game, so gamers and developers will join. The site is informative (and FreakTrap, informative != notepad-like site) it\'s use is not to show that PS supporters can code in javascript, flash, or whatever.

[karakth]

Well...Here\'s a suggestion...Why not have a flash site and an HTML site?

The user could be given the choice on the main page.

I\'m no web developer but I do not think this would be too hard to mantain, would it?

And honestly, the guy\'s just trying to help, no need to be so hostile.

[icebr4kr]

Maintaining two separate sites would be impossible.  Therefore, all the content would have to be moved to one data source, such as a database.

Right now, they use simple php/html/css which works fairly well.  There isn\'t a great deal of content to warrant storage in a database.

I\'m not trying to criticize FreakTrap, but I don\'t think many of us would like an all-flash site and some, even a site with just a flash nav.

Issues with a flash nav have already been pointed out.

What I would like to see (mentioned earlier) is something useful on the first page of the site.

Also, a quick link to the forums wouldn\'t be a bad idea either.

Have a word with the devs on IRC to see what they think.

[FreakTrap]

Nuculear: are you telling me you would rather have a great game community and a page that looks like crap and is 90% text, or a great graphical, extreamly imformitive page? adding flash to a page dosent take from the content, and 98% of browsers are flash and javascript compatible... the step from html and css to javascripting, asp, php, and flash is the diffrence between enjoying a website and not enjoying one... let me take back my previous statement abour an entire flash page, beacuse yes, theyre are the obvious downfalls of it.. yet to rather have a poor lookign page over a great looking and enjoyable page, is a stupid thing to beleive... i see your points, yet if i could wait 3 extra seconds the first time i viewed a site, not a page, beacuse if you wont need to  load for evry page, and have it have a great interface, i would go for it.. and that navbar was a 1.somethign second loadtime on a 28.8, and if you dont have a browser that can support flash, i pity you...

The site is about the game, not the game about the site.

........ if you went to a website, with the worst interfase you had ever seen, and decided to not play the game beacuse you felt the website sucked so much the game would probally suck too, then the game turns out being one of the greatest mmo\'s ever, wouldnt you feel shitty? and if you had a great gameing community wouldnt you feel shitty if people didn\'t play your game beacuse your website wasnt that great? you may not think these are revelent points, yet in today\'s online society, haveing a good website is evrything. If someone if oging to come to this community, the first thing to be impressed opun them is the website, is it not? proove me wrong? so how could a site with asp and javascripts, in today\'s society with allmost evryone using either IE, netscape, or a mozilla browser, how could such a site hurt the game?? what rock have you been living under where you can believe that flash and javascripts could actually hurt a site? i see your points, how the loadtime would be affected, yet i dont see how likeing the way a page looks could make it more cumbersome.. features like flash and javascripts arent un neaded in todays world, its a competitive world where evryone wants to look better than evryone else, and extra features on a website are what people like. so how can you oppose the opinions of millions of people?

[Fextina]

You don\'t need flash to have a great looking page.

You can have flash for the introduction, but beyond that, as previously mentioned, you can use style sheets + html + neat graphics + neat design and you\'ll have a magnificant site.

[hook]

ok, first i\'ll take my toll on being flamed a bit later
- 98% browsers support flash?!? ...yea, right ...where do you live!?!
- under which rock i live, that i can\'t use flash from time to time? hmmm... as i said, i\'m pretty sure quite a few people use lynx and links for browsing, when they\'re doing something else, and just want to read though the page, not
- plus, the flash support\'s still buggy under mac and linux (not to mention that there\'s none for other platforms!) ...have you never seen a mozilla break because of flash?
- [evil]why not make the page in gool ol\' w3c-valid SVG ...mwahahahah[/evil]

and now i\'ll try to be a bit more constructive
look, i like the page layout and all as it is ...and i\'m pretty sure i\'m not the only one, i definetly agree that the page could be a bit more complete, with new renders, sketches, info, setting and player guilde pages ...yea, a direct link to the forums would also be nice ...if it\'s not like this, because of an ingenious plan to leave most flamers out.
also i would like to see the flash intro be updated and evolve ...but that\'s about it what i\'d like to see from flash.

a few links to show you what can be done WITHOUT flash:
http://www.csszengarden.com (very good place to learn CSS from samples)
http://www.blender3d.org (note the menu!)

[discochimp]

I dont know why evryone is so anti flash...

i\'m not anti flash at all, in fact i work as a web designer and specialise in flash, i am also in my final year of an IT degree that involves web development.

however, the current site is good, it doesn\'t need anything else. the nav is simple and easy to use. it wears it\'s theme well and it\'s clean. the thing about flash is that it can be used to great effect in the right circumstances. however, flash for the sake of flash is unecisarry.

one of the other things about flash is it has poor accesability. it can\'t be read by text readers, you can\'t have alt tags for imageless veiwing, it has a big problem when it comes to search engines as the only \"hooks\" it can offer them are meta tags from the html document that the flash site sits on.

if done wrong flash can look aweful if not worse than poorly done html as the development interface has few constraints about what can and can\'t be done in regards to placement, etc...

personally i love flash, because of some of the things that can be created with it. but the menu system you created, i.e. 2 state rollovers could quite easily have been done in HTML. i\'m not trying to bash your work i\'m just stateing facts.

oh and hook... here is a link to the macromedia site where they have Statistics regarding browser flash support. quite beliveable when you think that flash player has been shipped with most windows and apple o/s\'s for the last few years.

nice links by the way. seen zengarden b4 but not the blender site.

[hook]

discochimp, i agree with all your post ...but i still just can\'t believe the the bit about those 98%, put it however you want, it\'s a pretty shifty number

[lynx_lupo]

Flash can be nice, but I also prefer other dynamic html types of pages.

[discochimp]

fair play i was supprised when i was told about it (in a lecture incedentally) so i had to check it out myself.

oh yeah, welcome to the EU. not sure how good a deal you guys are getting though.