My new SE:IV Website!

[TurinTurambar]

Yes, the Aa Turam Empire now has an official fledgling website!

For any who have not yet seen it, I highly recommend Balthazer Online (www.profx.us) for building quick and easy Flash Websites. I guarantee you'll get goosebumps and little specks of froth on your cheeks just watching the demo on the front page and imagining the possibilities!!

Please go and check it out at http://www.geocities.com/waknatious1/ and let me know what y'all think so far. I've built this as practice for my company website.

[Fyron]

Oh god... when will the flash stop? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif Vive l'HTML! Seriously though, why must planets spin into place? Ugh... flashing... pulsating... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/Sick.gif

[TurinTurambar]

OK point taken!

Just playing with the possibilities...... oh and important question (from what Balthazer tells me): With what speed connection were you viewing the site? Broadband or dialup? It's supposed to shunt/unshunt some things automatically. I have about a 400K connection and none of the Flash is "jittery" or "disconcerting".

Turin

[narf poit chez BOOM]

My eyes hurt. And please put credit to Tolkien. DSL.

[TurinTurambar]

Credit to Tolkien...... yes of course. I did skip that, didn't I.

And your eyes hurt. OK. Thanks narf.

[Fyron]

TurinTurambar said:
OK point taken!

Just playing with the possibilities...... oh and important question (from what Balthazer tells me): With what speed connection were you viewing the site? Broadband or dialup? It's supposed to shunt/unshunt some things automatically. I have about a 400K connection and none of the Flash is "jittery" or "disconcerting".

Turin

I have cable... the site is definitely very jittery and disconcerting. It looks like it was designed for MTV kids with ADD... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/Injured.gif Flash is ok in small doses, but stuff like the planet images randomly spinning and chaning to different types while loading, the ship image growing fuzzy periodically, the background randomly lighting up in various places, the background on the "disengage fantasy generator" link having rectangles grow and shrink, and weird circles moving about, are all very unprofessional. Backgrounds should be static. Images should not load with cheesey "wipes," and should not change randomly after loading... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/Sick.gif The vast majority of web sites are more or less "static" for a good reason...

[Starhawk]

Oh it's not that bad pulsing wise http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif
It's far better then anything I could manage lol so cheers and good job.

[Fyron]

Starhawk said:
Oh it's not that bad pulsing wise http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

Yes, yes it is.

And one Last thing... unskippable intros for a site are evil. No doubt about it... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/evil.gif

[TurinTurambar]

Ouch my *** hurts. I'm going to bed now. I'll let this run for a bit and play with relevant suggestions tomorrow.

Turin

[Kamog]

I got a "Sorry, this site is temporarily unavailable!" message from GeoCities.

[Fyron]

Geocities has a low per-hour bandwidth limit, and flash does tend to eat a lot of bandwidth...

[TurinTurambar]

wow..... how much does geocities basic suck then...

"The web site you are trying to access has exceeded its allocated data transfer."

And with what? 20 views? Damn.

Turin

[TurinTurambar]

Dear GeoCities,
My sincerest apologies. I suck.
Yours Truly,
Turin

It was me, g.f.dammit. I had the thing up behind this window the whole time, sucking flash.
Ha! Moron....

Turin

[Kamog]

Hey, don't be so hard on yourself! Anybody could have made a mistake like that...

[Mephisto]

I think it's a fine site. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Starhawk]

Imperator Fyron said:

Starhawk said:
Oh it's not that bad pulsing wise http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

Yes, yes it is.

And one Last thing... unskippable intros for a site are evil. No doubt about it... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/evil.gif



Okay so I was trying to be nice http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif <font color="blue"> yeash </font>

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Aside from the eye-hurting part, it is a good site.

^ Not sarcasm.

[TurinTurambar]

Thank you Narf, Mephisto, Sarge, ummm... maybe Fyron. (I slept, so criticism appears more constructive and my *** hurts less)

I put the Flash effects on the Race Description page ipso facto, cuz there was nothing there at all. I guess I should have left it alone, as the spin and warp effects seem to draw the most comment. I'll pull those back off and get rid of the "buzzing flies" on the Links page. Also will add a primary credit to the Tolkien gents, JRR and the Chris-man, since I straight ripped off the History page and its dynamic from The Silmarillion (which anyone who's played with me would find only logical).

Anything else?

(The enslaving Intro stays Fyron, Bogg off... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif )

Turin

[geoschmo]

Overall, not a bad site.

Problems:

The first part of the flash is almost unreadable. Dark print on black background. It took me a couple seconds to even register there was writing there. By the time I did, the flash changed pages and it was gone.

I am not as strongly anti-flash as Fyron is, but it would be nice to have a "skip intro" button. Not having one will turn off people after their first visit.

I think your race set looks really cool. Of course, I should think that. I chose it as the winner of a forum contest to have a race designed for me to use for my custom race. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif It's the Leonine set designed by Val. No offense taken taken. I don't really use it that much anymore anyway, but you should make sure you give Val credit somewhere on your site for the artwork. (EDIT: Never mind, I see that you have done that. Very good. It just took me some navigating to find it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif )

[TurinTurambar]

I did give Val Credit on the Last page. From History, click "Disengage Fantasy Generator" and it takes you to the credits/links page (where you also, my good man, are highly touted...).

The darkened text on the intro is intentional. It is intended to look as though I'm finishing off a mildly threatening communique to another empire, and if you'll notice, I actually positioned it so that the first line of text is half-way off-screen. My gaming is all about role-play.
I could lighten it up a bit, but then you'd actually read it and the intro might finish before "getting the gist" and that would really piss one off.. "Here, read this.... PSYCHE!!!"

EDIT&gt;<font color="red"> You're right &lt;sigh&gt; repeat visitors using it as information reference could find the intro annoying... ok FINE I'll put a friggin button in there later. Happy Fyron? </font>

[Rasorow]

nice show of what flash can do, but maybe some other way to get to the meat of the site? The RP is nice, but you really have have 2 sites. A site about the RP of your race in SEIV and a site about resources for SEIV. Perhaps (to keep in line with the RP) question at the beginning - Are you looking for the Ministry of Internal Affairs or the Ministry of Forgien(sp) Relations. Have the Internal Affairs take you to the Flash free resources and references section for SEIV and have the Foreign(sp and I give up) take you to the Flash content of the message being transmitted and the rest of the Flash RP content.

Just 2 cents

Rasorow

[bbq]

Nice site...once I got through the ads. But man do I dislike geocities.

Having one animated ad when I click on the link was bad enough, but when another Sponsored Links opened on top (and STAYED on top) I was tempted to just close the thing. Nothing bothers me more than the in-your-face spam like that. I realize this is not the fault of the owner of the site of course, but its geocities'.

Do anyone know what exactly do you need to do to DISABLE those flash ads (not sure if the Sponsored Links pop up can be disabled even though I have a pop-up killer). I am using I.E. with Win XP Pro. Thanks if you can help.

[Fyron]

Ditch Internet Exploder and get the Firefox (http://www.spreadfirefox.com/?q=affiliates&amp;id=15944&amp;t=1) browser. Install the Adblock extension. You can permanently block specific ad banners, including flash ad banners. Just replace everything after the server name with a single *, a wildcard. Bye bye heinous ads! You can even import the filters in the attached text file into Adblock, which will kill a lot of ad banners from common ad servers for you to get you started.

[bbq]

Imperator Fyron said:
Ditch Internet Exploder and get the Firefox (http://www.spreadfirefox.com/?q=affiliates&amp;id=15944&amp;t=1) browser. Install the Adblock extension. You can permanently block specific ad banners, including flash ad banners. Just replace everything after the server name with a single *, a wildcard. Bye bye heinous ads! You can even import the filters in the attached text file into Adblock, which will kill a lot of ad banners from common ad servers for you to get you started.



Thanks for the suggestion but installing a new browser to get rid of ads is a bit too drastic for me, that's not really an option for me.

[TurinTurambar]

Re: the flash add for Pro:fx, that has to stay unless I want to pay them a monthly fee, which I don't.
Re: the GeoCities thingy on the top, once I clicked on the page (mine) it went to the rear. I don't know why yours stayed on top.

I have a 10yr. old with homework and voting polls to get to yet; I'll start my suggested repairs around 10PST I guess. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif

Fyron, what's our GMT+/- here? Mine's all screwed up again.

Turin

[Suicide Junkie]

Its a security upgrade too.

Just go with the basic browser to keep it simple.
Quick setup suggestions:
Hit the menu; Edit-&gt;preferences

Under Navigator:
- home page location := http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/postlist.php?Cat=&amp;Board=UBB23
under Navigator -&gt; internet search:
- default search := google
under Navigator -&gt; tabbed browsing:
- uncheck "hide tab bar ..." (so it dosen't jump around when going back and forth between 1 and more tabs)
- check off: "load links in background" and the two at the bottom (open tabs instead of new windows).
under Navigator -&gt; downloads:
- select "open a progress dialog"

Under Privacy &amp; security -&gt; popup windows
- check "block unrequested popup windows"

And hit OK, you're all set with a nice starting point.

[Fyron]

bbq said:
Thanks for the suggestion but installing a new browser to get rid of ads is a bit too drastic for me, that's not really an option for me.

As SJ said, it is quite a lot more than just a way to get rid of ads... Browsing the web with Firefox is a lot more convenient than with IE... It is a small download, so at least check it out...

Turin, we are officially GMT -8. I believe this is the time of year when we are really -8. The summer months are -7 due to adding an hour for daylight savings.

[TurinTurambar]

I have ditched Internet Exploder. Bye bye. Firefox rules.

Aa' Turam Website (http://geocities.com/waknatious1)
Intro Page - new skip button
Race Description Page - less flash, no warp effects
Links/Credits Page - majority of flash removed, credit to Tolkien added

I was hoping for some comments on the audio that changes by page and am suprised to have none thus far.. only comments on visuals... hmmm...

Turin

[Fyron]

I have ditched Internet Exploder. Bye bye. Firefox rules.

I concur.

The audio must have been drowned out by WinAmp... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Generally, background audio should not be played by default. Instead, there should be a start/stop button for it...

What exactly is the frame on the right side? It loaded blank, leading me to suspect it was some sort of ad thing that Adblock killed.

[TurinTurambar]

Yeah, that piece o' crap on the right is the GeoCities ad-panel. It's a fickle thing too; sometimes there sometimes not. Sometimes I can click on the site and it'll move behind it. Whatever the case, I hate it and will eventually go to paid hosting to get rid of it.

Turin

You actually use WinAmp? Ugh. I HATE that thing. What Version?

[rdouglass]

Imperator Fyron said:
...And one Last thing... unskippable intros for a site are evil. No doubt about it... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/evil.gif



I have to agree w/ Fyron on this. Not allowing Users to skip Flash intros is considered bad design by most.

Other than that, pretty site (no skips for me on a T-1) but needs more content. Artsy stuff is cool but content is still king.

[Fyron]

TurinTurambar said:
You actually use WinAmp? Ugh. I HATE that thing. What Version?

The only useable Version, 2.91. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Looks better.