RoboCards Website

[Raven_Writer]

Hello all ChiefDelphi members and/or visitors! I have a special request to all of you. I am wanting to be website designer when I get older, and Dave... has let me edit our robotics site. Please tell me what you hate/like/whatever by viewing the site here.

[rbayer]

Overall, it's very clean and well-organized, with fairly reliable navigation menus. A few things I did notice:

1. The whole team link under "members" doesn't work.
2. The pictures take a long time to load and appear to be approx. 500k each. Is there any way you could make them smaller? At 500k a piece, they're going to rip through your bandwidth pretty darn quick.
3. On the main page you have "gratuitous thank you". My guess would be that you mean "gracious", or some other such word. Probably a good thing to change before one of your sponsors checks out your site .


--Rob

[Raven_Writer]

Originally posted by rbayer
Overall, it's very clean and well-organized, with fairly reliable navigation menus. A few things I did notice:

1. The whole team link under "members" doesn't work.
2. The pictures take a long time to load and appear to be approx. 500k each. Is there any way you could make them smaller? At 500k a piece, they're going to rip through your bandwidth pretty darn quick.
3. On the main page you have "gratuitous thank you". My guess would be that you mean "gracious", or some other such word. Probably a good thing to change before one of your sponsors checks out your site .

Thanks...in response:
1. I'll fix that [Edit] Yea, Dave wanted me to fix the organization of how it looked all in general, and so I renamed/deleted team.htm[/EDIT]

2. I'm not sure, Dave... took them, I just added them. I'll check to see if I can though.

3. I didn't type that stuff, I just added a few small changes here and there on that page. But thanks for the eye

Again...thank you for your response.

[AJ Quick]

It looks very nice. I'm not a fan of frames, or the menu type script though. You could easily acheive the same appearence of the site by using SSI, or PHP includes. The image sizes definately need to be compressed, they were slow loading on a T1 connection. I tested it in IE 6.0, but I know for sure that it probably doesn't appear the way you want it in other browsers.

You've got the basis for a good site.. good information, lots of information, and good appearance.

[Raven_Writer]

Originally posted by AJ Quick
It looks very nice. I'm not a fan of frames, or the menu type script though. You could easily acheive the same appearence of the site by using SSI, or PHP includes. The image sizes definately need to be compressed, they were slow loading on a T1 connection. I tested it in IE 6.0, but I know for sure that it probably doesn't appear the way you want it in other browsers.

You've got the basis for a good site.. good information, lots of information, and good appearance.

Our host only allows ASP scripting. Matt and I got really mad at that earlier today. Yea, I've been contemplating on how to do the image file reduction thing (not hard, just don't want to lose quality). JPEG (which is what all our images are) has the best compression rate ratio. The frames and top-menu was not my idea (I just joined this team this year, so I'm going off of what it was last year, and I can't change it, so...). Thanks.

[Petey]

The images were a bit slow loading.
The text up at the top was jumbled.
If you're going for the design award, you're going to want some more interactivity on your site--i.e., forums, chats, etc.

That said, it isn't a bad team website. But for the award, you'll need to take it up a notch.

--Petey

[Gadget470]

Do what I did for 247's site. Put a folder of thumbnails into Domain.com/Images/Thumbs/ for each thumbnail, have a standard prefix. Such as T_Image.jpg

Where you link your images, change the link to be:

<a href="src="Images/Image.jpg"><img src="Images/Thumbs/T_Image.jpg"></a>
as apoosed to
<a href="src="Images/Image.jpg"><img src="Images/Image.jpg"></a>

[Raven_Writer]

Originally posted by Petey
The images were a bit slow loading.
The text up at the top was jumbled.
If you're going for the design award, you're going to want some more interactivity on your site--i.e., forums, chats, etc.

That said, it isn't a bad team website. But for the award, you'll need to take it up a notch.

--Petey

I should (in which everyone should know if they read this thread all the way) that I'm working on the image loading problem, and hope to get it done A.S.A.P.

We have a forums, check out the Community part of the menu (last menu option).

Gadget> We don't even a link to blow up the pictures to a bigger size (except for a few that's noted). But thanks for the idea.

[Gadget470]

In that case, resize the images via photoshop to 20% smaller and then reduce image quality by 1. This should cut filesize by 30%

[Petey]

Originally posted by Raven_Writer
I should (in which everyone should know if they read this thread all the way) that I'm working on the image loading problem, and hope to get it done A.S.A.P.

We have a forums, check out the Community part of the menu (last menu option).

Gadget> We don't even a link to blow up the pictures to a bigger size (except for a few that's noted). But thanks for the idea.

I don't see a menu bar, or any sort of nav bar whatsoever.

--Petey

[Raven_Writer]

Originally posted by Gadget470
In that case, resize the images via photoshop to 20% smaller and then reduce image quality by 1. This should cut filesize by 30%

Ok, but do you know how to do that in PSP 7 instead? I'm not w/ the PS program at all.

Petey> It's up on top of the screen.

[Petey]

Originally posted by Raven_Writer
Ok, but do you know how to do that in PSP 7 instead? I'm not w/ the PS program at all.

Petey> It's up on top of the screen.

I don't see it. The letters are all jumbled together.
Hang on, lemme take a screenshot...

--Petey

[Raven_Writer]

Originally posted by Petey
I don't see it. The letters are all jumbled together.
--Petey

Ok, I dunno what browser you are using, but I don't think it is JavaScript compliant..since our menu is in JavaScript (man, can't we get rid of that thing?!) Try using Internet Explorer (preferably 6.0).

[EDIT Dave e-mailed me not to long ago, and told me that the image-loading problems should be fixed next weekend (we need to do it in ImageEditor).

[AJ Quick]

Originally posted by Raven_Writer
Ok, but do you know how to do that in PSP 7 instead? I'm not w/ the PS program at all.

In PSP 7, go up to file>export>Save as Jpeg... from there you can go and safe the file as a more compressed jpeg. I think you can also so save as, and adjust the quality from the options there.. but the export method is best.

Originally posted by Raven_Writer
Ok, I dunno what browser you are using, but I don't think it is JavaScript compliant..since our menu is in JavaScript (man, can't we get rid of that thing?!) Try using Internet Explorer (preferably 6.0).

In the website competition, the sites are graded by team members. You will need to build your site to adhere to all common web browsers. It should be made compliant with as many browsers as you can, and well.. you shouldn't force someone to use software.

[Raven_Writer]

Originally posted by AJ Quick
In the website competition, the sites are graded by team members. You will need to build your site to adhere to all common web browsers. It should be made compliant with as many browsers as you can, and well.. you shouldn't force someone to use software.

I'm not aiming for the competition, not sure if Dave, Matt, Bryan, or anyone else on our team is, but I ain't. I'm just looking to get better at webpage making. If I had enough control over what to go on what not, it would be compliant w/ every browser as far as I know (check out my site http://silent-poet.vze.com, that is not what it would look like, but it would be easy to navigation such).