Request for website testers and reviewers...

[jerseydevil]

Originally posted by johnnyrod

JD, my advice for the screen size thing is to fix the column width (in pixels) on the left so that the images fit, and leave everything else to fill up the rest of the screen, the browser will sort out the formatting for you and it'll always look okay. To be honest, a notice on a site that says "optimised for IE v.xx screen rez this x that" means that the developer hasn't given sufficient thought to what it is they're trying to do, even though this is the sort of thing you see on a lot of sites.

I gave a lot of thought to this. I understand about about being able to just let the browser spread out the content - but then you leave that up to something you have no control over. You then have to dynamically calc all the graphics - or else everything gets screwed up. Your idea works great as long as the site doesn't contain a lot of graphics - this will contain a lot of graphics.

BTW - most sites only give a sense of spreading out - by having everything within a main table and centering that table. I chose not to take that route and went with the style that many other sites do - including CNN.com.

[johnnyrod]

HTML was never really meant for strong physical formatting, if you want lots of graphics then perhaps Shockwave is what you should really be using. Check out:

http://www.freestreetdesign.com

Also vector graphics are faster-loading, but the whole thing scales itself without changing the time to load. That said this goes against what I said about compatability with older software.

I can't view your site right now, it doesn't seem to be up, but from what I remember there was a column on the left with icons, a heading across the top, and the rest of the content fille dthe remaining gap. It would be simple enoug to fix the dimensions of the heading and navigation column, and leave the rest to itself. Either that or use tables in the content part that also use proportional widths within that space.

Tell me to shove my advice up my arse if you like, I don't know if I'm treading on your toes yet.

PS. you're up early?

[jerseydevil]

Originally posted by johnnyrod
HTML was never really meant for strong physical formatting, if you want lots of graphics then perhaps Shockwave is what you should really be using. Check out:

http://www.freestreetdesign.com

Also vector graphics are faster-loading, but the whole thing scales itself without changing the time to load. That said this goes against what I said about compatability with older software.

I can't view your site right now, it doesn't seem to be up, but from what I remember there was a column on the left with icons, a heading across the top, and the rest of the content fille dthe remaining gap. It would be simple enoug to fix the dimensions of the heading and navigation column, and leave the rest to itself. Either that or use tables in the content part that also use proportional widths within that space.

i can't really change the layout right now anyway. I'm really trying to get a feeling if anything isn't working right - I suppose. Some things I can still change - but this part I can't. I have to start getting the content out there.

Tell me to shove my advice up my arse if you like, I don't know if I'm treading on your toes yet.

No - it's not that at all. I just went through the pros and cons of doing all that already. Also - a couple of days ago I was just frustrated with the website and what was going on with who is hosting it.

I know the people at web-services - but it's not really a "hosting" company. I go over stuff with them that i want to do - and then they always blow everythign out to 100 times more than what I'm asking and say it's not doable right now. Hell - they won't put PHP on the servers because of supposed security issues. At first they said they would - if I tested it out on a stand alone system, now they don't remember saying that at all. Then it was because they would have to update the maintence releases. If it wasn't one thing - then it was another. I've decided to go with Dreamhost and see how they are. They have everything I'm looking for excpet JSP/Java and Tomcat.

PS. you're up early?

Rumor has it that I never sleep.

[jerseydevil]

Okay - anyone who is interested - I made my forum active at http://forum.AboutNewJersey.com

[gimli7410]

i signed up as just gimli with no stupid ass number

[Nurvingiel]

Maybe somebody already asked this, but do you have vBulletin as a server (or whatever that's called) hosting your message board? It just has a similar layout to this one, or is that a standard layout? Very nice either way.

[jerseydevil]

Originally posted by Nurvingiel
Maybe somebody already asked this, but do you have vBulletin as a server (or whatever that's called) hosting your message board? It just has a similar layout to this one, or is that a standard layout? Very nice either way.

It's PHP BB, it is the open source free version. It's similar to vBulletin - which is built off of the same code, but it doesn't have as many features. It'll do for now. As Jonathan said - I can go with this one for now - if it takes off and I want the additional functionality - I'll spend the $160 for vBulletin.

Also - thanks for the compliment.

Gimli - thanks for signing up and all the other mooters who have. I know that unless you have plans to come to NJ or live in NJ - there isn't much sense in signing up. Of course Gimli might start in on the Devils or something.

[Grey_Wolf]

I now have a thin but fairly OK homepage. Take a look if you wish.

http://geocities.com/greywolf1735

[jerseydevil]

Originally posted by Grey_Wolf
I now have a thin but fairly OK homepage. Take a look if you wish.

http://geocities.com/greywolf1735

Looks good. You got the guestbook to work. I signed it.

[gimli7410]

Originally posted by jerseydevil
Gimli - thanks for signing up and all the other mooters who have. I know that unless you have plans to come to NJ or live in NJ - there isn't much sense in signing up. Of course Gimli might start in on the Devils or something.

what you mean on how there star goalie and captain are canadian

[Nurvingiel]

That's not a dig, that's a compliment!

Besides, you could poke fun at the Leafs in the same way. Don't they have a lot of American players?

[Grey_Wolf]

Originally posted by jerseydevil
Looks good. You got the guestbook to work. I signed it.

Thanks. and thanks for the backlink from the "View Guestbook" page.

[jerseydevil]

I'm trying to get advertising for my website and I neeed people to test something out for me. One person at a lodging establishment said that the Lodging application ran very slow....

"When you go to lodging and try to find out about CAPE MAY, or NORTH WILDWOOD, etc. it loads VERY VERY slow, and I have a fast DSL. People are not going to wait for the info to come up."

I have tested it out repeatedly, but I have not had any slow downs in receiving the information. Can you test this out and tell me how it runs for you. http://www.aboutnewjersey.com/Lodgings/index.php

Pleaee let me know what equipment you are running - Browser (aol, ie, netscape, etc), computer speed, modem speed (cable, dsl, dial-up), etc.

Thanks

[Nurvingiel]

This page (http://www.aboutnewjersey.com/Lodgings/index.php) didn't take more than 5 seconds to load for me.

I use Mozilla Firefox, and I have a 384kbps DSL connection.
I tried it in IE (version 6) and it loaded just as quickly.

Maybe the guys firewall or virus scan was being funky?Good luck troubleshooting that.

[jerseydevil]

Originally Posted by Nurvingiel

This page (http://www.aboutnewjersey.com/Lodgings/index.php) didn't take more than 5 seconds to load for me.

I use Mozilla Firefox, and I have a 384kbps DSL connection.
I tried it in IE (version 6) and it loaded just as quickly.

Maybe the guys firewall or virus scan was being funky?Good luck troubleshooting that.

Thanks. It could have also have just been server hiccup too. Did you try changing the city and county and looing for different lodging under the search utility? I think that might have been the problem. I out an index on the city_id so that way it will speed up the searches for the cities.

[Nurvingiel]

No worries. I didn't have any problems with the search function - I tried specific cities, specific lodging types, and both together.

If it was a server problem, the site should be fine for the person who reported the problem. Did you get him to try again?

I like your mouse-over popup box things BTW.

EDIT: I didn't have any trouble browsing around the site either.

[jerseydevil]

Thanks. I'm going to hopefully collect some more information from people and then e-mail them on Monday.