Work On Hwt

[IBBoard]

Most of you probably won't care about this, but I'm currently reworking HWT. The current work is converting the design of the main site over to CSS and div tags so that there is less code in the page, its easier to change/reskin, its faster to download and it ranks better with search engines.

After that (and probably on the train on Friday when I'm heading up to manchester - the benefits of laptops ) I'm going to be working on a FanFiction module. I've got the idea/plan there and I'll see if some of the authors from FanFiction.net want their fics putting up. Its all part of my "fluff" plan

Then, once that is done I will once again begin work on the RPG!

[TGSC]

Most of you probably won't care about this, but I'm currently reworking HWT. The current work is converting the design of the main site over to CSS and div tags

eh? :blink:

[IBBoard]

I'm sure you know what I mean

Divs are divisions, a way of splitting the HTML into logical groups (or if you use tables for your design, a way of grouping together lots of items that aren't paragraphs so that they can all be centered in one go)
CSS is Cascading Style Sheets - the really powerful stuff that can control colour, size, padding/margins/border, positioning, visibility, backgrounds, image rollovers and popout menus without Javascript and who knows what all else!

For an example of the power and what I'm meaning use Firefox and go to http://www.saila.com/usage/layouts/. Click in the bottom left corner (should be like a pack of crayons on normal FF) and you'll get a list of alternate style sheets. Look at the differences and see how radically just altering the CSS can change the look of the site

[IBBoard]

OK, a couple of botches/hacks thanks to IE being completely useless in some areas and getting things wrong when it worked perfectly in Firefox and we now have a working cross-browser version (IE5, IE6 and Firefox 0.9).

Please check it out at http://hiveworldterra.ibboard.co.uk/HWTv2.html - and report any bugs and what browser you are using.

Some things aren't perfect (IE5 won't show a border around the title) but some things like that aren't really fixable.

[edit] Arrrgggghhhh, this was working earlier! damned stupid IE with its rubbish rendering!

[edit 2] The version on the website is working fine, its just my local and more modified copy that isn't. Worryingly though IE5 seems to be rendering the main header better than IE6! Its a known bug and I'll sort it out when I have a clue what IE is doing. For now I can only wish that more people would move to Mozilla or something else that renders it all properly.

[edit 3] The striped heading on the main content is still slightly screwed, but everything renders correctly as long as your IE window doesn't drop below about 550px wide - and considering that leaves about 200px for the content including borders and only about 0.1% of our visitors use a res that low, I think it should be safe. Through all of this, Firefox is still problem free!



<!--EDIT|The Emperor|Sep 28 2004, 10:02 PM-->

[IBBoard]

An early morning fix and everything is OK now stupid IE not wanting an 80% wide box with a 3px border and 10% margins!

[edit] Bwahahahah! Kinda just me being awkward, but if I drop TheWarp.net banner ad we have 100% CSS and XHTML compliance on the test page now
Lets see if I can come up with compliant code and convince them to change the banner output

[edit2] OK, the banner is back (with a two minor tweaks and dropping everything to lower case) and it all still validates now But as per usual, IE has one tiny problem - if you resize the height then the left panel sometimes jumps over the center content and overlays itself - but hitting refresh fixes it! I'll look for a bug report/fix/hack tomorrow at work



<!--EDIT|The Emperor|Sep 29 2004, 08:09 PM-->

[IBBoard]

OK, its as fixed as its going to be for now. My girlfriend has an iBook, so I checked it in Safari and IE/Mac. Safari was fine, just got the three columns overlapping the header a bit, but all still readable. IE/Mac hid most of my content! Hopefully I've fixed it, just got to get it checked.

The new design (or new version of the old design) will be going up soon, complete with IE's "resize vertically and move things" bug.

[IBBoard]

Meh, IE Mac now has a simplified version (text only, no styles) as does IE4 and below and NN4 and below.

For an example of the power this design will have, go to http://www.csszengarden.com/ and click on some of the links on the side - identical HTML, differing style sheets! Plus pages should now load quicker, a 3300byte page will now be able 2400bytes and thats before I do any optimisation!

Anyway, should probably start work soon the design may start being added tonight

[IBBoard]

The new skin is beginning to take shape - it is now available on HWT as a "Work in Progress". This means that everything apart from the Links section, News, Register (which is disabled anyway), misc and User aren't working in the new skin (you'll get a "missing function" message from PHP). One or two functions are also direct copies of old functions that may change in future and others may not work properly together yet - it hasn't been tested, I'm going to bed and its a work in progress!

[IBBoard]

The skin is now the main skin, but is still incomplete (in the validation sense). Some of the issues are just content, but some areas are just simple things until I find replacements for the table layout (or the old table layouts left because I can't be bothered fixing anything!)

[TGSC]

I changed skins a while back and couldnt see alot of noticeble difference, the case of the text at the side I got, but not alot diffferent.

Might look again later

[IBBoard]

It isn't meant to look different to the average person, its meant to load better and be more accessible to bots and screen readers. One thing you might notice (or not on your Uni connection ) is that the Warp's banner might not appear for a while after everything is loaded. Its acutally at the bottom of the HTML, but then absolutely positions - that way the rest of the page can render without waiting to download the banner

[TGSC]

It isn't meant to look different to the average person, its meant to load better and be more accessible to bots and screen readers. One thing you might notice (or not on your Uni connection ) is that the Warp's banner might not appear for a while after everything is loaded. Its acutally at the bottom of the HTML, but then absolutely positions - that way the rest of the page can render without waiting to download the banner

Cunning Stunt.

And no, I don't notice the load time, I blink and I miss a page from deviant art loading
Hmm, I might go and download W40K: DoW now I dont have to wait 20mins for the download

[IBBoard]

I'm on 1.5MB, but still, don't you just hate some people?