OK, I've Been Inspired - What Do You Think?

[n3lrx]

OK, I've been inspired. By what I don't know.. Perhaps it was one of the many voices in my head.  I've restarted working on my website. I got the keys to my qsl.net website account today and I've been working over some of the code. It's pretty hard since I don't have the original template. I'm just wondering How it looks so far. I don't have all the links working yet, but that will take time. As I said I don't have the original template so it's going to be tough. But if it looks good I'll work with it. Unfortunately there is no Macromedia Fireworks for Linux. In fact there is no more Macromedia! lol But anyway, I'm back to writing code on a text editor so bare with me. I'm a bit rusty on HTML and I don't know CSS so it's still using those nasty tables. Unfortunately it's free, so they don't support PHP so I can't run a portal or CMS.

http://qsl.net/n3lrx

Keep in mind it's supposed to be light hearted and humorous, so if it looks kinda cartoonish that's my intent.  Anyway, What do you think? Go ahead give it to me straight, I've got thick skin.

You can be sure that whatever state it comes out as, either in the same theme as it is now or a complete work over amfone will be the first link on the links page. (And where ever else I can put it.) OK, I'm going to give the qsl.net servers a break, I've been working the piss out of their ftp server with all my updates and reviews so I figure I'll quit now while they haven't shut me off for excess usage.. I'll get my domains back shortly but until then qsl.net will have to do.

tnx for ur time om

[W2PFY]

Well since your asking, that black print on blue is a bid hard to  read. Maybe it would be better in bold? I note the links are not working but I guess that will change in time? I have never played with a web site so take this with a grain of sand

[n3lrx]

Good eye, I fixed it. Perhaps I'll try a bigger font later too. Yeah, the links are pretty hosed right now. The only pages I've made so far is the index (home page), links, and about. But even those links from the pages are a bit hosed I'm still working on that.

For now it's sleep time. I've been up all night so I'm pretty beat. But thanks for the input. Much appreciated.

[n3lrx]

Ah, just had an idea.. I'll try white text too. That might be a bit better to read.

But after some Z's

[n3lrx]

OK, I changed the font color to white and increased the pitch slightly. I tried white with bold and to me it looked like it bled too much. So hopefully the contrast makes a difference.

[Pete, WA2CWA]

Grammar: "I have played around with for many of years."


While the moniker "YellRX" might be quaint, plastering it all over the pages you do have running, is really overdone.  

[Opcom]

Looks OK for the most part, I will try to be constructive.
I never used QSL.net for a site yet, so probably some of my questions will be weird.

What are you using to generate the site?
Have you looked at the source code?

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I noticed the pictures of the 833 and the mike are .GIF files. This makes them spotty because GIF has only 256 colors, but the original must have had more, so it gets dithered. Can you find JPG or PNG (best but larger file) and use those? Also, when saving JPG, use a quality of at least "80" or 80% of the max, or select 'large file' or 'high quality'.

I took the liberty of taking an image from my site, sizing it down from the original hi-rez to about the size you are using, and uploading it here, just to show what I mean about not using GIFs. It's 14K file size, but your GIF is 15K, so you can use better looking files and still minimize disk space consumption if that is what is important. Visitors will be much more pleased and impressed when the first impression is good, and they will more often want to explore your whole page.

If you don't have or can't find a radio picture you like, you are welcome to browse my site bunkerofdoom.com and take any old radio image. Scroll down to the "Festivities" section and look for "VRPS" activities, where there are many hundreds of radio pictures. Click on the little one to get the full size one, then save it and edit it to your liking (crop, remove backgrounds, etc..) then resize it and you are done. Don't let the site resize it.

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I think the intensity of the blue background is a too hot. It's in line 27
<body bgcolor="#418de3"

how about <body bgcolor="#204771"> 1/2 brightness
or
<body bgcolor="#3070A9"> about 2/3, quite nice.

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The mail address being obfuscated
<A HREF="mailto:&#110;&#051; {i removed the rest from this post}"
is a decent idea but today the spam-bots will still harvest the e-mail address. It only hides it from nontechnical visitors who might want to bother you.

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Some of the graphics at the top are cut in half and have the background between the sections. The masthead of which these are a part has sections of differing heights. I can see that in the code. Try not to split up the images as it can be somewhat advanced to get away with it rendered right in all browsers. I know it says 'chrome' on the page there, but that's only a fraction of users, best to have it work for all.

firefox:
http://qsl.net/n3lrx/radiotop.gif
http://qsl.net/n3lrx/yellrx2_r2_c10.gif

firefox and IE:
http://qsl.net/n3lrx/yellrx2_r1_c6.gif
http://qsl.net/n3lrx/about-yellrx_r8_c9.gif

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There is also a bunch of obfuscated looking javascript first thing. What's that for? It may be responsible for odd behaviors in different browsers, but I can't tell. I noticed the web page apparently does not test which browser the guest is using. That is not good when the page gets complicated with stuff like the script below.

<script language="JavaScript">
<!--
function MM_findObj(n, d) { //v4.01
  var p,i,x;  if(!d) d=document; if((p=n.indexOf("?"))>0&&parent.frames.length) {
    d=parent.frames[n.substring(p+1)].document; n=n.substring(0,p);}
  if(!(x=d[n])&&d.all) x=d.all[n]; for (i=0;!x&&i<d.forms.length;i++) x=d.forms[n];
  for(i=0;!x&&d.layers&&i<d.layers.length;i++) x=MM_findObj(n,d.layers.document);
  if(!x && d.getElementById) x=d.getElementById(n); return x;
}
function MM_swapImage() { //v3.0
  var i,j=0,x,a=MM_swapImage.arguments; document.MM_sr=new Array; for(i=0;i<(a.length-2);i+=3)
   if ((x=MM_findObj(a))!=null){document.MM_sr[j++]=x; if(!x.oSrc) x.oSrc=x.src; x.src=a[i+2];}
}
function MM_preloadImages() { //v3.0
 var d=document; if(d.images){ if(!d.MM_p) d.MM_p=new Array();
   var i,j=d.MM_p.length,a=MM_preloadImages.arguments; for(i=0; i<a.length; i++)
   if (a.indexOf("#")!=0){ d.MM_p[j]=new Image; d.MM_p[j++].src=a;}}
}

//-->
</script>

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There is a table of img src code with no files referenced, all 1 pixel high but many unusual widths. What is that for? I'd get rid of it if it is not to be used because otherwise all visitors are forced to download it for nothing.

<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="775" align=center>
  <tr>
   <td><img src="" width="28" height="1" border="0" alt=""></td>
   <td><img src="" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt=""></td>
   <td><img src="" width="13" height="1" border="0" alt=""></td>
   <td><img src="" width="137" height="1" border="0" alt=""></td>
   <td><img src="" width="6" height="1" border="0" alt=""></td>
   <td><img src="" width="9" height="1" border="0" alt=""></td>
   <td><img src="" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt=""></td>
   <td><img src="" width="2" height="1" border="0" alt=""></td>
   <td><img src="" width="4" height="1" border="0" alt=""></td>
   <td><img src="" width="105" height="1" border="0" alt=""></td>
   <td><img src="" width="43" height="1" border="0" alt=""></td>
   <td><img src="" width="2" height="1" border="0" alt=""></td>
   <td><img src="" width="16" height="1" border="0" alt=""></td>
   <td><img src="" width="9" height="1" border="0" alt=""></td>
   <td><img src="" width="8" height="1" border="0" alt=""></td>
   <td><img src="" width="24" height="1" border="0" alt=""></td>
   <td><img src="" width="107" height="1" border="0" alt=""></td>
   <td><img src="" width="6" height="1" border="0" alt=""></td>
   <td><img src="" width="159" height="1" border="0" alt=""></td>
   <td><img src="" width="48" height="1" border="0" alt=""></td>
   <td><img src="" width="47" height="1" border="0" alt=""></td>
   <td><img src="" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt=""></td>
  </tr>

that's it for now.

[n3lrx]

Thanks Pete, I think I've addressed your issues. Let me know if you find any more.

That image tearing is why I had the "Best viewed" it doesn't do that on my Chrome install, Firefox it does. On Chrome I can zoom in max or zoom out max and the images don't tear. That's the tables doing that. It's all in how the browser renders the tables. I don't have IE to test it on.

I'm using an old template I generated on Macromedia Fireworks/Dreamweaver a long time ago which I no longer have the master to. There is a lot of code in there that doesn't need to be there. It's just Dreamweaver adding kruft and making things complicated. Some if not most I'll be able to get rid of some I won't. It's just a matter of going through line by line and getting rid of it or polishing it up. I don't have Windows or Fireworks (or whatever Adobe calls it now.) A text editor is all I've got I don't have a WYSIWYG editor.

The colors are what match some of the slices Fireworks made. Some have that blue background color on them so if I change the background it looks really mucked up.

I'm using gif because they are smaller than jpg, or png. And being as it's a free limited resource account I figured I'd keep the tax on the server as minimal as possible. Once the page is done, and moved over to a proper server if I don't wind up staring over anyway. Converting the gifs to jpg won't improve their quality any.

The java code pre-loads, and swaps the images for the menu which is still not working 100% right now. I've been working on that.

Unused tables: Those will be cleaned up. It's just a matter of going through and polishing them They can't be removed entirely, because that will whack the entire template.

Once all the little fires are all out I'll tackle the W3C issues and make it HTML 4.1 compatible.

I think that covers just about everything in both posts.

[Steve - K4HX]

GIFs are not necessarily smaller than JPEGs. GIF is designed to compress computer generated images with large blocks of colors and mostly straight lines. Photos or real life generally have neither of these. Thus, GIF does a poor job of compression and the limited color palette does little for image quality. JPEG was specifically designed to compress photos and will deal with the wider range of colors, soft edges and the like.

[Opcom]

well, I wasn't going to use the word crufty.