Re: PING Site Critics

You!  Yes, YOU, Krusty ([EMAIL PROTECTED])!  Behind the
rec.sport.pro-wrestling sheds!  Stand still, laddie! 

>> "John Henry" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote
>> > Site's serving pages again.  Take a look at
>> >
>> > http://www.lowgenius.com/3_1test.asp
>>
>> I couldn't get it to come up...it times out...
> 
> Okay, it popped up this time.

Yeah, it came back up thie morning and then - ironically enough - died 
for about a half an hour right about the time I posted this message.  I'm 
workign with my host - who have been most excellent, especially for the 
cost - to get this resolved.

> Nice. The colors aren't bad. You've shrunk the pallette, which looks
> good, and toned down the banner across the top, very nice.
> 
> I like the rollovers, it's a nice, subtle way to indicate a link,
> isn't it? 

Yes indeed.

> Lose the word "Core". I don't know what that means, but lose the
> tendancy to call things what they are. Like, people who put the word
> "NAVIGATION" over their navigation. I mean, we know it's navigation,
> you don't have to remind us...but that's just my personal preference.

Yeah, I'm still puzzling how I want to handle that.  The notion is that 
those links - the "core pages" of the site - will be on all pages served.  
Pages in other areas - like the lowbrary, for instance - will show a set 
of links, below the "core" links.  But, as you say, perhaps the best 
thing would just be to allow the links to do the talking themselves, 
rather than trying to label them.

> Also, strip out the word "About" and try this:
> Just change the color of the link, and remove its link properties
> whenever you're on that page. For instance, if you're on the HOME
> page, make "Home" the color of the over state and make it "stick". If
> I'm on the Home page, the home page link shouldn't even work, and it
> should just "stick" that "over" color, letting me know, visually, that
> I'm on *that* page. Likewise for all other pages. If I click on
> Digital Imaging, the link changes to its over state, turns that
> lighter color, and stays. 
> 
> Make sense? In other words, if I'm on a page, it should stay its
> "over" state, to let me know that's where I am...

*nods* I see where you're coming from.  The "about" is just a title; in 
this case, this is the banner that would be used for my the 
site/webmaster bio.  the gaming home page would have "gaming" in that 
corner; pages related to morrowind would have "morrowind" in that corner; 
etc.  While on the "about" page this is probably not necessary - after 
all, that's what the titlebar is for - in other areas of the site, like 
sub-areas of the LowBrary, it's nice to provide a little extra note to 
let people know that they're in - for instance - the "Musicbase," which 
has several different pages, versus the "videobase" or another part of 
the app.  In some cases, there *is* no "direct" link to a given page - 
like the search results pages for the various musicbase searches - and so 
this provides a (hopefully) attractive alternative for when you simply 
can't just use a text color to show what page you're on.  On some of the 
pages this will be vestigial, but for the sake of consistent look-and-
feel, I chose to go ahead and display page/section title information in 
the page banner even when it's not strictly necessary.

Make sense?

> Other than that, it's your best work to date.

Thanks.  I really appreciate your help.  Hopefully when I'm done screwing 
with the lg.c site, I can apply some of the lessons learned to rspw.net 
as well.

-- 
John Henry
-Now playing: Winamp stopped
http://www.lowgenius.com - if it's not one thing
http://www.rspw.net - it's the other.
I don't remember half the time if I'm hiding or I'm lost, but
I'm on my way -- Soundgarden