Check the front page. ;)

Wooo! Nice. You must be glad to have finally got that up. Well done. :thumb:

Well, well well. :D It's been a long time coming, and I must say, well worth the wait! Absolutely fabulous.....such an improvement on look, use of space, ease of navigation. It's just magnificent....and I'm sure, lots of hard work! Congratulations to you and SP!

Excellent Tal! Looks great. Good work.

Holy Sh!t - that's a whole different SP I'm looking at - way cool though.
Good job! :thumb:
:borg:

This is a huge improvement! Not that I didn't like the old design, but this is so much better! Great work!

I'm not sure I understand the SPS accounts bit fully though. How mcuh do you have to donate and what do you get other than a different level of ads?

It's all explained in the FAQ and on the Sign-up page. Check the links in the Subsections table on the right side of the page when you're in the SPS Accounts section.

(Links to pages inside sections are now on the right side; check the front page for my intro on the new navigation.)

Aha, I see now. Sorry, I didn't look far enough past the first intro.

I definately like the new design. Well done!

Np, it's somewhat different than before, so it'll take a bit of getting used to. ;)

Tal - can you create a bug reporting thread for the new design? It isn't looking so peachy from my point of view (not the design look itself, the coding just appears to be broken for me). For example, the menus on the right and left are located in the dead center of the scroll, rather than at the top.

I wish I could say it looks great - but I will say that it appears to be a nice improvement. Maybe I'll try it on a different computer later.

This thread can be used for any bug reports.

Which browser are you using? And at which page are you seeing this?

The link to the home page from the top left corner of the Message Board page doesn't work for me - it takes me to your 'error' page.

The links on the boards are being fixed as we speak.

That was fast. It now works fine.

Argh! It is different! It is not the same! I have to honestly say that I prefered the old design. This looks a bit crowded and it feels like I have seen it many places elsewhere.

However it is good that it is finally done and you wont need to worry about it no more. :)

@ Tal

The problems I mention are on the home page. The browser I'm using is Safari, on a G4. I also have Internet Explorer, and at the time I wrote my last post it wouldn't even load in IE. But now it's up in IE and it looks great (kudos). It may just be my Safari browser (which would suck, because that's my primary/favorite browser). Also, in Safari, your cool little border doesn't even appear.

Another thing - can you change the link scripting so that links change color one you've viewed them? As you recall, on the other design new links appeared in Red, and viewed links appeared in white. Now, they appear in that off-white color you have now in both states.

The design looks really cool.

However, there is something odd about the navigation in the games section. When you are in the games index, there is a link in the subsection menu to the index. However, when you click on a game, you can't return to the index without using the 'back'-button in your browser. I don't know if this was planned or a mistake, but it just seemed a bit weird.

And as long as we're talking about how it looks in different browsers: if you go to a game in the games section with Firefox, there is a grey line underneath some download buttons. However, some download buttons look just fine. Just some small flaws I guess, which are inevitable with every new site.

Lastly, how are the nice color changes effects of the links done? It changes colors gradually with IE on my pc, however, with Firefox it just changes colors. Maybe with a simple change of the settings, I can also get the full experience with Firefox. (Or Firefox may just not support it.)

Ah, Safari... one we didn't test it on. I'm afraid I didn't know anyone who used it, nor did it occur to me it could be an issue. Catbert tells me any decent css-capabale browser should be able to display the design fine. Sorry if it doesn't work on your favourite browser, but I don't think we can do anything about it at this point. I'm surprised the old design worked for you in Safari, it had issues even with Mozilla.

As for visited links not being marked; that's a downside of the link colour fader, visited links aren't being marked. It bothered me at first too, but now I actually like links staying the same colour around the site. Personal preference I guess, it takes a bit of getting used to. Might get changed in the future.

Wow! It looks great! And for some reason it seems a lot more D&D than the last one did... I think its the background and borders, which are great!

Mesmero, that's because the index in the game sections is the Walkthroughs & Guides page - that's the initial one you go to. Having another index link to go back to the Games section would be a bit pointless, considering clicking on the Games section on the left does the same thing. Just saving some redundancy here.

I know about the underlined Download links in Firefox; this shows up because Firefox incorrectly reads that part of html. So, a Firefox bug. I didn't even know that I had an underline in some links in the code until I saw Firefox display it, IE properly ignored it. It doesn't affect anything though, so I'll fix it when I get around to it.

As for the fader, it only works in IE, sorry.

It's funny, the reason I switched to Safari in the first place is because it was the only browser on my system at the time (between Safari, IE, and Netscape) that would actually display the original SP homepage without breaking it! And now I'm used to Safari, and don't want to switch back. I don't wanna!

Damn you, Tal! Damn you all to heeeeellllll!!!!

/end Planet of the Apes moment.

Oh well - I'll just get used to IE again. It looks great, either way.

Oh well, you'll live. ;)

My lurking around, changed to a post..

I think a lot of information is on the first page, or at least links to it. And I like it. opens a chance to quickly get an overview, and to visit new corners of SP just for a seconds. Splendid for us lurkers who really won't leave SP, but have changed interests and spend only brief moments here.. I like the level of details, I will be pleased to stay a while and observe. :)

Still, I felt relaxed when I saw the old colours and layout on these community-boards. Ahh Habbits :) I hope the thrill of it finally happening and the very professional layout will make those hours you put into it count, Tal. Each and every time you log on to sorcerersplace. Had I been you I would be closing and opening SP just for the thrill... heh

EDIT; Doesn't Beren have a profile in the staff section? Along with Extremist. They wanted to remain unknown perhaps? And is BTA still 33 years old :p
Neat; hourly quote and whose is online

[ July 20, 2004, 21:09: Message edited by: Nobleman ]

Damn, it's really good, better then it already whas.

Btw, all members listed in the Member of the Week thread (and any SP Team members I haven't been able to get in touch with yet) are getting SPS accounts, and will be contacted about it shortly.

Damn. Want to be an SPS member. Guess I gots to do something about that... ;)


-EDIT-

Done. Now SPS me! :grr:

Great job on the design Tal (and Catbert whoever he/her may be)

I love the quote of the week, can we send those in ourselves?

How many books did you have to buy from this site via amazon to earn a sps account?

*off reading some fan fiction*

[ July 20, 2004, 21:07: Message edited by: Apeman ]

Will the forums also get the/a new design?

Aaarrgh, nearly gave me a heart attack :D

Well I guess it takes a while to get used to it, but it looks fine allthough I can't see what was wrong with the old design?

Wow, didn't really expect it to come; thought it was dead and buried. Now we just have to get adjusted to the new layout... Looks better, although I prefer more minimalistic approach (as you can see at my own website). :cool:

I like the design Tal. Good job to you and Catbert. :thumb:

Looks very nice

Wow. I don't really like the front page that much, but this quick reply box is awesome!

I like it how the backgroung is a bit lighter - in all it's more pleasant to the eye. :)

Apeman, no, the quotes are all there, so no need to send in any. ;)

As for SPS accounts, they need to be purchased, you'd need to buy a truckload of books before I'd get the same amount of commissions for them as the sign-up fee is. And I can't really track book purchases in sufficient detail.

Xei Win Toh, no, the boards are staying as they are for the time being.

Morgoroth, the list of problems with the old design is a mile long, but you wouldn't understand most of them unless you worked on the content of the site. So trust my word, it was severely limiting the expansion of SP.

Wow, this looks great! Great job guys. The front page is really good looking, especially the background and border. Two thumbs (and a coupla toes) way up! :D

The new site is nice looking. The 3-column layout is becoming more common, so it feels very familiar even though it's new. Are you using a custom built content management system for the site, or one of the pre-built CMS's?

The only issue I have with the design is that it doesn't validate to standards-compliant HTML with the W3C. This shouldn't be a difficult issue to fix because most of the code looks well-formed. However, if the document was switched to valid XHTML transitional, most or all of the problems others are experiencing would most likely be fixed.

Unsolicited advice, but if you design for Firefox first (because it's the most standards-compliant user agent), it's easier to drop in the workarounds that are necessary to get Idiot Explorer working like it should, and Safari generally plays very nice with valid code.

</web design rant>

Sounds like it is going down well so far!

Nice. GJ.

Rogue Paladin, it's all custom built.

And any problems people are experiencing with the design is due to browser bugs / poor standards support, not problems with the code...

I like it, though the old design seemed to be more unigue.

I just noticed the changing background of the logo, nice, very nice! :cool:

[ July 21, 2004, 00:59: Message edited by: Eaglearrow ]

Not to be offensive, annoying, or any other word that is equivalent as such, but the site doesn't validate to the HMTL standard, so rendering bugs probably aren't due to poor standards support. However, I want to be positive about it, as I think the redesign is excellent. But I'm also a graphic designer by trade, and I specialize in web design, so it's something I'm passionate about, and certainly not ignorant about. I understand that it's not a perfect web though, and everything will iron itself out in time.

I like the new look...But I have one request. Tal, can you put your photo behind the sorcerer again...Just like old times?!?!? Please?!?!? ;) :p :lol:

P.S. It really does look great!!!

@Rogue Paladin: I suppose the site isn't HTML 4.01 or XHTML 1.0 for a reason. There are things you can do with a plain !DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN", but don't work with "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd" properly added. For instance, when you add the more detailed DTD definition, you won't be able to display table cells without visible content. Without the detailed DTD definition, however, you can, and Internet Explorer, Netscape and Opera will show those empty table cells with specified background in specified width and height. Otherwise, you have to put non-breaking spaces in there. Just one example, there are more issues like that and I don't know many of them.

XML-based agents won't probably like SP because of uppercase tags in the code, but then it isn't intended to be XML-compatible. However, it wouldn't take much work. Tags of the empty type that require closing in XHTML but not in HTML 4 are already self-closed and the uppercase to lowercase change can be automated to a great extent. Only the head section needs a total remake when switching from HTML to XHTML, but head is pretty much the same in all subsites.

I will say this: The new version loads a LOT faster for me, and will probably save some of your bandwidth on the site.

The only real complaints I have are these:
-There's no banner!
-Most of the links open a new browser window. I do not really like this very much.

Generally I like it - but ... is that funky picture that was there gone entirely? That thing was funky...

@chevelier - I see what you are saying and agree in this context. However, with the site being in the 3-column layout with the center section being fluid, I don't know why this was done with tables, as it could have been done much more economically with CSS, saving tremendously on bandwidth costs. Of course, I am not in a position to understand all of the context behind the development decisions, but I'm curious nontheless.

Check that Favicon out :)

@Rogue Paladin: That's called the 3 Column Problem. Three columns will work in CSS so long as you don't want to synchronise their length.

Without the DTD definition from W3C, you can nest divs and make one column the parent of another and use the body showing from beneath as the third column. Still, the synchronisation won't be full as prolonging the body with text won't prolong the div columns and the child div won't prolong the parent div. You simply need to know beforehand which columns you need to govern the layout. Floats won't work as 100% parent height is calculated into pixels or whatever unit and used to calculate the float dimensions before showing. However, once you've put that float in there, the content has to adjust as floats take space (Archimedes Law, hehe) and it stops being 100%.

When you put that DTD in there, div nesting won't work. You have to position everything and 100% becomes 100% of the viewport and not of the body. You can position everything absolutely, but for that you would need to preset some fixed dimensions for the whole site. Even this will stop working when someone uses a bigger font setting in the browser, so one needs to be extremely careful.

With CSS, it's possible to create a scalable border table with the middle square holding content and the other squares being border so long as you don't have the DTD from W3C. With tables, it will work even in XHTML strict, so long as you put a non-breaking space in each empty cell (for example in your background containers) and specify min-height and min-width in the CSS file (or it will cut it to the space's size). Font-size works in IE, but Netscape definitely needs min-height.

It's true that not everything supports browsers, but there are more browsers that have troubles with supporting CSS than with supporting tables. And if something supports CSS, you can always toy with display:table-cell; and similar. Should work even in XML.

If a browser doesn't support tables, nor the display:table-cell and similar CSS properties, I doubt it will display any advanced CSS layout as well. Those browsers are simply not meant for CSS, nor for tables and basically are text browsers with some benefits. I don't think it's the best idea to visit a gaming portal like SP with such a browser. Nor do I believe many people would try that :)

Not to be offensive, annoying, or any other word that is equivalent as such, but the site doesn't validate to the HMTL standard, so rendering bugs probably aren't due to poor standards support.No, it does not. And it was not meant to, hence no compliancy buttons or claims anywhere. It's way more complex beneath than what the output of the code that gets served to you is. It would not be easy under any definition of the word to make it completely compliant. Trust me on this.

--
Sir Belisarius, photo? Geez, I haven't had a photo of me up even in the previous design, and that one's been up for years! Just seems too tacky to have a photo up on a non-personal website.

--
Rastor, erm - what banner? Also, the links in the features and on the sides of the site were set to open in new windows for the sake of convenience, but I guess this works for some people, and not for others, depending on how they use the site. Which ones bothered you, so I can take a look at them again?

--
Aikanaro, the elf one in the globe on top left? That's gone, the random images now serve as the logo instead. Though I was more than sorry to see that nice di Terlizzi art go - but it's a major pain in the ass having to approve every single piece of art you want to use on your site, not to mention that not that many are suitable either.

--
Rogue Paladin, again, most of the content in the middle table is legacy, directly transferred off previous html pages into the new ones, hence the often ugly code in those parts. To redesign all that from scratch would probably take a year, not to mention be completely pointless, since it works just fine as it is now.

As I said, there's way too much going on in the background for you to be able to comment on this with any accuracy. No disrespect intended.

Yea, yea; it's good and all, but when do we get the NEXT update? :p

[ July 21, 2004, 18:29: Message edited by: Wirhe ]

Next site update? Soonish, after I get the SPS accounts setup down to a routine. Read SPH, it's always announced in advance there.

Wow!!

Good job, Tal!

Even though I liked the old look, you have really improved it. :D

@Tal - Of course no disrespect taken. It's a discussion, and one that I've enjoyed.

Even if I don't fully agree ;)

@chev - I'm going to research your 3 column problem a bit more for my own reasons, because I've never had any problem with any of my 3 column layouts, and I've never heard the css gurus of the web mention it either. Maybe it's an implementation issue. Anyway, better educated than ignorant. Thanks.

I did mention that the design is nice, didn't I? ;)

I must say excellent work, the only thing i would comment on is the fact that the... well symbol that was always hanging in the corner of the front page is gone and i liked it. I was wondering if it could be put back in somewhere. Anyway just a thought, but overall excellent work!

I'm not sure what symbol you mean... the elf image? Please elaborate...

Only one thing to say...NICE!

edit: off topic, sorry :/

@ Chevalier
I have no idea what floats you are working with because I can float perfectly fine with 100% Height layouts. Including 3 collumn ones.

I'm not even going to get in to this Table/CSS issue with you again. CSS rules all you should know that by now :)

@ Rogue Paladin
Even though SP does not validate to the HTML or the XHTML standard, you must remember to think of your audience. If Sorcerers Place went full 1.1 Strict then many many viewers/members here would need to get a browser better than IE (unless much CSS hacking was introduced) or upgrade.

I don't think many members here are looking to browser this webstie using a PDA nor a mobile phone, text browser or a screen reader. Therefore XML usability or even web standards are not much of an issue.

True, we should all be moving toward 1.1 Strict sites, but realistically one needs to review a website's intended purpose before doing so.

WOW that is a brand new beautifull face. Cool allthough it took a long time to bring it up Tal it was well worth it :thumb:

@Gopher:

I have no idea what floats you are working with because I can float perfectly fine with 100% Height layouts. Including 3 collumn ones.100% viewport, you mean? Or 100% parent height for non-block child elements. Div nesting doesn't work in W3C DTDs and therefore there's no such thing as child divs having 100% of parent div's height. Three column layout is doable in CSS so long as the columns don't need to be of the same height, unless: 1) you have it all in fixed positions 2) all of it is contained with 100% viewport whereby the problem doesn't exist. To synchronise dimensions of objects is impossible without tables.

I'm not even going to get in to this Table/CSS issue with you again. CSS rules all you should know that by nowCertain things will not work in CSS alone and that's where tables come useful. Tables are still valid elements even in XHTML Strict.

That they don't work in certain browsers is a secondary concern. What's more, there are more browsers that screw up styles than those that screw up tables.

Of course, certain tags (like H1 to H7) aren't allowed in TD's, but hey, that's why <p>'s and spans have configurable font sizes and all.

@Rogue Paladin:

"CSS three column 100% height all the way down problem" as your loooong keyword should do ;)

There's no problem with three column layout so long as the height is a specified number of pixels or a percentile value or whatever such. However, it's impossible to have, for instance, background containers stretch to wrap around text. It's impossible to have what I have at http://www.chevalier.szm.com with CSS alone so long as the W3C DTD is specified. If you use a short Doctype definition without the full reference to W3C's DTDs, it will work in most browsers thanks to DIV nesting - one column is BODY showing, another has a big margin-left and another's child div has a big margin-right as well, therefore giving you three layers. Fixed header and footer with float:left and float:right corner graphics finish the job. But it won't work in properly W3C compliant code.

It's impossible to have what I have at http://www.chevalier.szm.com with CSS alone so long as the W3C DTD is specified.It's perfectly doable...

Header uses background image in a div to do the top, footer for the bottom and a main background div with repeated-down graphic as the border.

Anyway, this discussion is way off topic.

I go away for four days and this happens!

I was in shock when the first page had loaded. The good kind of shock though. It's still somewhat unfamiliar, but it looks much better and much more professional than the last design.

Good work, tal! :thumb:

It's perfectly doable...

Header uses background image in a div to do the top, footer for the bottom and a main background div with repeated-down graphic as the border.Only in a fixed width. Otherwise it won't work. I might create some sites with a fixed width - after all, it really has some significant advantages, but sometimes, when a site is text intense and devoid of fancy graphics, I prefer to have it scale to the user's resolution - be it the standard (for websites) 800*600, or the on-the-rise standard 1024*768, or whatever bizarre thing such as 3456*864 or the old 640*480 (I have a large share of visitors with uncommon resolutions on that site). No matter how you put it, tables are still better for some tasks than CSS. With whatever resolution you view my site, or SP, the border will still work properly, placing itself on the edges as it should. CSS won't make it.

The current SP design is one of such examples. The problem is the same as with my site - there's no way to achieve the same effect with divs and CSS without forcing a specific resolution. Specific resolutions suck for anything else than portal layout a la PHP nuke and the like - with no border and just floating menus on either side of the middle text container. SP is not one of such sites, however.

As Gopher said, this has gone quite off topic. Now either carry this conversation to PM or another thread in Whatnots, or stop it here. Thanks.

One thing that I thought was a little funny is the "Help Wanted" graphic is in the Diablo font.

Looks purty sweet there Tal.

Very nice. :thumb:

Nice work, Tal.

As I said at RB I love this new layout! Great work!

One thing that I thought was a little funny is the "Help Wanted" graphic is in the Diablo font.Might have been a subconscious hint of the diabolic torments awaiting all those who sell their souls to the advancement of SP and eventual worldly dom... :evil: err, I mean, I have no idea what you're referring to, I'm sure. :good:

I like the new look. It's colorful but easy on my eyes. You do a good job Tal.

I can't get the Friendly Arms Inn links to Top Talkers, Who's Online, and Channel Stats to work.

Oh yeah... fixed now, thanks.

This page from Apple about Safari's CSS support (http://developer.apple.com/internet/safari/safari_css.html) might be helpful in tracking down what might be the root of the problem. If you're using an unsupported CSS selector in Safari, then maybe there is an easy alternative or if there is no alternative, then at least you'll know exactly what the problem is and we can send in a bug report to Apple so they will add support for that in the next version of Safari.

I really would appreciate it if you didn't write off Safari as a browser not to code for, even if it's difficult for you to do live testing. I'm sure there are enough Mac folks and enough support on the web for you to at least know what the problem is and yell at Apple that it's making you look bad, because a lot of people visiting who are using Safari won't know why it doesn't look good and will blame you, even though it's not your fault.

That's not fair, so we should make sure we point out to Apple that they're lack of support for some CSS is making you look bad to Safari users. If enough people submit bugs, they'll fix it.


------

Ah, no wonder it doesn't work in Safari.

The page can't be validated by the W3C Validator (http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=www.sorcerers.net). Looking at the source, I couldn't even begin to help with this. Not that it's written poorly, I'm sure you did a fine job, just that it's not based on any standard that I even kinda understand,

From looking at the source, it looks like you are using nested tables (I didn't look that closely, though, but there are a lot of tables) and I'm guessing that the tables for the sidebars are missing something that Safari expects to be there. I would look into it more, but I don't have time to do the things I'm supposed to be doing and I'm not even sure why I'm writing this because it's only going to get me into trouble.

And the last thing I need is more trouble in my life.

Anyway, usually if the W3C Validator fails on a page, it means it's not going to render in someone's browser and so you were coding and looking at browsers and seeing if it looked okay. That's understandable. I do that. I don't think our site validates (for different reasons, but our site definitely doesn't validate).

Validation is good, though. Someday I'll go through and get our site to validate. Then it's a lot easier to blame a browser for poor support. As it is, one can't really blame Safari for it. Safari will render pages that validate, unless they use CSS that isn't supported by Safari, but that doesn't seem to be the case here.

I should shut up now.

[ July 29, 2004, 02:26: Message edited by: Hanna ]

Been cruisin' around, checking out the new design for the past few days.

Looks good. Two thumbs up to all involved, (Tal and Catbert are the only two I know of that were involved).

I likee!! I'm only workin part-time now, once i get a full-timer i think i may look into becoming a donater to your site, which i have always said is THE best site for CRPGin' and D&D whatnots. I hope i never have to go that long without a SP fix again. ;) Tal, Berenator, etc. keep up the excellent work!

Hanna, CSS is the problem. If Safari supported CSS properly like any other modern browser (Mozilla, IE, Opera etc.) it would work just fine there. So telling Apple to make a browser that doesn't require special coding would be a better idea. Just because something validates on W3C (or not) is no guarantee by itself that it will show on Safari. The things that make the design not pass on the W3C validator are of no consequence to the rendering (which is obvious enough by the fact that everything but Safari and text browsers show the design fine).

I could make (and will when I have some free time) a few easy fixes to make pages validate completely on W3C, but they still wouldn't show properly on Safari. Sorry.

I should shut up now.Yes, m'lady, you should.

If we should not write off Safari as a browser to code for, then we probably should improve our parking spaces to accomodate riding camel parking. I, personally, have never seen a camel, not to mention one who needed a parking space, but hey, if there are camels, than a chance is that there are some people who use them to commute. God forbid for us to offend them in any way. Jokes aside, but Safari compatibility is not our priority (and not anyone's). The market share simply does not justify the expenses, as somebody more clever than me would say.

Please, don't stick W3C in my face here. It should be obvious that due to the time SP has been around and been accumulating content (old as it is, we still need to present it to our visitors), a huge [bleep]ing lot of our content is intrinsically invalid. The site is and has always been made by fans and for fans for long years now, before the standards you mention were even known to anyone except for the people who make them.

If you're so disappointed about the illegitimacy of SP standard-wise, please find someone who'll rewrite a metric [bleep]ton of SP pages in a nice, shiny, and valid form. I'll safely say that we are not going to decline any sort of volunteer assistance in that area. Otherwise, sorry. If Dr. Jake Nielsen (http://www.useit.com) can make a living on standardizing other people's websites, it simply means that we cannot afford it.

Certainly, we'd like to please everyone, but making the markup work in the major browser engines was not a pretty thing as is. And once again, making it work properly in obscure browsers will hardly justify the effort. I'm sure the SP team has better things to do than that.

ps. If you wish to complain to Apple about the lack of support for standard css selectors in their magic browser, please do. They might even fix the usability as long as they decide on the profitability of the venture.