BB Central

neoliminal · Post by **neoliminal** » Tue Feb 11, 2003 10:31 pm

martynq wrote:
carnage4u wrote:....and it will be pretty on the eyes, which I know isn't overall important, but interface will be one of the nicer things about it.
<Martyn jumps on his personal high horse! >

Remember the first great rule of website design: CONTENT OVER FORM!!!! Just because a website looks great when you load it from a local machine on your browser of choice does not mean that it will download fast to someone on the other side of the world and that this person will appreciate it when it doesn't look at all nice on their choice of browser.

Yes, in an ideal world we would all be using the latest super-dooper up-to-date version of Netscape (sorry can't stand Micro$loth Internet Explorer ) but we don't.

The new NAF site looks, erm, quite naff on my (rather old) browser here at work. I'm sure it will look great with the more modern version I have installed at home, but that is the state of things.

SECOND RULE OF WEBSITE DESIGN: Always validate with W3C - if it doesn't validate then redesign.

Martyn

That's certainly an issue. When you look at the numbers most people are using IE. I don't like IE, but when I design a site, I have to build it for the masses. If you ask me about the other 3%, then what am I supposed to say? Should I spend 90% of my time trying to get a site that works for 3%?

carnage4u · Post by **carnage4u** » Tue Feb 11, 2003 10:33 pm

those reroll counters on ebay were not andys.. those are someone elses. i have seen them in person and have my own custom set. they are neat.
but not andys

i cant say anymore as the Net police of bb have already seen to much and yelled at me in a non yelling way..

Grumbledook · Post by **Grumbledook** » Wed Feb 12, 2003 12:11 am

Ive spent a fair bit of time reading about website compatability and such like. I spent the time getting my website to look the same in ie ns and opera. Its all in valid css and xhtml, took a little tweaking due to the different ways they apply settings but its all there now ;]

Only problem is that some of the older browsers screw it up. The content still displays and they also get a message telling them that their web browser isn't standards compliant and they should download a new one. There are loads of different browers versions along with different browsers and the best to do is to get them to work correctly in the ones that are compliant with the w3c standards. Any more than that requires a lot of bodging.

Anthony_TBBF · Post by **Anthony_TBBF** » Wed Feb 12, 2003 1:33 am

The NAF site IS content over form... the whole thing is content driven. We are using postNuke (a content management system) for a lot of the back end stuff, to be honest it was a b*tch to work with but we got it going pretty much how we wanted it. I bet the validation is a mess on really old browsers, but IMO you can only go so low. I doubt any reasonably complex sites out there conform to W3C standards, heck I bet even most simple ones don't

Snew · Post by **Snew** » Wed Feb 12, 2003 2:39 am

Anthony_TBBF wrote:
if you liked the idea of black block dice,, well you will love the .... opps. i almost said something i shouldn't have about bbc future. heh..
I hope you're not talking about those reroll counters I saw on eBay...

Those were done by Liviath. He was pretty active on the BBC. I think they're quite cool. Absolutely unnecessary (I use minis), but cool.

Post by **GalakStarscraper** » Wed Feb 12, 2003 5:16 am

BBC was cool back in the day, but making something as uselful as blood-bowl.net will be tough IMO.

Anthony that comment got you forever in the good graces of Galak club .. thanks. If I could get the VA to return my 2 new BB mini castings that I had done in November, I'd show my appreciation more properly ... sigh....

carnage4u wrote: yes that site does have lots of nice stuff as well. There are some features that it doen't have that the new BBC will contain though

No offense meant to Andy at all as I was a long time patryn of his site, but if he has content that I haven't but on my site yet, I'll be curious to see it. I honestly don't think much is missing at this point to be honest ... a few pics of some more minis need to be added and I have typists working on finishing off the article library, but unless Andy has a series of new tactics articles using LRB rules (which are sorely needed for the BB community and would be welcome if he does) ... I'm not sure content wise what's missing. My goal for blood-bowl.net was simple ... have all the content ever printed related to BB on the site ... the site is long from done, but it gets a little closer everyday. My typist for the 2nd edition Blood Bowl Star Players book finished that and I'm hoping to post it soon into the library (converting from Word to html can be a real pain).

Again ...I appreciate the nice stuff comment, but I have to honestly say I think your mistaken on the features stuff unless its new fresh material to Blood Bowl that Andy has developed which would be cool. Blood-bowl.net is really meant as a historical library site, so if Andy's got new stuff I'll be very interested in seeing and reading it.

and it will be pretty on the eyes, which I know isn't overall important, but interface will be one of the nicer things about it.

Actually, I've had offers by BB web design experts to retool Blood-bowl.net and never accepted them for the simple reason that Martyn gave. After talking to a number of Blood Bowl folks, they wanted a simple content library with a site only search feature which is exactly what Blood-bowl.net offers ... the normal subbanner for the site is:

"No fancy graphics ... just the most BB info you could ask for. "

Which is missing currently for the contest message. So one thing I'll never try and do is make my site pretty on the eyes ... too many people have told me that that would suck for my site ... and with 100,000 hits coming up for the site in March ... I'll listen to them.

AGAIN ... carnage4u I'm not slamming Andy W. or BBC at ALL. When I started designing blood-bowl.net it was after seriously studying the old BBC and deciding what was missing. The biggest thing it seemed to be missing was throughly researched content (the type of content that you can only get by spending money to do the research yourself). His White Dwarf index was missing several articles as where his Citadel Journal indexes. His listing of of Snotlings used the 28 Snotling image instead of the more accurate 29. IE Andy had great content but it had holes because the historical content was not his focus or drive ... which was fine ... so I had one simple mission for blood-bowl.net and that was make the content complete. Its meant droping 100s of dollars on getting back issues of White Dwarf and Citadel Journals and old editions of the game to see what the materials actually said, but its been fun and worth it and I perceived it as an area that Andy W. and I would never compete on as I don't think Andy is much of the librarian type ...

... my goal was never really to compete with Andy's site ... it really was to fill a void in the BB community ... one of historian.

I in many ways wish Andy a lot of luck getting BBC up and running again ... if he does, it will probably kick up my drive to add to my site all the existing historical stuff sitting on my hard drive waiting for formatting and biggest one to me ... it will make me get all new pictures for my miniature gallery using the color images that I got permission from GW to post to the site from the old White Dwarfs without copyright issues .... (Virtual Alchemist has full GW rights to images and since my mini galleries have ads for VA, I can use the color images from the White Dwarves) ... just not made the time to make this update ... but I promised Andy W. about 2 years ago that I would get create WD pictures for my site's mini galleries and stop using the black and white ones and I try to keep every promise I make no matter how old. BBC coming back on line would probably kick me into gear to fill in the gaps on the site that I know are there and have left outstanding to run the MBBL and MBBL2 leagues.

Anyway in all seriousness, I wish Andy the best in revamping his site. After so many of the major sites died ... it would be nice to see an old timer resurrected into the BB world.

Galak

I've been editing this document for about an hour because I'm convinced it will be perceived incorrectly and I'm going to get PMs from carnage4u not coming to GenCon because I'm a prick. I'm hoping my editing made sure I was simply addressing comments made directly related to my site which I would not even be talking about here if it was not mentioned and then replied to here first. I hope I addressed it in a rambling but non-jerkish way. ... basically it was a question over content and prettiness that I at least wanted to address since discussed ... past that ... I really hope Andy the best with his site and even more I hope to see Andy W. at GenCon if he can make it since I know he is an incredible painted and great BB coach and a good tournament cannot have too few of either.

Zombie · Post by **Zombie** » Wed Feb 12, 2003 8:59 am

(Big succion sounds coming this way.)

martynq · Post by **martynq** » Wed Feb 12, 2003 11:12 am

neoliminal wrote:That's certainly an issue. When you look at the numbers most people are using IE. I don't like IE, but when I design a site, I have to build it for the masses. If you ask me about the other 3%, then what am I supposed to say? Should I spend 90% of my time trying to get a site that works for 3%?

The point is that you shouldn't design a website with any browser in mind - you should design it so that it satisfies the rules of whatever version of HTML you are using and hence validates with W3C. It should then look fine with whatever browser anyone uses. (Anybody else remember Lynx?)

Anthony_TBBF wrote:The NAF site IS content over form... the whole thing is content driven. We are using postNuke (a content management system) for a lot of the back end stuff, to be honest it was a b*tch to work with but we got it going pretty much how we wanted it. I bet the validation is a mess on really old browsers, but IMO you can only go so low.

I'm using Netscape 4.5 here at work. The front page of the NAF site has the poll as black text on a fairly dark red background, so can't really be read. The news items only have corners - I presume they should actually appear in boxes? When I shoved the URL into the W3C validator it gave me 108 errors.

I agree that content is the most important thing on the NAF site, but I would have put much less effort into the form than you have.

I doubt any reasonably complex sites out there conform to W3C standards, heck I bet even most simple ones don't.

Well my work one is simple, I admit, but it validates. My personal one would validate, except that Geocities ad-box code screws it up. However, I only ever use XHTML, so I couldn't do some of the complicated stuff that appears on the NAF site.

Martyn

Grumbledook · Post by **Grumbledook** » Wed Feb 12, 2003 11:27 am

The problem is they used postnuke so its going to be more problematical with validating something you didn't write from the ground up. Also ns 4.5 is a bit ://// Also with a bit of searching I found this

"Netscape Navigator 4.x is not compliant with existing standards and is a difficult browser to write HTML for due to its rendering inconsistencies and bugs. Inline images, nested elements, tables, and aligned images are items which Navigator commonly has problems with. Fonts are not sized accurately or in many cases readably. "

So maybe you should use a browser that is compliant with the standards before moaning about the site not working ;]

martynq · Post by **martynq** » Wed Feb 12, 2003 11:43 am

Grumbledook wrote:So maybe you should use a browser that is compliant with the standards before moaning about the site not working ;]

I have no control over the version of Netscape installed here at work - I am not the system administrator. So there is nothing I can do about that.

Whatever browser I happen to be using has nothing to do with sites not validating at W3C. The fact that my browser isn't very good here points to the reason why I need to validate my own websites - I can't rely on what it looks like to me... I need to check whether validation tells me it is correct.

Martyn

Post by **GalakStarscraper** » Wed Feb 12, 2003 12:16 pm

Zombie wrote:(Big succion sounds coming this way.)

I'll assume you meant suction, Zombie ... since I looked succion up in the dictionary and its not a word ...

And if your post means that blood-bowl.net is going to lose a lot of hits to the new BBC (which you don't even think is coming

), I have zero problem with that.

My site was never meant to compete with Andy's per se. If he starts getting 600 hits a day like my site and I go down to 100, that doesn't bother me in the least. The site is there to do a service and that's 100% historical content for the game. I don't think Andy's site could ever do this since Andy just doesn't have the time to do the research.

If BBC becomes the fun site to go for BB stuff and mine becomes a place you go to look up XYZ old fact that's fine ... seriously ... I don't have a problem with that at all.

Galak

martynq · Post by **martynq** » Wed Feb 12, 2003 12:56 pm

Hmmm... I've been thinking about what I wrote before. I just wanted to say that I'm not trying to criticize Anthony and everyone else who worked on the NAF site - certainly I couldn't have produced what you did with the XHTML that I know.

Sorry!

Martyn

carnage4u · Post by **carnage4u** » Wed Feb 12, 2003 2:28 pm

Hello.
dont worry Galak. I didnt take any offense at what you said. I understand what are you doing and your site is great. One of the things Andy got in trouble for was putting info in that was in some of the magazines you mentioned and back in the day, when he put a printably copy of that red sheet from death zone. GW almost had his site closed down. Now it doesnt really matter, since they post all that stuff now.. Plus the lvl of detail your going will probably be top on the web. We dont have some of the resources to dig deep into the past to drap all the data needed. altough this is getting better, due to some new sources

I really cant comment more on the BBC as I have said to much and am currently in the doghouse for that

I just wanted to say that I understand what you said about your blood-bowl.net site, and I will say It is sometimes nice to go there when i want something straight and direct like how its set up. What andy is adding will be things of a different nature anyway. (ohh. must stop now. risking more trouble)

Post by **GalakStarscraper** » Wed Feb 12, 2003 2:36 pm

carnage4u wrote: One of the things Andy got in trouble for was putting info in that was in some of the magazines you mentioned and back in the day, when he put a printably copy of that red sheet from death zone. GW almost had his site closed down.

An unwritten/"unspoken" thing. Blood-bowl.net doesn't put any material on its site from any magazine until neither the UK or US web sites offer it for sale. So the internet content doesn't interfere with possible GW sales.

What andy is adding will be things of a different nature anyway. (ohh. must stop now. risking more trouble)

I'll look forward to seeing it when its done.

Galak

Zombie · Post by **Zombie** » Thu Feb 13, 2003 6:43 pm

GalakStarscraper wrote:
Zombie wrote:(Big succion sounds coming this way.)
And if your post means that blood-bowl.net is going to lose a lot of hits to the new BBC (which you don't even think is coming :P ), I have zero problem with that.

No, what i mean is that you're sucking up to Andy big time in that post. Get a pair.