A Birth of a Synth/Thomas Henry section that doesn't suck...

Scott Stites

Hi All,

I'm in the process of transferring my website to my domain from the People's Republic of PC. Actually (as some may have noticed) I've already moved the TH content. Unfortunately, the move turned into a delicious serving of loser cakes smothered in fail sauce. I purchased one of those WYSIWYG editors, and what I saw is not what you got - some of the pages are nearly unreadable on just about any platform other than mine, and for that, I apologize.

The fail is a result of some bad cut-and-paste to an equally bad editor that provided no means at all of hand-editing the HTML/CSS tables, which would have been nice because the program seemed to rely on tags that had long since been deprecated before the program was released. Moreover, it created such a snarl of CSS that, even when I did get the proper tools, it became obvious that it would be easier to rewrite the pages and publish them anew. This weekend I tried a Hail Mary CSS reset on the published pages, which actually made the situation worse. Unfortunately, I'd deleted these pages from the old site, so there's no going back there....

Anyway, I'm sorry to have crapped up those pages so bad, and soon I'll have them fixed in a new, code compliant, improved read-o-matic style.

My apologies,
Scott

Sound · Joined: Jun 06, 2006 Posts: 842 Audio files: 1

Congratulations for your new site. well done

richardc64

Scott Stites · Posted: Mon May 03, 2010 7:35 am Post subject:

Thanks, guys.

The deprecated tags really wouldn't jack the site as bad as it is. I think the main problem was the WYSIWYG program I was using before was designed mainly for people who wanted to use the built in templates. It allowed one to create one's own layouts, but it had some restrictions that clashed directly with my goals - the main problem right off the bat is that it restricted the vertical height of the page to 5000 pixels, which forced me to attempt to squeeze a lot of those pages down. That and the cut-and-paste I'm sure was putting in unwanted style code, and there was no way to look at the code inside the program to edit things out. I didn't have any obvious reason to - it looked fine on my computer; it wasn't until I looked at a different computer here at work that I realized the fail of my ways.

Anyway, I've got Microsoft Expression Web 3, which I really like. It allows me to work with the code directly and see what happens right off the bat in design view. It also checks whether the code is compliant or not, and that really helps. It's got some great preview modes, and I've got every browser I could find on my computer to check it out as well.

I've got a test page up - so far it works on my computer using all my browsers and a computer here at work running Linux with Firefox and Google Chrome. The main page content is a bit schmaltzy and stern in other places, but I'm worrying more about layout than content right now. The Home and Thomas Henry Designs menu items work - the rest are just place holders. The only TH page I've re-worked is the 8038 Generator, which is the simplest of the pages. I was considering using frames, but have decided not to; I still need to work out a decent menu system for the multi-page projects (like the SN-Voice), but so far things are working out better. The test page is here, should anyone want to take a look:

http://www.birthofasynth.com/index_test.html

Cheerios,
Scott

blue hell · Posted: Mon May 03, 2010 8:25 am Post subject:

Sorry to hear Scott Crying or Very sad

the new one looks fine to me, on the mac as well (FF and Safari).

Scott Stites · Posted: Mon May 03, 2010 8:42 am Post subject:

Thanks, Jan! I don't know anybody here with a Mac, so that really helps.

Cheerios,
Scott

v-un-v · Posted: Mon May 03, 2010 12:10 pm Post subject:

mark_olson · Joined: Oct 26, 2006 Posts: 177 Location: Lawrence, Kansas

I looked at it in Safari, FF, and Camino (my preferred browser) and it looks fine but I have a hunch that the text window is probably not intended to cover as much of the image/s as it does.

And as Tom has already pointed out, you have more Mac users among your friends than you seem to realize Smile

Oh, and nice work, BTW.

Good luck.

Mark

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Scott Stites · Posted: Mon May 03, 2010 1:31 pm Post subject:

I should have clarified "here" - I meant, physically here as in my immediate vicinity of Kansas. Come to think of it, Scot Solida uses mac, if I'm not mistaken.

Thanks for the screenshot Mark. Actually that's how I intend it to look - I lowered the main content a bit to let the more of the background image through - I liked that better. I spent too much time on it to cover it up. Laughing

The "birth of a synth" logo is a separate transparency that doesn't work well with IE6, which has poor transparency support, but I have absolutely no urge to jump through hoops for that browser. It's still visible, you can just see the edges of the transparency.

Thanks all,
Scott

Tronato · Posted: Tue May 04, 2010 3:48 pm Post subject: New Website

Hello!

Your new website looks great to me!

Congratulations!

TRON

RF · Posted: Tue May 04, 2010 4:16 pm Post subject:

Thanks for your efforts at keeping this up Scott. Your pages have been a great source of ideas and inspiration for me. Sorry to hear of the problems - glad to see the content is still around Smile

bruce

Scott Stites · Posted: Tue May 04, 2010 6:21 pm Post subject:

Well, thanks guys! Very Happy

I'm finally getting a grip on things, and hopefully I'll have all of the TH pages restored to legibility in a week or two. Then I'll transfer the rest of the content and go from there.

Cheers,
Scott

tommi · Posted: Wed May 05, 2010 2:38 am Post subject:

Scott i am digging this page from your website:
http://www.birthofasynth.com/boas1_002.htm
I like every one of your klee's samples.

State Machine · Posted: Wed May 05, 2010 4:22 am Post subject:

Scott

Looking good thus far. The page is very readable. I will assume that menu items 4 & 5 are intentionally not loading. I can appreciate all tghe work your doing so hang in there.

The new web tools seem to be much better and maybe even something I would be interested in. That "Web Easy Professional" program is a joke really (if thats the program your using originally) !! Seems only good for templates and not much else. Rolling Eyes

BTW: I enjoyed reading the piece about the "analog vs digital" on the home page to ... Wink

Bill

BananaPlug · Posted: Wed May 05, 2010 5:47 am Post subject:

Scott:

Scott Stites · Posted: Wed May 05, 2010 7:30 am Post subject:

Yep, Bill - this isn't the "live" site, just a test HTML - I'm just working out whether the layout will work across different platforms and browsers.

Banana Plug - I'll let you take that up with Morten Rand-Hendriksen Very Happy

http://www.designisphilosophy.com/

mark_olson · Joined: Oct 26, 2006 Posts: 177 Location: Lawrence, Kansas

Scott Stites · Posted: Wed May 05, 2010 8:31 am Post subject:

v-un-v · Posted: Wed May 05, 2010 8:33 am Post subject:

Scott, my only criticism, is that the text is rather difficult to read against that grey-ish textured background. I actually really liked your first site, as I found white text on a black background quite easy to read. Grey is far better though, and this shows on your rectangular inserts.

I downloaded a really mad app the other day called "sim-daltonism" which simulates what it is like for people with colour blindness, who have to look at websites, and applications. It's amazing how much we take for granted!

http://michelf.com/projects/sim-daltonism/

Apart from that, nice site! I've built mine 7 times now, and it still hasn't got published! Shocked

Scott Stites · Posted: Wed May 05, 2010 9:21 am Post subject:

Hey Tom,

Yeah - I'd read about that app in one of the books - I hadn't tried it out yet. Some of those filters are wild. It's a good thing to check.

I agree on the text - I have a hard time following it, too. However:

mark_olson · Joined: Oct 26, 2006 Posts: 177 Location: Lawrence, Kansas

Scott Stites · Posted: Wed May 05, 2010 10:05 am Post subject:

I was thinking A/DA.

Does this mean I have to put up a carpal tunnel syndrome disclaimer? Laughing

Tronato · Posted: Wed May 05, 2010 10:21 am Post subject: Complaints?

Hello!

Scott, do what you feel is right and don't try to satisfy everybody, that is impossible!
From my point of view, we are already lucky enough to see you post anything at all!
Cheers!
TRON

v-un-v · Posted: Wed May 05, 2010 10:28 am Post subject:

Scott Stites · Posted: Wed May 05, 2010 8:05 pm Post subject:

Thanks again, guys. I widened the line spacing and put a gray tint on the content tiling and subdued the grain a bit (I liked it better than the straight background gray, Tom). One thing I think helped also was to bring down the color of the background tiling - it's actually pretty close to the color of my old site now. I found the bright blue tended to make it harder for my eyes to focus on the content.

I also changed the background image and pulled the opening page content higher on the Y axis so that more of it was visible when the opening page opens. I checked for color blindness - it generally does OK. One or two modes gave it more of a pinkish tinge, but it wasn't too garish.

Cheerios,
Scott