my [work in progress] website Options

[Magik5]

just after opinions really... and to get a cheeky lil link to it heh

^ must have flash installed, probs need flash player 10 due to me using vector arrays....

anyway, general design of it is done, yes it took me like 5mins to come up with...

only thing thats working atm is the photography page, all xml driven which make it easy to add/take away images as i please.
im aware clicking the photogrpahy btn relaunches the gallery again so for now just deal with and only click it once =]

3d page gna be renders of 3d models etc, flash page gna be more games as/when they get created...

programming page is gna start out to be the source code for my site, when i cba to upload it - kinda wana get it a little neater before i do tho, as potentially this website will go on my c.v.
then evolve into whatever, custom as3 classes, perhaps a bit of c# etc


views opinions on what can be made better/improved/changed would be nice, criticism welcome blah blah the usual =]

any errors u get would be nice to know as well...

glhf?

[fido77]

i got up to 130 on the snake game. after that i had to call it quits.lol. nice site though. whos dog?

[Magik5]

snake not finished, needs a level system, either thinking could do it like the classic versions where u set the level/speed yourself, but ill probs have a level select menu with like 20 diff levels with different walls/obsticles etc - and you can set the speed seperately.

dogs mine, called charlie =] the worlds most pr0 dog. EVER.

[fido77]

you should make the ball move and you have to catch it with the snake. that would be awesome. i just wrote a program for a number guessing game. i was supposed to make a program for a game like minesweep, but never got around to it.

[Magik5]

ah minesweeper =]

im currently working on a take of connect4, utilising a grid type system. should imagine minesweeper would need a similar approach...

should really use a grid system for my snake game, would make collision detection alot easier =]

i love the moving ball idea, maybe do this over the weekend if i have time =]

[MonkeyFiend]

gah don't have flash in work, so it all looks like text to me

I just hope you've done your penetration testing

(will check it out later though, when I get home)

[Magik5]

not worried about security atm, if thats what you mean?

i have to ask because when you talk about penetration, you could be talking about multiple things. so i have to make sure first.

[Magik5]

updated the look and feel of this, bitch and moan at me with why you dont like it

[MonkeyFiend]

the most important aspect of your website is still broken: snake!

[fido77]

looks good dangay?. i have no idea how to get my work from my computer to where everyone else can see it or play it.

[Magik5]

well im slowly getting my head round tile based games so when done, im gna rewrite snake with... levels!!!!

[Magik5]

http://www.dancotton.co.uk/snake_new

OMFG IT WORKS kinda... just gotta fix a few bugs and sort some levels out, but at least you cant go through yourself anymore ;p

[fido77]

all i get is a twitchy menu for slow, medium, fast. but prob cause i'm at work and this computer sux. will check it out in class or when i get home.

[=R6= Raile]

all i get is a twitchy menu for slow, medium, fast. but prob cause i'm at work and this computer sux. will check it out in class or when i get home.

i got the same dude

[Magik5]

lollington, works on my home and here, and on everyone elses pc's ive tried it on ;p

what flash version you got? you need fp10

[fido77]

i got the same dude

maybe thats the game?

[Magik5]

dont actually get whats happening, so i cant suggest a fix, except as above ;p

http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/ - update

[=R6= Raile]

no idea what flash i'm on, but i'm using linux. flash and firefox dont work well with linux

ps - not sure what you are using your site for, but maybe put info on there about what is required to play it? (ex: flash 10)

[Magik6]

Works on mine, I'm using flash 10. It's impossible on fast lol

[Magik5]

hehe fast is jokes

im suprised your on linux raile, arent your a crapple-phan? and yes i no mac is based on unix, so none of that thank you ;p

[=R6= Raile]

nah dude im sure ive said before we have a huge amount of in-house software.. to my knowledge, ya need linux cuz you can custom everything

[Lawpf2001]

wow a new thread :awes

[Magik5]

looking at redesigning website (again ), did this last night:

hmm thoughts / criticisms...

got a few more ideas but nothing viewable

[MonkeyFiend]

the typeface looks a little out of place, then again I have been known to employ garish and out of place fonts :S The rest looks good so far.

Although if you make that site by chopping up a jpg and hotspotting it, I will personally vomit in your face. That is all.

[Magik5]

heh i have little more web knowledge then that

and choosing fonts always fuk me off, can never get a perfect one

im thinking of either flashing it and using swfaddress to aid spydering, or js the fuk out of it

flash is the easy root as i can knock it out pretty quick, but considering the advantages of js, and the fact i need to learn it properly (darned as2 type syntax) im thinking i should go down that route...

[MonkeyFiend]

Personally I dislike flash, it used to be good when it appeared on webpages to add effects to things.

Then came the days of making entire websites in flash and worse those annoying little banners constantly trying to play video, animations or worse make annoying sounds or rollovers

Because of this I have a browser with flash enabled and another browser with flash disabled, that I usually use.

Apart from bad habits the now legal requirement for resizing needs for disability etc., increased website size, slower loading (based on single swf file hits), incompatability (so who actually has flash10?), indexing issues (swfaddress isn't perfect ) etc., etc.,

Flash when done well is good, flash when not done well is worse than no flash at all.

Besides from what I've seen of AS2 it's close enough to JS syntax to not cause any major issues.

I spent some time looking for a font organiser that worked well... tried several out, but they all sucked :/

[Magik5]

being a flash developer ( albeit the as3 side of it - think as2 is a disgrace ) im going to need some areas as flash for demonstration on my site.

i rarely do flash for websites tho, stuff here at work is usually e-learning, experiential type stuff or the odd game

have to mention though i agree full on flash sites are great if done correctly - e.g. providing a unique experience to the user ( example is http://www.experience159.com/ ) but can be crappy if its not required... i speak from experience heh

it used to be that the only way to get sleek looking interactive interfaces on a website was through flash, but now that javascript has evolved, and theres a great deal of library's available such as jquery and its variants, there is little point in using flash for basic menus items such as rollovers, small animations etc, hence why i think this is a perfect time to get my head into it.

being that flash player 10 is fairly new, i "should" still develop for 9, but a, the people who i care about seeing my site (employers etc) should have the latest version installed, and b, i like finally having type-casted arrays and the native 3d(2.5d) support... (raile - "yum install flash-plugin" you looser)

[MonkeyFiend]

Speaking from experience, I made a great CV, complete with my qualifications in a nicely laid out nested table. I found out after a while that some of the agencies that got my CV had office 97 that doesn't support nested tables.

The result was they printed out my 2 page CV as about 9 pages of highly spaced out cells.

Further the agencies were too stupid to mention this and just printed it out and sent to prospective employers, which considering I was claiming to be a highly qualified IT professional made me look like a joke. I know if I received a CV from someone that looked like that I wouldn't give them a job.

Can't always rely on the people that should have the correct tools actually having them :/

[Magik5]

your a highly qualified IT professional?

now theres a scary thought...

[Magik5]

second posible design...

[MonkeyFiend]

think I prefer the first (bubbly) one, the second is a little busy for my liking (distracts from the content rather than framing it) and the torn paper style edges just don't do it for me

[Magik5]

heh tbh i prefer the blue anyway, just wanted to try something a little different..

bubblys not perfect though, think ill go with the idea, but evolve it some more...

cheers for being the only one to comment so far though (everyone else is ghey )

[fido77]

it looks good. but i do agree with monkey bubbly one. but then again i really don't know much about any of that stuff

[Magik5]

soo.... design number 3:

i phail at design

kinda settling on the above, although its maybe too "blue" atm.

definitely javascripting it, just gotta see exactly how powerful it is.... ( lack of php on my cheap ass webhost has now annoyed me, so i hope js is good at dynamically serving up content ).

[MonkeyFiend]

looks good (although put some damn .htaccess in your directories!)

you can do quite a bit in js, the old battlefiend royale tournament sub-site, although was in php, was an experiment in not using a SQL database... it worked... kind of..

I'm a firm believer in you can make things like js do pretty much anything you want (whether it's always wise or worth the effort is another matter )

lorem ipsum - latin from cicero's 'On the end's of good and evil'. It's actually a rather good book.

[Magik5]

having (on and off) just short of a years experience in webby type stuff, im still unsure of overall security of webpages. i understand htaccess can rewrite/redirect/hide directorys etc, but have never been sure when and where to use them, considering i now little to nought about security.

i generally figure if u put sumthin on the web, anyone who reeeally wants to CAN get at your files etc, but ive always wanted to know how to set up a directory containing more "sensitive" files and give it a little protection, like a password etc... not something ive come across in the past year so have never got round to working out how

[MonkeyFiend]

There's a good guide here: http://www.javascriptkit.com/howto/htaccess.shtml

the htaccess file can be used to specify users/passwords, hostlinking prevention, blocked IP addresses, MIME type changes and most basicaly preventing users listing directory contents when no index is present.

The single largest web security flaw I come across is with directories with 777 permissions - a lot of forums and content managemt systems require a directory like this for file uploads (like the SM imagehost or avatar upload)

putting in a htaccess file with something like this:

<Files ^(*.jpeg|*.jpg|*.png|*.gif)>
order deny,allow
deny from all
</Files>

means a person can only upload the above file types. Without this a user could upload a script. then with the 777 execute the script. (typically installing an IRC control client, a bunch of malware and chowning the legit files/direcotires to 99:99 so that the user would have to contact their webhost to get it fixed.

Not that I've done this, of course.

[Magik5]

ah sweet , thanks for that

i like how you can prevent hot linking as well, tho i doubt many people would want to link to my images etc anyway

ill give that ago over tweekend

[=R6= Raile]

anyone want to make me a website?
it would be super simple, like 2 or 3 pages only, to put my show reel on and a few bits of info.. would need some form of password protection to see the vid.

there would be no money involved

[Magik5]

if u do the graphics ill html it for you. video would be flv / f4v

but you already have a website?

[=R6= Raile]

what's flv/f4v? im going to assume its some form of video? i'd have to take a look at it to see if it was good enough quality.

cheers dude let me get back to you with a bit of a layout, tho design-wise you could really do anything you want.. just neutral-ish colours is the only must

[Magik5]

flash video... f4v uses h264...

could go quicktime but its not usually recommended for web


rather u would choose urs colours/images etc as my design skills arent exactly to the standard you would most likely require...

[=R6= Raile]

i'll get you colours, probably don't need any images. perhaps a font? you may be better at that then me.. lets do coffee we can iron this shit out

[Magik5]

lol

as for fonts, its usually safe to use a font family - the browser will choose its default from the selected fonts you list...
its safe to list generic ones that everyone will most likely have on there system or itll render the text with whatever substitute it finds

but then again you can always save your text out as an image and have any font you want...

[MonkeyFiend]

my only bugbear with flv is the lack of indexing on it.

Quicktime (and realplayer) on the other hand are the spawn of satan!

Text as images = bad for the indexing though (or for people like me on text only browsers, dam you!)

Font: maybe you could use comic sans, but use it ironically

[=R6= Raile]

whats indexing

[MonkeyFiend]

search engine indexing - stuff like google reading your site, it sees everything as text. If you use pictures for text google doesn't really recognise it (although you can use alt tags on pictures and a few other methods like some interesting javascript)

co-incidentally you can use custom fonts with css... google "@font-face" - essentially downloading fonts if the person viewing the page doesn't have them. It's not that commonly used, although I'm not sure why.

[Magik5]

google will scan/spyder your site and index most text/media it finds into its database

when you search for a term in google, itll search its database and serve up results based on what it finds

damnd beaten to it. what ever minger


fonts via css eh, sounds like a good idea

[MonkeyFiend]

hehe,

it's like this site... google indexes the forums (it has it's own spider account) - so anything appearing in the public or members (not clan member or special) forums can be indexed by google.

If I write: "Raile like the cock"

hopefully in days/weeks, google will find this page and index it. A subsequest google for the word "raile" will bring you to this page*, thereby providing you with 100% accurate information

(*or at least a page in this site that's more popular, you can always show the omitted results though)

I know of the @font-face css thing but don't know any details. My initial thoughts are that if your browser automatically downloads something then that has some potential for dodgyness.

[Magik5]

err had a tiny look into it and seems it only supports .eot fonts? have to convert or sumthin more hassle then its worth... new browsers sposed to support ttf and otf but its no good if its "new browsers only" kinda thing.


oh and another thing to note about google, is that next to each search result there is a "cache" button so if the site it serves up is currently down, you can view the cached version - sometimes omits images etc, but you generally get the bulk of the text your after.

[=R6= Raile]

whoops just to clarify... i would actually prefer google to NOT be picking up anything from my site.. as everything on it would be info i'd rather fewer people be viewing. it would only really be a site for me to send the link overseas and such to allow people to see my portfolio/show reel. now i dont care enough to want to do whatever i can to block google, but i also dont want to try and make it google-friendly

[Robthemerciless]

Very nice site dude! its no where near as good as mine! ^-^ hang on u did it! =)

[Robthemerciless]

theres nothin about u!