No more frames on the main site

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2006-10-07 01:43pm

I decided to switch the main Empire site over from a frame-based site to a no-frames site. The navigation bar is now a DIV floater at the upper left corner of every page. This is obviously of no particular importance to the "vs" debate, but I just figured I'd let people know and find out if anyone greatly dislikes the change.

Einhander Sn0m4n · Post by **Einhander Sn0m4n** » 2006-10-07 02:19pm

Anything that gets rid of frames is a good thing. It's slicker and easier to read.

Post by **Surlethe** » 2006-10-07 02:43pm

I think the new look is much prettier: not only is it wider, but it also will permit the direct copying of links out of the address bar.

Mad · Post by **Mad** » 2006-10-07 02:58pm

That's a much nicer feel. The old bar was far too obtrusive.

There's still a few kinks to work out, though. The links page, for instance, has some formatting problems in Firefox (2 RC2) and Opera (9.01).

LordShaithis · Post by **LordShaithis** » 2006-10-07 03:05pm

To be honest, I liked the frames. I don't like the way this new thing pushes the first few items of each page off to the side. It looks sort of improvised.

What if you were to take all the fluff on the right side of the front page (recent forum topics, poll) shrink it down a bit, and move it to the left side, beneath the navigation box? Like okay, I took a minute to draw a layout in Paint.

Then in each subcategory, you would add a navigation list for that particular area, to fill out the sidebar and to save backing out and selecting a new topic within that category.

Just my two cents!

Mange · Post by **Mange** » 2006-10-07 04:09pm

I think it looks great (Mad pointed out the formatting error)! What browser are you using, LordShaithis? That's not how it looks to me at all (I'm on Firefox).

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2006-10-07 04:10pm

Looks like that to me, on Opera 8.54.

Darth Servo · Post by **Darth Servo** » 2006-10-07 04:53pm

I like it better and it will be much easier to link to specific pages of the site.

fusion · Post by **fusion** » 2006-10-07 07:43pm

LordShaithis wrote:To be honest, I liked the frames. I don't like the way this new thing pushes the first few items of each page off to the side. It looks sort of improvised.

<snip>

What if you were to take all the fluff on the right side of the front page (recent forum topics, poll) shrink it down a bit, and move it to the left side, beneath the navigation box? Like okay, I took a minute to draw a layout in Paint.

<snip>

Then in each subcategory, you would add a navigation list for that particular area, to fill out the sidebar and to save backing out and selecting a new topic within that category.

<snip>

Just my two cents!

I double what he said!!

Lord Poe · Post by **Lord Poe** » 2006-10-07 09:28pm

From Curtis Saxton's "Star Wars Technical Commentaries" FAQ:

1.4.2 Why aren't Java/CGI/frames used in this site?

Because I detest gimmicks. Sites which attempt to look "modern" or "fashionable" become outdated-looking much more quickly than sites which are clear of purpose and consistent in content. I have seen very few sites which contain web gimmicks which could not have been done equally well with clean, pure, vanilla HTML.

Fingolfin_Noldor · Post by **Fingolfin_Noldor** » 2006-10-07 11:02pm

Well, I suppose a very good example of that would be Google. Very simple interface and clear in purpose.

Darth Yoshi · Post by **Darth Yoshi** » 2006-10-08 05:50am

I also support Shaithis' idea.

Incidentally, I noticed that on 800x600, the Google ad appears below the floating menu, leaving a lot of wasted space at the top.

Pax Britannia · Post by **Pax Britannia** » 2006-10-08 09:04am

Are you ever going to update the Revenge of the Sith section Darth Wong?

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2006-10-08 11:13am

I do plan to update the site more in future, but there are always other things to do. I need 48-hour days.

PS. I shrunk the banner down to 468x60 size so it would be less obtrusive and wouldn't fuck up 800x600 displays.

Ted C · Post by **Ted C** » 2006-10-11 06:01pm

LordShaithis wrote:To be honest, I liked the frames. I don't like the way this new thing pushes the first few items of each page off to the side. It looks sort of improvised.

I second that opinion. I'd say the easy solution is to just move the navbar to "float: right" instead of "float: left". The more difficult solution is to make a division for the navbar that extends all the way to the bottom of the page, so you don't have an inconsistent left margin in you main content.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2006-10-11 09:11pm

Hmm, an interesting proposal. Does anyone else think the navbar should be on the right instead of the left? Another advantage is that if it's on the right, I can comfortably make it bigger without disrupting the text too much. Right now I tend to feel very constrained in terms of whether I can add anything to it.

Wyrm · Post by **Wyrm** » 2006-10-12 12:40am

I'm seeing the same problem as LordShaithis, and I find it annoying. (Note me down as having a strong objection.) The main content is unrelated to the floating navbar, the polls and the topics; they should not intrude into the rectangle of the main content, because they look like insets used for explanitory material.

I prefered the frames, because it didn't have this annoying flow-around effect.

And before you ask, yes, I do run FireFox.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2006-10-12 12:14pm

Well, I tried putting it on the right, but now the text justification looks goofy on the front page because the right-hand column is widened by the pictures and other stuff.

http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/ (hit F5 to refresh)

Any suggestions?

Batman · Post by **Batman** » 2006-10-12 12:39pm

Sorry, but I'm used to stuff like that being on the left side. This just looks wrong.
The frames version I liked best so far, though the floating bar on the left was tolerable.
I also like Lord Shaithis' proposed layout.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2006-10-12 01:22pm

OK, I tried changing it again. I widened the navigation bar and narrowed the poll and recent topic boxes so that they would all be the same width, then put them all on the left-hand side while leaving the "I WANT YOU" graphics on the right-hand side.

http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/ (hit F5 to refresh)

Wyrm · Post by **Wyrm** » 2006-10-12 02:34pm

On the pages, we still get that annoying problem of the main text wrapping round the nav-bar. Good formatting seems to demand that the nav-bar be relegated to the web-page equivelent to the margin of the page. Frames did that nicely.

How about putting a bunch of whitespace below the navbar (and pals, for the main page) to prevent that wraparound?

Ted C · Post by **Ted C** » 2006-10-12 02:56pm

There ought to be a way to create a <div> that extends the full length of the page down, and put all the navigation and doodads in it. I do something like that with my local SCA group's page. I don't know how much trouble it would be to revamp SD.net that way, though.

Wyrm · Post by **Wyrm** » 2006-10-12 05:02pm

Ted C wrote:There ought to be a way to create a <div> that extends the full length of the page down, and put all the navigation and doodads in it. I do something like that with my local SCA group's page. I don't know how much trouble it would be to revamp SD.net that way, though.

I looked, and this seems like what the doctor ordered. In the attached .css file that defines the layout, there are two points of particular interest to us:

Ted C's Code

Code: Select all

#NavBar {
	background-image: url("graphics/banner1.gif");
	background-repeat: no-repeat;
	background-position: center;
	/* background-color: #009900; /* green */
	background-color: #ffffdd;
	text-align: center;
	margin: inherit;
	display: block;
	float: left;
	padding: inherit;
	width: 12%;
	height: 300px;
}

...

#content {
	display: block;
	margin-right: 12%;
	margin-left: 12%;
	background-color: inherit;
	padding: inherit;
}

And in the file itself, we have the following divisions:

Code: Select all

<div id="NavBar">
--NAVBAR CRAP--
</div>

...

<div id="content">
blah blah blah, main content, ect.
</div>

What's going on here, I think, is that the content is confined to the middle 76% of the screen (because of the margins), and the navbar is confined to the left 12% of the screen (because of its size). That way, the navbar is confined to its area, and the content is confined to its own, and does not encroach upon the area of the navbar to wrap around it.

Is this what's happening, Ted C, or is there further magic happening?

Also, take a look at the #footer id, to make a boilerplate (and consistent) ending section.

Ted C · Post by **Ted C** » 2006-10-12 05:49pm

Wyrm wrote:What's going on here, I think, is that the content is confined to the middle 76% of the screen (because of the margins), and the navbar is confined to the left 12% of the screen (because of its size). That way, the navbar is confined to its area, and the content is confined to its own, and does not encroach upon the area of the navbar to wrap around it.

Is this what's happening, Ted C, or is there further magic happening?

No further magic, you have provided the nutshell description (except there's another 12%-wide bar on the right with some more boilerplate content, so I could also put more stuff on the left if desired).

The question is how much trouble there would be for Mike to implement something like that. If his server is configured right, he should be able to put all the standard navigation components and other sidebar widgets in a separate file linked with an INCLUDE statement.

Ted C · Post by **Ted C** » 2006-10-12 05:58pm

Looking at Mike's code, it looks like he could apply a "#content {margin-left: 105px}" style to the <DIV ID="content"> division of the page to get a similar effect, adjusting the actual width of the margin to fit whatever needs to go in the right column.

If all of his pages have this division and he puts the style command in his /Empire/style.css file, that should apply it site-wide.