Redesign

[Michel]

Hi Dino,

I like the redesign. It's nothing radical - nice and clear and simple.
Perhaps the Dino's Ultima Page graphic at the top of the page could be
a little bigger? I like the old school icon rips!

Thanks for keeping it up-to-date,
Michel

[Kobra_Kai]

Agree with Michel... there were no radical changes. The layout is
basically the same and looks like changing desktop wallpapers.

That doesn't mean it's bad (actually, it is good). Changes give new
life to a website and show the evolution of its content and of its
webdesigner. In addition, I always liked the clean layout, simplicity
and user-friendness of your site. The pages have always loaded fast
enough for me, even when I used to connect to the internet using dial-
up modems. If the databank will be processed even faster now, then way
to go, Dino!

[Gunnar]

In this case Dino, I think that the reason you received no comments is
because there were none to give. I like the old style, but the new
style is more or less the same. Plus, I like text to be black on
white ;-)

[WtF Dragon]

I like that it's got a lighter feel to it; the dark colours were nice,
but the lighter greys are better, methinks. The title -- in the
Ultima font -- is a bit rough around the edges.

Now, what I'm more interested in is the overhaul of the back-end, and
the transition between flat files and a database. Is there any
possibility of adding an RSS feed to the site now that such a
transition has been made?

[Dino]

Thanks guys for the comments.

Structure-wise you're right, the site is practically the same. The
only thing I improved is that I am no longer using divs for navigation
and content since I had devised a better method a year or two ago. The
structure didn't need to be changed because it is already fine as it
is.

The reason for the redesign was not structure. There were two reasons
to change:
* the old news system is not as suitable as it once was, since the
news file is always growing
* aesthetic reasons

To elaborate on "aesthetic reasons":
* The website always looked dull... the reason for the dark colour
scheme was that a bright background is hard on the eyes, but
experience taught me that white text on a dark background can be even
worse; hence what I did now was use a light grey background that does
not really hurt the eyes, and does not hurt aesthetics either.
* The news images were ugly (some were made with Paint). The current
ones are not only nicer, but are from the actual games themselves.
* Another reason why the website looked dull was the lack of images on
the main pages. That's why I added some images in the navigation menu.
* Yet another cause of dullness was the lack of colour, which is why I
chose nav images with certain colours, and used colour in the
headings.
* A website needs to change once in a while... just to make it feel
fresh.

The comments about the "Dino's Ultima Page" are true. I'll try and
improve it a little, but I'm not very good with graphics, so I don't
promise anything. ;) [added to TODO list]

An RSS feed is definitely possible, yes. [added to TODO list] I
already have code that outputs the news in XML format; I just have to
change it to output RSS (which is XML-based anyway) instead.

I don't know if I had RSS already at some point. I know I used to have
a WML page (for mobile phones) but discontinued it because of the
hassle of having to update multiple files with every update. Back
then, posting news wasn't automated (as in, using a web form as
opposed to editing and uploading files)... and even now that it is,
you can't really post the same news into a WML page, because WML
doesn't support large files (and some newsposts on Dino's Ultima Page
are quite large).

[Kobra_Kai]

Regarding the Ultima Web Directory, you could use a system of tags
instead of a system of folders.

That way, if necessary, you can set a website to more than one
category.

[Dino]

That's exactly what I'm doing, but it is necessary to migrate to a
database-driven system to do that (hence why I'm using a database for
the new Ultima Web Directory). The new system will use tags.

[mageguru]

I just wanted to give you a heds up with using slternate
stylesheets...

While the instructions you gave on the homepage to view ver. 5 is
correct it only works in Firefox...
It does not work in any version of IE the menu cmd is simply not
there.
But there is a fix using javascript...

check out http://www.alistapart.com/stories/alternate/

[mageguru]

Oh this should also solve the issue with being able to retain the
setting by using cookies...
cause as it is now, you leave and come back to the site it goes back
to the original style.

[Kobra_Kai]

Google Chrome also does not have that option.

But it worked well on Opera 9.60 and Firefox 3.0.3.

Mageguru's hint on cookies is interesting. It would be interesting if
we'd be able to retain our changes. In addition, new users (after a
few months), won't notice that they are able to change the page layout
(by selecting its style sheet source), unless they bother browsing
through old news. Perhaps it would be interesing if this option was
available on the main page.

To save bandwidth (I don't think this is a problem nowadays...
but...), both from you and the visitor, you could rely on Javascript.
This feature is not vital, so people whom don't activate JS would not
be penalized. I don't know of any other user-side script as simple as
JS that can solve this little problem.

[Dino]

Thanks for the tips guys, I'll try and do the cookie and JavaScript
stuff when I have some more time.

Regarding browser compatibility, well I tested it on Firefox and
Internet Explorer 8 - both of which had the ability to switch
stylesheets. To my incredible surprise, IE8 and Firefox interpreted
the CSS exactly the same way. Microsoft has managed to impress me.

The idea of making layout-change info available on the front page is a
good one. I've added it to the front page.