[Website] Readability Improvement

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Mon Apr 12, 2004 7:04 pm

Okay, I've finally comitted to fixing my technically pathetic web site. I have thus bought a book on HTML today. I have decided on the following:

1) I shall create a Cascading Style Sheet for reference to make the styles in the pages uniform.

2) I shall create an Index page.

3) I shall redo all the pages, fixing spelling errors, removing excess code and generally cleaning everything up.

It has been suggested I use a different font. Suggestions would be helpful (The last I remember is "Wingding.")

It has been suggested I use different colors. Suggestions would be helpful.

If there are any other stylistic changes that would be a bonus, suggestions would be appreciated.

Kai · Post by **Kai** » Mon Apr 12, 2004 7:11 pm

Use a sans-serif font. Arial, Verdana, Helvetica. Justify your text or display it in table elements for visual organization.

DV8 · Post by **DV8** » Mon Apr 12, 2004 8:15 pm

Verdana. For God's sake, use Verdana. And let me know when it's done, or if you need help with CSS.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Tue Apr 13, 2004 11:16 pm

In your opinion, do the tables improve the organization of the information? I won't try building a whole page of tables (at least, not again-that weaponry page was a bitch), but are they helpful?

Kai · Post by **Kai** » Wed Apr 14, 2004 2:31 am

Very. 90% of this board is laid out in tables. It organizes information and helps with presentation immensly.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Wed Apr 14, 2004 3:50 am

Oh good. I hoped they'd be helpful.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Thu Apr 29, 2004 3:52 am

Testing

This is very, very far from being set in stone...I still need to play with colors and styling to improve readability and whatnot. But the CSS works, and I now have an index page.

Adam · Post by **Adam** » Thu Apr 29, 2004 4:46 am

You should remove the <p> </p> tags within the <li> </li> tags; they're not necessary and cause the page to use a lot more vertical space than it needs. The more Good Stuff you can get 'above the fold' [the spot where the average user can't see something because they have to scroll down] the better.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Thu Apr 29, 2004 7:19 pm

Right-o. Fixed. Still not beautiful, but I can work on that later.

DV8 · Post by **DV8** » Thu Apr 29, 2004 10:58 pm

Can someone please give this guy a spot on dumpshock?

FlakJacket · Post by **FlakJacket** » Thu Apr 29, 2004 11:34 pm

Well AnHi's site does seem to be a lot more active than half of the currently hosted ones over on the Matrix part of ds. Perhaps you should e-mail the admins and ask? Failing that, Winternight offers some good deals on sites and the like.

Kai · Post by **Kai** » Thu Apr 29, 2004 11:42 pm

3 months of payment is a free domain even ;7

Seriously, it'd be probably $10/month or less for hosting through WT.

Adam · Post by **Adam** » Fri Apr 30, 2004 1:04 am

Bah; we said we'd give him space on DS - I just have to talk to Mark about it, and I barely see him lately. *writes note on side of monitor in felt pen*

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Fri Apr 30, 2004 1:56 am

Thanks, guys. I wasn't going to bug Adam about it again 'til I'd re-done all the pages.

FlakJacket · Post by **FlakJacket** » Fri Apr 30, 2004 2:05 am

The only thing I'd ask is that you make really clear what's fact, what's ED related and what's suspected or your own idea/opinions. Although it's fairly easy to see and well marked most of the time, someone new coming into this fresh could be very confused if not careful.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Fri Apr 30, 2004 2:43 am

I thought it was clear. Hmm. Is there any particular page you had in mind, or little bits everywhere?

FlakJacket · Post by **FlakJacket** » Fri Apr 30, 2004 3:38 am

Sorry, the 'most of the time' seems to have slipped in as a turn of phrase more than anything else. I'll let you know if I see anything major though.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Sat May 01, 2004 3:04 am

I have just completed and put up the first draft of the refurbished orichalcum page

I think the readability has improved considerably, but I'd like feedback, it y'all don't mind.

Moonwolf · Post by **Moonwolf** » Fri May 14, 2004 2:29 pm

On my comp, it has a pointless bottom scrollbar, so you may need to shrink the table width % by 1. Other than that, it's a good, clean, readable site. Congrats.

Edit: Spelling mistakes:
Para 1, line 5: "continued"
Para 2, line 2: "disappear"
Para 3, line 2: "said"
These line numbers given on 1024*768.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Fri May 14, 2004 3:58 pm

Thank you, I'll make a note of that and fix it.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Sat May 15, 2004 4:05 am

Okay, I fixed that. I've also fixed the invae page.

Currently, I'm working on the Immortals page, and considering a few things which I'd like some input on:

1) Would book references be helpful on the orichalcum page?

2) I've figured out how to do an in-page linking, so you can jump directly to my reference for a given statement and back again. I was primarily thinking this would be useful on the metagenetics and blood magic pages, but what do y'all think?

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Tue Jun 29, 2004 4:31 pm

I know, I know--another bugging about my website. hey, it beats the rest of my shitty writing, eh?

This is the current work-in progress for the Immortals page. Not the revisions and expansions on what is there (I'm just now getting to Ehran the Scribe. Aargh.) However, it seemed a bit blocky to me so I attempted to break it up a bit. What do y'all think?