Website makeover

Fenster · 16-02-2008 3:29pm #1

It's still very much a work in progress, but I've upgraded my site, changed to a new look, and added an honest-to-god front page by hacking the Simple Viewer flash gallery:

http://www.bhalash.com/

(If you want to wince, look at my front page code)

challengemaster · 16-02-2008 3:41pm

Fenster wrote: »

(If you want to wince, look at my front page code)

if you really want to wince, look at it with a web developer addon :>

you're missing loads of stuff, and your title is fzucked

Ricky91t · 16-02-2008 3:48pm

Very nice have tried using that simple viewer and found it hard to work with
One iv noticed when you view your portfolio
Its got your heading then underneath it has"and portrait photograher"
Nice though

Fenster · 16-02-2008 3:50pm

The pictures are placeholders and I fixed the front page code right this minute.

My coding knowledge is weak and my needs are few, so I'm starting with small steps.

challengemaster · 16-02-2008 4:08pm

also flash sites = poo, you cant bookmark, etc..

but apart from that..

edit: k i'll give you the errors showing up for me.

line 1: missing <!DOCTYPE> declaration - to fix:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" 
   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en" xml:lang="en">
<head>
<title>XHTML-document</title>
</head> ...

and the other main error is you have content after the </body> tag..

Fenster · 16-02-2008 4:19pm

Only specific pages are flash (front page, portfolio). The rest of my site is built around Wordpress.

EDIT: Both fixed, I'll also fix the embedding code later.

Sebzy · 16-02-2008 5:42pm

Like the look of the front page it's very clean and simple. I'm a bit fan of flash but at the moment google and web browsers dont quite know what to do with so i'm still staying clear.

challengemaster · 16-02-2008 6:19pm

forgot to </meta> all the <meta> 's

and from what i can see, the last </script> is doing nothing

Fenster · 16-02-2008 6:51pm

challengemaster wrote: »

forgot to </meta> all the <meta> 's

and from what i can see, the last </script> is doing nothing

Fixed. The last script is for Google Analytics

challengemaster · 16-02-2008 7:29pm

cool, only warning im getting now is that embed is not W3C approved -

not too bad

sheesh · 16-02-2008 7:38pm

doesnt really need to standards compliant if its just a personal page looks nice some lovely photographs there.

challengemaster · 16-02-2008 7:53pm

sheesh wrote: »

doesnt really need to standards compliant if its just a personal page looks nice some lovely photographs there.

nah, doesnt hurt though

its only a few lines of code anyway. yeah, nice site

(despite the flash)

Fenster · 16-02-2008 7:57pm

I'm planning to tidy the embed code tonight. :]

challengemaster · 16-02-2008 8:06pm

kay, you probably already know this, but on the pages you have linked - there's no way to get around from there - no links to other pages..

Fajitas! · 16-02-2008 8:18pm

It'd be great if you had a navigation bar up top, to get from one section to another - That's the biggest thing I feel it's missing (like mine!) - it's not immediatly obvious you have to click the images on the front page to go from one section to another!

countryjimbo · 16-02-2008 8:47pm

Like the look and feel, really like being able to scroll through the photos with the mouse wheel. Pre-loading the pictures works good, really responsive.

You need to work on the navigation, I didn't spot it until Fajitas pointed it out

RoryW · 17-02-2008 1:07am

http://www.bhalash.com/portfolio/

the first few lines "I am a Las Vegas...." are hidden by the MGP Heading/Border at the top

challengemaster · 17-02-2008 2:16am

RoryW: what are you using to view the site? I've checked with firefox and IE6 and dont see any problems...

Fenster · 17-02-2008 2:18am

RoryW wrote: »

http://www.bhalash.com/portfolio/

the first few lines "I am a Las Vegas...." are hidden by the MGP Heading/Border at the top

What browser are you using?

RoryW · 18-02-2008 12:07am

Fenster wrote: »

What browser are you using?

Internet Explorer 7

Viewing on a 13.3 inch laptop if that makes any difference

email sent with a screen grab to show you

Fenster · 18-02-2008 5:24am

I had a look a the picture. I think I have an idea of what it might be, but what compatibility mode are you using?

Cabaal · 18-02-2008 9:08am

Hot Eskimo Porn eh?
Maybe not the best thing to have written on your site for those without Flash installed

Fenster · 18-02-2008 3:01pm

It's so I know what is beta.

http://www.bhalash.com/index2

Sebzy · 18-02-2008 3:54pm

Fenster wrote: »

It's so I know what is beta.

http://www.bhalash.com/index2

And it's great for search engines and content filters when they look to blacklist something

Fenster · 18-02-2008 5:11pm

Har. /index2/ isn't being indexed right now (robots.txt) and there's nothing at my front page. I'm very happy with the hacked Simple Viewer for a flash menu and so right now I'm creating a Wordpress theme to use as a wrapper for it.

Fenster · 18-02-2008 11:27pm

If anyone here is up on embedding flash, I'd like to hear from you.

Sebzy · 18-02-2008 11:37pm

Fenster wrote: »

If anyone here is up on embedding flash, I'd like to hear from you.

What's the question?

Fenster · 18-02-2008 11:50pm

I'm running into problems with embedding a flash gallery (Simple Viewer) into my front page, when I'm using a Wordpress header, which I consider complete.

Ill throw up some code in a few minutes.

Fenster · 19-02-2008 12:00am

Here is how it looks:

http://www.bhalash.com/

And here is the front page code:

http://www.bhalash.com/index.tar.gz

Sebzy · 19-02-2008 12:07am

Fenster wrote: »

Here is how it looks:

http://www.bhalash.com/

And here is the front page code:

http://www.bhalash.com/index.tar.gz

Dose not look like a problem with the embed/object but maybe with the xml and it's location of the images/thumb folders

try sticking the images here
http://www.bhalash.com/images/
and not
http://www.bhalash.com/index/images/

Fenster · 19-02-2008 12:12am

The size/position of the player is also an issue, even though I'm trying to specify that it should be centered and take up the whole area.

EDIT: On its own, the viewer works just fine:

http://www.bhalash.com/index/

Sebzy · 19-02-2008 12:28am

Fenster wrote: »

The size/position of the player is also an issue, even though I'm trying to specify that it should be centered and take up the whole area.

EDIT: On its own, the viewer works just fine:

http://www.bhalash.com/index/

Size of the player is in the embed script and you should position the div via the css
http://www.bhalash.com/main/wp-content/themes/dark_theme/style.css
I am unable to find any reference to the id flashcontent.

no the gallery thing

page location : http://www.bhalash.com/index.php

using the embed variable line : so.addVariable("xmlDataPath", "gallery.xml");

within the xml the image and thumb paths set to
imagePath="images/" thumbPath="images/"

images folder location then should be http://www.bhalash.com/images/

image paths are relative to the swf not the xml now

i see no reason why this should not work

Sebzy · 19-02-2008 12:36am

just noticed that "http://www.bhalash.com/index.tar.gz" page you posted up is calling the SWFObject() function but dose not have the js file in the head swfobject.js

may cause some problems too.

Sebzy · 19-02-2008 12:48am

last but not least

This was bugging me so I did a bit of reading

Within the head tag you have a couple of div tags

quite basically they should not be there ever, they should be below the ending </head>

have no idea about the wp_head() function as I have no idea what it pumps out but am guessing it's not meant to be there either.

Stick to the rule if it's part of the body keep in in the <body></body>

Going to sleep now

Fenster · 19-02-2008 12:59am

Standards-compliant code simply won't work - all that works is <embed>, god help me. And the images still won't display. To the SimpleViewer forums, I go!

Fenster · 19-02-2008 6:28am

I fixed the embed code overnight (swfobject was in the wrong place and I need to fix the position and size, but the big problem remains that the images absolutely refuse to load.

The div tags are part of the spacing in the header. The code isn't mine, and I've had to clean it up considerably already, but I'm content to let it be as I've had no browser troubles. The wp_head() forms part of the header also.

Sebzy · 19-02-2008 9:54am

Only a small problem left

Viewer = http://www.bhalash.com/viewer.swf
xml = http://www.bhalash.com/gallery.xml

images folder = http://www.bhalash.com/index/images/
thumbs folder = http://www.bhalash.com/index/images/

The problem is the paths in the xml
just save down this copy and replace yours
http://www.sebastiandooris.com/mark/gallery.xml

I have set the paths to absolute and pointing to your portfolio

mikeanywhere · 19-02-2008 10:10am

Nice one for the input/advice Seb!! :cool:

440Hz · 19-02-2008 10:21am

Fajitas! wrote: »

It'd be great if you had a navigation bar up top, to get from one section to another - That's the biggest thing I feel it's missing (like mine!) - it's not immediatly obvious you have to click the images on the front page to go from one section to another!

+1

Its looking a lot better than what was displaying for me the other night Mark. Its def getting there. SimpleViewer can be a pain, and certainly is overused in its "standalone" environment. At least you have made an effort to adopt it for your own needs by embedding it, and that is worthy of a pat on the back!
Seb seems to be putting you on the right path there, so hopefully that'll work out.

RoryW · 19-02-2008 1:50pm

I see the About Me section has been updated

"My name is Mark, and I am the greatest photographer, lover and liar in the world"

Fenster · 19-02-2008 4:08pm

RoryW wrote: »

I see the About Me section has been updated

"My name is Mark, and I am the greatest photographer, lover and liar in the world"

It's true, all of it.

EDIT: Cheers Seb, I'll try that in a little bit.

I'll release all of the final code under the Creative Commons if anyone would like it.

Fenster · 19-02-2008 6:28pm

The fixed embed code is below. I set my flashcontent on the actual index page because changing it in the stylesheet interrupted lighbox's functioning. All I really need to do now is to add content to it.

<style>

#flashcontent {
	width: 100&#37;;
	height: 100%;
	border: 0.00px solid #FFFFFF;
	margin: 0.00px auto;
	text-align: center;
}

body {
	height: 100%;
	margin: 0;
	padding: 0;
	background-color: #ffffff;
	color:#ffffff;
}

</style>

<div id="flashcontent">Viewer</div>	

<script type="text/javascript">
	var so = new SWFObject("viewer.swf", "viewer", "800", "600", "7", "#ffffff");
	so.addVariable("xmlDataPath", "gallery.xml");	
	so.addParam("scale", "noscale");
	so.write("flashcontent");	
</script>

Website makeover

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