Thread: Spades Team Oriented Site Completed

Hello,

I am a member in a spades league called fun loving spaders, and that league is divided into 6 teams. I am captain of one of those teams... FLS_Riders. I have designed a site specifically designed to make it easier for my team members to pull up information regarding the team, contact other team members and myself, and so that we can all have a little extra fun and interact with each other. If you wouldn't mind, I'd appreciate it, if you could look around and tell me if you think this site meets those expectations and any other opinion you may have about the site. Thank you.

My url address is http://www.fls-riders.com

Oh Dawnee, nice idea, good art work. Now for the negatives, your menu bars are all over the place and in different order on most every page. Keep things consistant, users do not want to have to hunt for what they want and to be honest I was getting irritated. On your Awards page the text is covering or being covered by the frames and the page with the charts, the charts take a long time to load. They are so small that I really could tell what I was looking at. Thats about all for now, I'll check back on your progress.

Hi, Ditto with Ed, also most images need to be brought down in size as well, especially the backgrounds. The graphs are also at nearly 4meg & very slow to load.

Hello... ok, so... here's my problem w/ the buttons... I'm having a hard time trying to find a spot that works w/ all the backgrounds so that the backgrounds don't get too "interupted". I thought I had them all in the same order tho, I will check that. And as far as resizing the background images and whatnot... i really don't know how to do that... got any suggestions?

Okay, I did find one instance... on my suggestions page... that the buttons were in a bit of a diff order... the chat and contact members buttons were reversed in order. I fixed that though. Other than that, that's the only place i see them out of order (other than me having to move the home and suggestions buttons--which are the first and last buttons of each page--around in order to coincide w/ the background image). Any suggestions on how to better arrange the buttons are welcome. Also, Im not quite sure what you mean about the frames on the awards page? It appeards correctly to me?

Hi, there are some hints on resizing in my signature & you can use the free Pixresizer to reduce them.

Ok, so.. i already have and use IrfanView... are you saying to actually decrease the visual appearance of the background? Cuz if so.. I don't want to do that...

How about breaking the page into two parts a small frame at the top just for the menus then a frame under that for the background image and your content. I realize you do not want to change the image but you have to find a balance between form and function sometimes.

The thing is, most of my viewers are broadband users... and I'd like to keep the outward appearance of my site as is... but if i can decrease the memory usage w/o affecting the outward appearance greatly, i have no problem doing that... i just don't want to compromise what i've worked so hard trying to put together visually...

Ok skipping over the load time for the moment, how about having the menu bar in the same area that you have each page banner there seems to be enough room without interupting your image too much. You have it that way on several pages. And what I was talking about the menu bars not being the same on each page was that each time a page loaded you took that menu off the the page making it hard to remember where you go next. Keep all the menus on every page just don't link the one for the page yu are on. Be consistant and users will find it easier to use. One thing to remember is this site more for you (and your tastes) or for the users.

okay, i'm sorry... i don't mean to sound as if i'm being a baby or unwilling to work or change, that's not the case.. i was just really confused as to what you were suggesting i do. i can add another button on each page if that will help things... should i really add a home button on the index page? ... i just never thought of doing that, wasn't about me not wanting to... just never occured to me the user would be looking for a button for that same page they were already on...

Not at all, if I sounded rude I'm sorry. Just trying to help, you asked for our ideas and I gave you mine. Don't feel that there is only one way that fits all, thats the great thing about the web you see many different ways and ideas. have your club, friends and family check it out get there input and along wih ours you can always make changes. Also as you work within it you'll find things to fix, add or subtract. Good luck

Originally Posted by demuredawn

Ok, so.. i already have and use IrfanView... are you saying to actually decrease the visual appearance of the background? Cuz if so.. I don't want to do that...

Hi, pop this image http://www.fls-riders.com/fantasy-wallpaper03.jpg into this site http://tools.dynamicdrive.com/imageoptimizer/index.php & press optimize. When you see an image that is ok, right click & save it as the replacement. You can take it down to about a 1/4 of the kb's to help speed up the page.

thanks chris *hugs* ... i know i have to sound obstinate on this forum... and i apologize for that

Thanks D'Son.. and no, you didn't sound rude. Just thought maybe I was sounding obstinate in my replies. I have moved my navigation buttons around and have added the buttons to make it easier to see where things are, like you suggested... does this look any better? (The only page I haven't completed on that is the graphs page, and thats cuz I actually have someone else do that page for me as I know diddly about graphs, lol.)

I've fixed the navigation buttons.... still working on the background resizing... what do you think now w/ the buttons? anything else besides the background resizing?

The background is not centered unfortunally. It looks like it has been placed totally on the left side. I use Firefox:)

And just to mention as well: you`re artwork is really great.

Hey Chris,

K, so I've done that to all the background that it will LET me do it to. Some are over the max limit, and therefore will not allow me to optimize them... anyway to fix this?

Thanks Katrine...

I'm not really sure how to fix that since you and I have different browsers, do you have any suggestions? And thank you for the compliment about my backgrounds... they are not my personal artwork though, and so I've given credit lines to where I got them from on each page.

Hi Dawnee, I see the progress... looking good. I noticed on the rosters page that the font is very hard to read (some not at all) you might want to change that to a internet freindly font. You say at the bottom of one page to click on the image to see the full version this is not working either. I don't know if you have been told yet but its not a good idea to link directly to your email, spam bots will find it and you'll be barraged with junk. Link it to a contact page (form) and have the form sent to your email. The site is looking great!!!

Dawnee,

Please can you explain this Spades to me??? I have never seen anything like this before and I couldn't work out from your site what this is exactly? Just intrigued.

Hi Demuredawn.

Here is a link for you. Its great. It shows you how your page looks from several browsers.
http://browsershots.org/

Besides that. There is an option in your page properties were you set the sizes and stuff on your background. At the same place, you have the options to set the page as Centered.

I hope this helps:)

Great link Katrine, I added it to my favorites. It will make it so much easier to test now.

I`m glad you liked it. :)

Originally Posted by demuredawn

Hey Chris,

K, so I've done that to all the background that it will LET me do it to. Some are over the max limit, and therefore will not allow me to optimize them... anyway to fix this?

Hi, this one is not so fussy on the image size, but works the same.

Good luck.

ty Chris and Katrine, those links will help a lot!

Marincky,

Spades is a card game. I am captain of a spades team within our league. Most of the stuff on that site is comparing our team to the other teams within that league, and the roster and contact info for my team specifically. Also, there are strategies about how to play the "regular" spades... that's the offense/defense/ 10/200 /blind nil/nil/bagging pages... and then there also some tips on how to play the "alter" spades games, which is still spade, but few added rules. If you want to check it out sometime to see what it is, we'd love to have you come and check us out. The address to our league is http://www.zoo-games.com and then you click on spades, then down in the lower right you will see "leagues", under that listing is "fun loving spaders", click on that. That is my league. My name there is demuredawn. Thanks for asking, and I hope that helped.

Marincky,

Is "Ramsey" your last name? Just wondering... cuz that is my last name, and it caught my attentino, lol.

D'Son,

Is it hard to read cuz of the style, the size, or the color? And... on the nav buttons or the page itself? Thanks

Okay... so... I looked at that site that Katrine gave, and there's actually 5 browsers that it doesn't work well with... 2 of them the background repeats itself in... and 2 others don't show the background at all.. and the other shows only part of the background. I have no idea how to correct any of this. The browsers that aren't working w/ it are:

Firefox on Mac and Camino on Mac both repeat the background (both vertically and horizontally)

K-Meleon on Windows XP blacks out the background, but text and nav buttons still show

Dillo on Titanium Platinum whites out the background and lines up the nav buttons and the banner with the text on the side

Safari on Windows 200 only shows half the background

Any suggestions anyone?? (Thx Katrine)

Originally Posted by demuredawn

Marincky,

Is "Ramsey" your last name? Just wondering... cuz that is my last name, and it caught my attentino, lol.

Ramsey is my first name, took me a while to like it but it's growing on me. But it is a pain when people keep phoning and asking to speak to Mr Ramsey!

Originally Posted by demuredawn

Marincky,

Spades is a card game. I am captain of a spades team within our league. Most of the stuff on that site is comparing our team to the other teams within that league, and the roster and contact info for my team specifically. Also, there are strategies about how to play the "regular" spades... that's the offense/defense/ 10/200 /blind nil/nil/bagging pages... and then there also some tips on how to play the "alter" spades games, which is still spade, but few added rules. If you want to check it out sometime to see what it is, we'd love to have you come and check us out. The address to our league is http://www.zoo-games.com and then you click on spades, then down in the lower right you will see "leagues", under that listing is "fun loving spaders", click on that. That is my league. My name there is demuredawn. Thanks for asking, and I hope that helped.

I used to play many card games years ago.. lost and won a lot of money in my time! But I must admit to never hearing about this game before. I'll check your game out soon, thank you for the invite.

cool... come on down anytime you want

i run tournaments at 4:30pm on Thursdays and 2pm and 8pm on Fridays (eastern standard time). You have to be a league member to play in the tournaments, but membership is free, and if you find that you'd like to sign up, I or some of the others there would be happy to help you with that. I look forward to seeing you there!

Dawnee in IE 7 its hard read the print that you have in the main body, the font and size are the issue.

D'Son.

Is this any better?

Hey!!!!! I can read it now. The part at the bottom still bugs me that says to see the original image click on the back ground.......and nothing happens. Is this part not done or do you need to remove it?

Hey,

For some reason, all the links I put "inside" the backgrounds stopped working. I thought I had switched them all to the type-written linking. I keep forgetting to update that one. Thaks for reminding me!

Okay... so... I looked at that site that Katrine gave, and there's actually 5 browsers that it doesn't work well with... 2 of them the background repeats itself in... and 2 others don't show the background at all.. and the other shows only part of the background. I have no idea how to correct any of this. The browsers that aren't working w/ it are:

Firefox on Mac and Camino on Mac both repeat the background (both vertically and horizontally)

K-Meleon on Windows XP blacks out the background, but text and nav buttons still show

Dillo on Titanium Platinum whites out the background and lines up the nav buttons and the banner with the text on the side

Safari on Windows 200 only shows half the background

Any suggestions anyone?? (Thx Katrine)