Boulder Dash Fan Site officially launched!

Rockford4ever · Post by **Rockford4ever** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 6:59 am

I just found that some of the screenshots in the Unix Freeware Games don't have large screenshots:
BD4 has, but "Boulder Dash v1.0-b5" does'nt. You are still working on this, not?

Post by **Holger** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 10:39 am

> Well, I actually changed width: 100% into exact pixels, because otherwise
> the site would look very strange if you made the window a bit smaller (then
> the cells go over each other).

Yeah, I know what you mean. (I've also seen this when making the browser windows smaller.)

Why not just using good ol' TABLE tags for the base layout? I know it's bad, and should be done with "pure" CSS, but as I'm far away from being a CSS wizard, I still use this technique for the base layout (title box, index box and main content box), and it works just nicely in every browser (older and newer ones). :-)

Martijn · Post by **Martijn** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 1:50 pm

Rockford4ever wrote:I just found that some of the screenshots in the Unix Freeware Games don't have large screenshots:
BD4 has, but "Boulder Dash v1.0-b5" does'nt. You are still working on this, not?

No, that's because I don't have better screenshots of them. Therefore, they are only a little bit bigger, but still very small. If you have better screenshots (or can make better ones), then I would be thankful if you made some for me.

I just work with Windows XP here so I can't make any screenshots of Unix games or even test them!

Holger wrote:Why not just using good ol' TABLE tags for the base layout? I know it's bad, and should be done with "pure" CSS, but as I'm far away from being a CSS wizard, I still use this technique for the base layout (title box, index box and main content box), and it works just nicely in every browser (older and newer ones).

I'm also far away from being a CSS wizard... Francesco (our wizard), is this a good solution? Or Tomi (our other CSS wizard)? (What a magical forum this is...)

Francesco · Post by **Francesco** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 2:11 pm

Yes, it is a perfectly working solution, but - just like Holger said - it's not adviced to do so. Also, it implies a complete rewrite of all the sources.
Since the site has a really good structure, we'll fix it soon, but I must anticipate that there will be a bit of extra work for you, Martijn. We have fixed the layout to jump over IE's bug relating to the screenshots' tables: you'll have to remove these tables and replace them with some nested divs groups - also, we'll need to change some things on CSS. Nothing too bad, just a little tedious, repetitive task.

I'll feed out the instructions as soon as I'll work them out

Post by **Holger** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 3:54 pm

> it implies a complete rewrite of all the sources.

Oops?! I thought you were using some sort of template based system?

For my site, I use such a system, so the recent change of the site layout from plain HTML 3.2 to (partly) using CSS (and still a lot of tables) merely required changing the main template and rebuilding the resulting (static) pages...

Francesco · Post by **Francesco** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 5:26 pm

Using templates is a very good choice, anywhere there is a uniform target to achieve.

For good luck, this work started and continued with a good CSS-oriented structure, so the changes will need a very little effort.

By the way, since using just a template is not enough, I'd like to know what kind of program you're using to create the pages in base to that.

Maybe a custom one which inserts the different contents finding some specific tags into the template?

bojster · Post by **bojster** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 5:37 pm

Martijn wrote:Francesco (our wizard), is this a good solution? Or Tomi (our other CSS wizard)? (What a magical forum this is...)

I just got this in my fortune:
"Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for you are crunchy and good
with ketchup."
:-)

Anyway, sorry for causing a mess, it's really not that important and definitely not urgent. Though I think using a fixed width is generally a bad idea anyway, just think of all the screen resolutions people use (yes, I know 1024x768 has a majority at the moment, but still). For example on my site 1024x768 has ~60%, 800x600 has ~18%, 1280x1024 has ~8% and then there come all kinds of other resolutions. So that means approximately 20% of people viewing your page have this glitch (the ones having 800x600 and less) and another 20% have blank spaces besides the text boxen (the ones with resolutions >1024x768).

Francesco · Post by **Francesco** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 5:57 pm

bojster wrote:Anyway, sorry for causing a mess, it's really not that important and definitely not urgent.

Yes, it's just a minor glitch, but it would be nice to have it working good from 800x600 up to 1024x768 - not more, because it would be a bit ugly.

Since we can fix it, now...

bojster wrote:"Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for you are crunchy and good with ketchup."

Wizards could eat you at once, with a single bite, but they could even be the sweetest people on earth (or mars, or jupiter, or...)

Since I'm still an apprentice, I'll warn you if I'll meet one

Martijn · Post by **Martijn** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 7:39 pm

Francesco wrote:Nothing too bad, just a little tedious, repetitive task. I'll feed out the instructions as soon as I'll work them out

Well, as long as you give me the instructions, I feel fine. Some extra work doesn't really mind. After all, this is typically a site which never gets out of development. Of course I want to make my TODO-list as small as possible, but from time to time it also grows again...

bojster wrote:I just got this in my fortune:
"Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for you are crunchy and good
with ketchup."

Well, as I've already meddled in the affairs, I hope that wizard Francesco has not cast a spell somewhere on the code... that would mean real trouble

Francesco wrote: Wizards could eat you at once, with a single bite, but they could even be the sweetest people on earth (or mars, or jupiter, or...) Wink

Well, I certainly hope that you are a good-humoured one... but I'm not certain... you never know with people from magical islands... (you lived on the 'Winds Island' didn't you).

Francesco · Post by **Francesco** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 9:23 pm

I must admit that my island has a millenary tradition of magicians, and even in our current ages, we still have some kind of spells to help the growth of plants and animals, to heal some types of illness and wounds...
...as well, we have some kind of "dark" spells, meant to damage/obstruct things, plants, animals and people.

In my strictly personal opinion, I believe that they are just a covering for the real cause: the human intention.
It doesn't matter what words you say, the things that you use or the way you move your hands.

The important thing is the intention to achieve a target.
This is the causative part, and I believe in it.

Anyway, I don't understand the link between "wind" and "magic"... maybe you meant "wand", but it's a completely different thing

Francesco · Post by **Francesco** » Thu Mar 16, 2006 3:47 pm

I've found, in some way, an almost-solution to the resizing problem, including the screenshots' table (which is not a table anymore).

Please take a look to the following:
http://spazioweb.inwind.it/entuland/css/css_1.html

We'll go on speaking about these things via e-mail, Martijn.

PS: Hope nobody really cares of my post above, they are just my personal opinions and are not presented as "true/real" things

Martijn · Post by **Martijn** » Thu Mar 16, 2006 4:48 pm

Ah I see. There is no real connection between 'wind' and 'magic', but for me, the place where the winds come from, has some special meaning. But 'mysterious' would better do than 'magic'.

I think the example is pretty good. Yet, the left bar is pushed down in Internet Explorer. But we will discuss this further via e-mail.

Francesco · Post by **Francesco** » Thu Mar 16, 2006 9:02 pm

I'm adding this just for the people who could, eventually, be interested: IE pushes the left bar at the bottom *only* if you make the window *very* narrow. It's due to the fact that IE doesn't recognize the "min-width" rule. Firefox and Opera will behave correctly, blocking the resizing and adding an horizontal scrollbar when the window becomes smaller than 600px (in width, of course).

I've tried a lot of workarounds, but I think there is no way to set a minimum width for the "body" element while keeping it resizable. Not too bad anyway: that layout is a pretty good one - imo.

Martijn · Post by **Martijn** » Fri Mar 17, 2006 4:52 pm

I have Internet Explorer set to the maxiumum size... see it here: http://www.bd-fans.com/Temp/example.jpg

Francesco · Post by **Francesco** » Fri Mar 17, 2006 5:00 pm

Yes, I see... I see also that IE on my laptop behaves differently than IE on my current system (a desktop)...
... I think I'll need to refine it a bit...

IE is completely breaking up the layout of my site! Oh gosh...

Ohhhh... One time it shows good, I refresh and the page is broken, I refresh it again and it's good again... I HATE IE!

[Edit:
Just for curious people, here is how IE on my laptop renders that page, notice the small drop capitals:
http://spazioinwind.libero.it/entuland/css/temp.html
IE on my desktop shows it just like the screenshot posted by Martijn - with the drop capitals correctly set to a 3 times bigger font...
The absurd thing is that I've got the same version on both the laptop and the desktop PC...

Martijn, I've fixed the page linked above, try to see if the problem shows up again (the "good" IE - to say so - is on the desktop I've got at work, so I can't check it out now).
I'm going to apply these things on your main page, I'll send it to you by e-mail.
/edit]

I'm not going to post again such stuff here, so the moderator can re-fold the laser-gun