Alt-BEAM Archive

Message #12323



To: beam@sgiblab.sgi.com
From: "Bruce Robinson" Bruce_Robinson@telus.net
Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2000 18:52:56 +1100
Subject: Re: Suggestions Anyone?



> Hi, Mike.
>
> > So I know beambotix is kind of so-so...
>
> I think you've fallen into the "What you see is not what I get" trap. I
> don't know if this is built into FrontPage, but your page is so rigidly
> formatted that individual browsers don't have any room to interpret --
> and that's what HTML was designed to do.
>
> For example, your page appears as a narrow band down the center of my
> 20", 1280 pixel wide screen, because the page is locked into a table 600
> pixels wide. The text is much too small for my tired old eyes, even
> though my browser is set up to make text a little larger (when it can).
> My final suggestion for improving (I'll stop whining in a minute) is to
> fine tune your colour scheme. The blue-gray background doesn't contrast
> well enough with the darker blue border, OR with black text.
>
> OK, now for the good stuff. Banners. If you gotta have them, you gotta
> have them. I find the "static" ones such as yours are far less intrusive
> than the dynamic, "in your face" adds.
>
> News. Have you had a look at Chiu's page? Nothing's changed on it,
> 'cause he got a job and has negative free time, but when he was active,
> it was a very dynamic page ... just took too long to load. While Chiu
> was pretty active at surfing the web, he also made a point of following
> up every lead that appeared on the BEAM list. I found a couple of home
> pages where people said, in effect "This site is better than Chiu's --
> all he does is post the same information that appears in the mailing
> list. Big deal." The thing is, that was very handy. I would often blow
> away a note, because I wasn't interested in the topic. Than a couple of
> weeks later, I would suddenly realize I needed the link ... and there it
> was on Chiu's site. He wouldn't copy the messages verbatim ... just
> picked out the interesting bits, and the links that he thought might be
> useful, and stuck them on the top of his page.
>
> As you add stuff, you might also want to think about how it is
> organized. For example, when I started building the BEAM Web Index, most
> of the sites I found had one page dedicated to a robot, instead of
> having a whole bunch of robots on one page. This was usually easier to
> read, because the images AND the text were larger. It also turned out to
> be the arrangement which worked best for the Index. In the circuits side
> of things, I found that most people put up a whole bunch of circuits on
> one page, with a brief bit of text; that doesn't fit the BEAM Web Index
> at all, and is also a pain for people who are trying to describe a
> circuit. It would be much more useful all around if there were one
> circuit per page.
>
> Of course, while this is the best arrangement for the Index, or for
> people who want to troubleshoot, it means more work for the web site
> designer :)
>
> Anyway, a few random musings. Don't take any of it too seriously :)
>
> Bruce

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