Curtis Thompson
Forum Replies Created
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hello…
up to the flash part should be pretty straightforward – there are a ton of applescripts that do thinngs with mail, so you should be able to cobble something together from examples via google…
editing the flash file should be ok too – the tricky part could be controlling the flash app itself to do something, although i don’t think it’s out of the range of possibility…
so short answer – sure, why not. how to do it? google is your friend… 🙂
sitruc
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hello…
ya – i actually stepped back as the primary developer a while back and eric bliss is now the owner – he’s happier in cgi so i assume that’s why he went back that route – and it seems to be working great, so kudos to him!
(i just got too overwhelmed with my startup company and couldn’t be as responsive as needed to keep this ever-growing site going, so eric gracefully stepped in and has it humming along nicely)
sitruc
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hello…
ooh – sorry…not really. you can use iphoto to export gallery-esque tools and then edit those, but they aren’t anywhere as fancy as that…
sitruc
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hello…
while there probably are tools that help you generate rss feeds, you can also easily do it yourself – it’s just a text file and then you put a link to that file on your site…rss is xml-based, and once you generate that rss file, you just put a link to that file in your site and then the user’s browser reads it, recognizes it as rss and deals with it. while the aforementioned tools are out there, because there is no voodoo to it, it’s usually much easier to just set it up yourself.
the best shortcut to learning on this that i can offer is this search from google:
https://www.google.com/search?q=example+rss
the key is to not be intimidated by the wrapper that your browser puts around an rss feed – you don’t have to deal with that part – all you do is create the .xml file and the user’s browser takes it from there. xml is very much like html, so with a little practice, you can be making rss feeds in no time…
one caveat – rss is dependent on their browser supporting it (firefox and safari are the best at it), but it is extremely common to not bother yourself with that but rather just offer the link and not worry about the user being able to deal with it or not – note that if you are not a savvy web user and you see the term “rss feed” or the little orange defacto “xml” logo, you won’t have any urge to click on it, so in a sense it’s the perfect interface – experienced people see it and use it while others ignore it…
hope that helps!
sitruc
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hello…
nice work!
well – somet thoughts:
– first thing i’d do is decide if it was staying on tripod or not – if it is, then i’d consider adjusting the design to allow for the fact that all those banners will be at the top of every page – i’d probably do that by shrinking your own site header so that it doesn’t have so much space around it…
– also on the navigation – you have a menu across the top under the banner and then also on the left – what’s the difference between those? maybe consider picking one location for all your navigation items to reduce confusion between them.
– i tried looking at your graphics and either got 404 errors or nothing happening – still a work in progress? maybe consider opening those in a new window or popup window or working up a little gallery for those?
just some off the cuff thoughts – in general a nice site, though! 🙂
sitruc
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hello…
a ton of people use pay pal for donations:
https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/xcl/rec/donate-intro-outside
that could be an option for you…
sitruc
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hello…
[Larry Melton] “I also realize that as a web design community, many of you are probably shaking your heads the same way I do when a corporate client tells me that he’s going to use his camcorder to make his own training video.”
ahh you read my mind… 🙂
but seriously, i guess there are a few things i’d note…
1. the difference in medium between video and web is a lot larger than you might think, and the ability to design for the web is not necessarily something that one can learn from a book. the primary difference is a change in thought process during design. the web is an interactive environment, which means your designs have to be able to allow the user to not only watch them (as with video) but also interact with them. this falls under the bigger category of usability, and it is a very tricky thing. in terms of teaching this, it’s something that i don’t really believe can be learned from reading. you can certainly get a lot of information on web usability from a few minutes of browsing (https://www.google.com/search?q=%22web+usability%22), but it ultimately takes a lot of practice and thought to pull it off successfully.
2. complexity of tools – if you are in the adobe world, you can consider using their newly acquired tool dreamweaver, which will help with building web pages sans knowledge of html. however, you’ll run into #1 a lot if you don’t have the understanding of the underlying concepts. flash is more tricky – the one thing you’ll notice if you play with flash is that the animation timeline is very different from after effects, and it will take a lot of getting used to. you can use flash without programming to do basics, but anything interactive involves action script, which is a pretty robust and not especially simple concept to pick up (it’s very similar to javascript, but if you don’t have any programming experience, it will look very foreign to you).
so all this said (and i don’t want this to be a lecture, but rather just a discussion of what’s underneath the web design iceberg), what are your training options? i guess that depends on how you learn. i tend to think that a lot of computer books out there are way over-priced and it’s quite the crapshoot to find one that teaches you in the way you like to learn. i almost always prefer more hands-on web learning via searching as it’s typically free and you can pick and choose sites that present information in a way that you can best understand.
not to say that all books are useless, though. o’reilly generally produces a nice quality set of books, and they have everything from overall views (see “web design in a nutshell” from the first page below) to very specific books on languages and concepts in development. here’s some relevant links:
– https://www.oreilly.com/pub/topic/webdesign
– https://www.oreilly.com/pub/topic/flashand if you prefer more hands-on learning, you really can’t go wrong with total training:
https://totaltraining.com/prod/webcreative.asp
a bit more money, but the medium is often a much preferred learning environment for folks…
so in general, i guess i’d say that your comment about shaking your head is the most accurate summary. you can learn web design, but don’t expect that you can pick up the more advanced concepts by just reading a book or watching a video. i’ve been doing web development and software engineering for 10+ years now, and i learn new stuff each day that expands my horizons in ways that i didn’t think were possible any more. but don’t let my ramble intimidate you – go for it and i hope the above resources are of use to you! 🙂
sitruc
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hello…
if you mean run it as it would run on the server then the only real option is to install apache and php on your local box and run it as a webserver – pretty easy but if i’m reading you correct then that’s what your path would be…
and ya – php is a nice language. you can use it in conjunction with your ssi or as a standalone – the latter is naturally easier, but the former would keep you going on your current path w/o a lot of new dev work on your site…
lemme know if you need any assistance on this!
sitruc
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hello…
ugh – i’m sorry. i didn’t quite read your post correctly. my answer won’t work for you because you need the javascript…
unless your javascript is drawing based on a value at load time? or is it drawing dynamically based on selections the user makes after the page loads? if it’s the former, my thing might work because you could pass that value at load time; otherwise you need the ajax kind of thing…
sitruc
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hello marco…
ya – javascript can’t read files in that sense. there are activex ways to do this, but i wouldn’t rely on those for a variety of security reasons. but here would be an activex way:
https://www.thescripts.com/forum/thread460516.html
there are a few other suggestions there as well, but none are really practical….
it’s a super-easy thing to do in php if you have that option:
now you could get really fancy with a simple javascript ajax implmentation, but i think that would be overkill here and would introduce a large amount of learning on your end that you wouldn’t want to undertake…
but in most ssi implementations, you can reference external files via a virtual call (although some servers disable that for security reasons), so you could perhaps create a small php or perl script that took a file name as a param and and generated a pretty file size string and then reference it via ssi:
https://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/mod/mod_include.html#element.include
i think that’s the easiest way to go about it…
make sense?
sitruc