It's been brought to my attention (something I never really thought about before) that I'm hindering OSC's growth with the only part of the new layout that even holds on to the old. The navigation. Does anybody know of a way in which I can create an animated navigational system that wouldn't use flash that could still be indexed by search engines? I really love that nav. It's totally unique, and very simple at the same time. The rest of the site is well designed (or so I've been told, I'm also looking for input on that), so I need to address this issue. Any help?

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-=I'm the wang of this here site, and it's HUGE! So just imagine how big I am.=-
1337Yectiwan
OSC Returns!!
10 of 14 -- 27 Lives On

*shrugs* Who needs search engines...

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"The Oracle told me I would die with my boots on. I've worn tennis shoes ever since." - Axis

any site that wants to grow outside of the massassi retirees. Having old members visit semi-regularly is great and all, but we need some traffic. Especially to justify you know, paying for hosting, and stuff.

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-=I'm the wang of this here site, and it's HUGE! So just imagine how big I am.=-
1337Yectiwan
OSC Returns!!
10 of 14 -- 27 Lives On

I put up a non-flash nav that's nothing spectacular... I really need to find something that will be cross browser compatible, offer eye candy, and still be able to be scoured by web pages.

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-=I'm the wang of this here site, and it's HUGE! So just imagine how big I am.=-
1337Yectiwan
OSC Returns!!
10 of 14 -- 27 Lives On

Just make a normal nav and a little button above it saying "OMG FLASH THINGI FO TEH FLASH PPLZ!!1"

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Fight fire with fire! Fight EVERYTHING with fire!

"True as toasted toads!"

really what I need to do is have a browser test that will check to see if they have flash installed... But I don't know how to code it... that's what I'm looking for right now.... Like If you have flash you get THIS if you don't you get THIS and the second THIS would actually be hard coded into the index, but wouldn't be seen unless you don't have flash.


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-=I'm the wang of this here site, and it's HUGE! So just imagine how big I am.=-
1337Yectiwan
OSC Returns!!
10 of 14 -- 27 Lives On

I can post code that prompts the user to download the flash plugin if they dont have it already...



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Most people regard me as the dark and immoral side of Massassi. At least I'm getting what I want out of life.

You advocate shoving flash down the user's throat? Bad idea

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"Music is the universal language and the
dialect we speak in is Hip Hop!" - King Solomon

[This message has been edited by Molgrew (edited March 05, 2004).]

Then that is forcing a download onto your machine. That is a guaranteed way of driving away traffic.

I researched into plugin detection by the browser and determined that PHP can't do that. It will have to be written in JavaScript (ugh).


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<scribbly handwriting barely resembling name>

It's not forcing a download. It's that window that pops up and aks the user if they want to download and install flash player. Macromedia is a reputable source (for the most part) and nearly everyone knows wwhat flash is, so I doubt that probs will arise from that.



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Most people regard me as the dark and immoral side of Massassi. At least I'm getting what I want out of life.

[This message has been edited by Pagewizard_YKS (edited March 05, 2004).]

Aside from that use of flash in websites is a pervasive bloaty unnecessary and massively overused evil. Yes Yecti it looks mad sexy as does the rest of the site, but you could increase the functionality and friendliness and only slightly decrease the sex by making it a compliant accessible menu.

Flash is good for things such as clubbing penguins, and strongbad, but not as a menu interface for the love of all that's holy

No offense but it's even worse than the people who make like all their navigation as jpegs with rollovers to show the labels, and no alt-text.

I have this tendency towards websites, if it's not summat i can get away with browing in lynx should the urge arise, it's not really a properly functional site imo

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[Blue Mink Bifocals !] [fsck -Rf /world/usr/] [<!-- kalimonster -->] [Capite Terram]
"You'll have to face it, the endings are the same however you slice it. Don't be deluded by any other endings, they're all fake, with malicious intent to deceive, or just motivated by excessive optimism if not by downright sentimentality. The only authentic ending is the one provided here: John and Mary die. John and Mary die. John and Mary die." -Happy Endings [Margeret Atwood]
NPC.Interact::PressButton($'Submit');

I went on your site yesterday and the sidebar didnt load in firefox, so I left... anything that works for me will work for me.

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Drugs & Stupidity, Tons of it.

Try visiting the site now. The navigation is just a CSS rollover link change with some highlights. Plaintext. It's sorta growing on me.

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-=I'm the wang of this here site, and it's HUGE! So just imagine how big I am.=-
1337Yectiwan
OSC Returns!!
10 of 14 -- 27 Lives On

A bit tiny

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"Music is the universal language and the
dialect we speak in is Hip Hop!" - King Solomon

Tiny. And doesn't really mesh with the rest of the site design that much, it's like the only place where that size and font seem to be used. And formatting-wise it looks kinda just /there/, maybe make it a bit larger and add some depth to it [ie drop down one of your pipe graphics to the side of it as a vertical border, with those circle/dot icons next to the links or something]

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[Blue Mink Bifocals !] [fsck -Rf /world/usr/] [<!-- kalimonster -->] [Capite Terram]
"You'll have to face it, the endings are the same however you slice it. Don't be deluded by any other endings, they're all fake, with malicious intent to deceive, or just motivated by excessive optimism if not by downright sentimentality. The only authentic ending is the one provided here: John and Mary die. John and Mary die. John and Mary die." -Happy Endings [Margeret Atwood]
NPC.Interact::PressButton($'Submit');

You know, you can make gif images that look EXACTLY the same as your old nav (minus the animated part). I don't know how to test for flash, either, which is why I don't use it. If you do it in javascript, that will also hinder search engines. You could always check in javascript and just put a hidden DIV containing the nav links, I think search engines will crawl that since they don't actually care which parts are shown or not.

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EvilMagic.net: Brian's Web Log