I know I am probably just picky, but I have been considering for awhile now how to make Massassi.net a better place for newbies and for editors (I am both).

One of my ideas is to have a slightly different main menu. Another idea is to have a central editing page for each of the Jedi Knight games--an "Editing Hub" that would contain all of the needed links on one page. Plus, the hub would display the latest projects, with a "Project" page that would be editable like the "Editor's Corner".

With these ideas in mind, I have constructed a different main menu and an unfinished prototype of the JK/MotS Editing Hub. They are both "unofficial" (but maybe if people like them, an admin could make them "official").

I look forward to receiving comments and suggestions about these ideas.

You know, not only do I think the idea is pretty cool, but I liked your execution of it aswell. I think this is worth some real consideration.

Nice work there, ZeqMacaw!

Everyone needs to bug Brian so that he'll finish Massassi2. The new design does incorporate a few new ideas that are very similar to yours. At least, Brian was working on something similar at one point...

good ideas.

I'm working on a PHP script like that.. for one of my sites- it has picture posting, .plan posting, adverts for help, and the ability to start a project and group all of the above under it.. its about 75% done but I kinda lost interest for now I'm sure i'll finish it sometime.

Wow, that is a really good idea.

It's a really good idea, and the modifications you made look nice... now for a "however:"

1. We are at the max of menu items on the sidebar because if we add even one more, at 800x600, most major browsers will draw a vertical scroll bar on that frame which looks really bad.

2. You have some features there that we haven't implemented and that aren't going to be implemented in the very near future.

3. We have a new design in the works (I know you've heard it all before... *sigh*). The scripts are almost done, after that it's simply a matter of fleshing the site out. I can't make any promises on the status at this point, I'm going to do my best to make it a priority now that my major projects at work are done and I'm working a little bit less there.

4. We will DEFINITELY need and take into consideration suggestions like this in the future -- anything to make the site better will definitely be used. I want to turn this site into something MORE of a community site simply because there are so many of you helpful visitors that have nothing but the best in mind for Massassi.

I really like the idea too.

I think the menus in the "Editing Hub" (as you called it) should be expandable and collapsable...

I vaguely remember there being an expandable/collapsable system being worked on for one part of "Massassi 2" quite some time ago (despite what you may think, I've been here for a looong time, I used to have an account here with "Viper" somewhere in the name (BlueViper then some numbers I believe, but I couldn't recall the PWD so I re-registered with this name in December.) I used to make textures, I actually think a couple were uploaded to massassi, but that's well beyond the point) So, if it hasn't already been considered/started production, it'd be a good way to do the menu system, as you can have more menu items than there are now, but wouldn't have to worry as much about the scroll-bar, unless all the headings were expanded.

Just my $.02 though.

[Edit] Not to get off topic, but, if you actually care, I did find one of my textures on here, It was a texture for a white ceiling with bumps (can't remember the material right now... it's in the decor section, top of the list added 06/06/00) [/Edit]

I was just going to mention that, L3CY :p it was pretty functional .. you should show it to brian.

How about using tables instead of frames?

...because frames were the 'in' thing in 1998. :p

Live by the frame...

Die by the frame.

We should stick with the frames, I mean its classic! Massassi has been around for a really long time, especially for a gaming website, stick with the old stuff!

YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO

Fixed.

Okay, this is making me mad. What the hell does <div> actually do?. Everywhere I go, all it says is "div marks off a section of a document." Whoopee. Big-*** deal. Yet everywhere else I go, all I hear is <div> this and <div> that! <div> is da bomb! I never have been able to figure out what it does, other than retain whitespace. And I never will be able to figure out what it does, because it doesn't seem to... do.. anything at all. How could this tag possible replace a table? What am I missing? Please humor me here.

Yes, I have an expandable/collapsable thing that works across all semi-modern browsers with javascript enabled. It would be perfect for that type of thing.

I just need to get off my *** and do some coding!

I'm with Freelancer.

Im with those guys^^^

*whips Brian*

THE LASHINGS WILL CONTINUE UNTIL THE CODE IS FINISHED!

It's a container than you can manipulate with CSS. Using CSS, you can position them anywhere on the page, allowing for numerous layout styles. Just look at http://www.csszengarden.com/ to see it in action.

Another example is http://www.espn.com/, which uses div tags to layout the site. Seems to work fine to me. Cuts down on a lot of extra code that tables need, reducing the bandwidth costs of the site and the pageload time for those of us with slower connections.

Not only can you use divs and css to place areas on screen, you can also use it to style them - like having background colors, images, rollover effects, etc. http://www.massassi.com/scripts/

Hmm...someone hook me up with some tutorials on how DIV actually works. Seems to me finding margins pxs etc isn't really worth the trouble.

Edit: Nevermind found some on that site.

Rather interesting...a bit more to it than tables but the precision is awesome...I will practice!

Tables were never meant to be used for Website Layout. They were intended to be used as tables, to simply display data in an organized fashion.

Divs and CSS, on the other hand, were intended for layout purposes. As a result, there are far more attributes that make it easier to manipulate Divs and create a better looking website.

CSS is also very useful because it seperates content from layout/design. By using one stylesheet, and linking to it from every page in your website, it drastically cuts down on development time, makes it easier to update your website with a new or modified design, and also decreases bandwidth and loading times as well.

http://www.alistapart.com/

for you...

All of the website designs i've done in the past couple of years have used only css positioning. It's very easy to do, really.

Okay, it seems that people like the ideas.

It also seems that Brian (the admin for Massassi.net) likes them, but has a new design planned.

So, now what?

Do we wait for Brian's new design? Brian, would it help if we did some of the programming (and fleshing out) work on the site? Does the new design provide a "hub" in some form to help editors?

Do we discuss other improvements?

Do we try to implement the improvements (on other sites)?

[2 cents]
Does anyone even care about editing the games any more? I'm starting to sense that there are very few people that are editing. Actually that points out another problem with the site. There's no easy way to tell who is editing. Maybe I have misinterpreted what others have said, but it seems that many would enjoy working with others to put together good quality mods. Getting together is difficult if there isn't a clear way of managing it.

My main interests (in relation to Massassi) are to make mods for JK and to play mods for JK. Massassi has the best repository and the best online help, but oh, if only it would be more convenient for editors. Why have most editing projects failed? I claim that it is partly due to editors not wanting to deal with the organizational/administrative stuff necessary to keep a project going. With the ideas I have presented (and more that will surely come), I think we can reduce the admin burden, so that editors could get more editing done.
[/2 cents]

My intention is not to rush anyone, or push my ideas over others; I just want to have (and provide, if no one else does) a convenient resource/distribution/administrative "hub" for editors.

What do the rest of you think?

from what I can tell, it doesn't.

the cool new fad is to use CSS to position everything-- which works great on IE6, but try that using an older browser with less-than-ideal CSS support and the page WILL look like s***. I don't use divs that often, but they seem to work like photoshop layers-- stuff you placed in a div can be moved all at once and positioned using CSS.

I am totally old-school. I still use tables for most of my layouts. Old? Yes. Clunky? Not really. Effective and universaly accepted? Yes.

Aren't you supposed to be a professional webdesigner?

CSS layouts are:

• faster
• smaller in terms of overall filesize
• more accessible
• work in about 95% of browsers in use today, you can gain another 4% if you use the IE5 hacks
• standards-compliant
• elegant
• search-engine friendly

A decent XHTML/CSS site will be perfectly usable in browsers which don't support CSS as the natural formatting (if you strip the styles) should be a logical document using header tags and paragraph formatting. ie <h1> <h2> <h3> <h4> <h5> <h6> <p> <ul> <li> etc

I am. I still like old-school HTML code b/c it works just as well as the new stuff. I focus more on the artistic aspect of the site. I have a business partner that takes care of most of the cgi scripts and the programming aspects.


Some of my clients want elegant graphic-rich interfaces, so i build the full layout design in photoshop and then slice it up in imageready. I then use tables to put it back together. i tried using /CSS to do it once, and it took much longer.

Plus, tables are not too slow unless you have a ton of them nested within each other. Besides, unoptimized images and bulky flash animations hurt load times the most from my experience.

also, isn't ironic that these new boards still use mostly tables for layout? :p

Not really, do you know why?

Because a forum system is just a visual display for the content of a database which is funtamentally a TABLE. Using tables to layout a forum makes sense, using tables to layout an entire website doesn't.

this page is using exactly one table, can you see where it is? Is it incredibly obvious why it's a table? It should be

Wow... Thats really cool.. I hope Brian will seriously consider this idea.

Eh...I'm not liking CSS to layout the pages so far. I'm having trouble making three columns, one on the left, center, then a nested right, without it looking like utter crap at a different resolution...

Eh, it takes a little work to get used to it.

What do you mean by saying it looks like crap?

The borders don't line up and/or they overlap one another.

I think I've fixed my problem there though.

I still can't figure out how to have a nested "div" on the right hand side though. Where the text from the middle section wraps underneath the text in the right aligned DIV.

An simple example of what I'm talking about is attached to this post.

A 3 column layout that uses HTML colors as bg and that all go the same height is virtually impossible in CSS due to browser bugs and incompatibilities. There are sites dedicated to it but all the solutions that are "cross-browser" rely on hacks for certain browsers and there are always issues.

I came up with an idea similar to that last time we had a discussion about how to imporve the site. I just forgot to come up with a cool name for it.

Based on what Evil_Giraffe posted, I went looking through old threads. (Even though I registered in Dec 2003 and posted a few threads in the Main Editng and Cog forums, I did not really become "involved" until July of this year.)

Mainly for Evil_Giraffe's benefit, but I thought it might be interesting for all to see, here is a quote from Evil_Giraffe on 24-Feb-2004 in the thread, The State of Massassi:

My ideas do mirror his ideas. Also, he does name his main idea "hub". I concur with what he said in the quote.


I checked my web host for custom scripting (to implement the project pages for the Editing Hubs), and discovered that my current plan does not allow custom scripting. (Argh!)

I will wait and see what Brian (or others) implement this month before I implement my ideas.

Thanks for all of the comments.

I agree with Detty. Pagewizard, you should at least take the time to learn how to use CSS before you pass judgement on it. I know that it seems very confusing at first, but once you get the hang of it, you'll find yourself using tables less and less. CSS does have a steeper learning curve than older html methods, but its worth it.

There is one "hack" which works in all major browsers (maybe excluding IE5, it depends on your implementation), just use a background image that mimics the overall background of all 3 columns, most of the time it'll only be a few pixels high anyway so the image ends up being pretty small.