Topic: Vedit Web Page (1 of 22), Read 53 times
Conf: VEDIT Sales and Info
From: Ian Binnie
Date: Wednesday, September 07, 2005 09:34 PM

I noticed the recent change to the web page (I kind of liked the old).

One change is that the date of the latest release is not listed.

I looked at the Downloads which lists "Current Version is 6.13.1 dated 01/25/05"

6.13.2 beta was created in April (and I have been using it since), but not promoted to release.

 


Topic: Re: Vedit Web Page (2 of 22), Read 44 times
Conf: VEDIT Sales and Info
From: Ted Green
Date: Wednesday, September 07, 2005 10:19 PM

At 09:34 PM 9/7/2005, you wrote:
>I noticed the recent change to the web page (I kind of liked the old).
>
>One change is that the date of the latest release is not listed.
>
>I looked at the Downloads which lists "Current Version is 6.13.1 dated 01/25/05"
>
>6.13.2 beta was created in April (and I have been using it since), but not promoted to release.

One of my programmers/web-designers (Carson Keith) created the new site and promised that the content was the same, but with the goal of simplifying it a bit. I have not yet gone through it page by page.

We will add the release dates back soon.

Ted.

 


Topic: Re: Vedit Web Page (3 of 22), Read 42 times
Conf: VEDIT Sales and Info
From: Christian Ziemski
Date: Friday, September 09, 2005 04:33 AM

On 9/7/2005 10:19:56 PM, Ted Green wrote:
>At 09:34 PM 9/7/2005, Ian Binnie wrote:
>>
>>One change is that the date of the latest release is not listed.
>>
>>I looked at the Downloads which lists "Current Version is 6.13.1 dated 01/25/05"
>
>We will add the release dates back soon.

Then it would make sense to update the FAQ page too.
It says "VEDIT 6.11 was released on Oct. 22, 2003" ...


BTW:

1.) It seems that the new page layout is coded to have a fixed width of about 800 pixels. On higher screen resolutions there is much "wasted" space to the left and to the right. Is that by design?

2.) The font may be generally a bit small and in the "What's new" column it is not easily readable with white on red.

Those are very personal impressions, I know.

3.) Is the Vedit logo on that page the new official one?
Am I allowed to use it on my Vedit fan page?

My page moved from http://ziemski.privat.t-online.de/vedit/
to http://www.ziemski.net/vedit/

Perhaps you can change the link listed on http://www.vedit.com/links.htm?


Christian

 


Topic: Re: Vedit Web Page (4 of 22), Read 42 times
Conf: VEDIT Sales and Info
From: Ian Binnie
Date: Friday, September 09, 2005 05:16 AM

On 9/9/2005 4:33:15 AM, Christian Ziemski wrote:

>1.) It seems that the new page layout is
>coded to have a fixed width of about 800
>pixels. On higher screen resolutions
>there is much "wasted" space to the left
>and to the right. Is that by design?

I had noticed that the design was a little strange, requiring scrolling to view the bottom (poor design IMHO).

The page shape is narrow & long, but most of us have 4:3 screens, probably 1024*768 is the most common, but pages need to be designed to work on 800*600.

Following Christian's comment I looked at the source, and dimensions are hard coded!!

 


Topic: Re: Vedit Web Page (6 of 22), Read 41 times
Conf: VEDIT Sales and Info
From: Ted Green
Date: Friday, September 09, 2005 11:51 AM

At 05:16 AM 9/9/2005, you wrote:
>I had noticed that the design was a little strange, requiring scrolling to view the bottom (poor design IMHO).
>
>The page shape is narrow & long, but most of us have 4:3 screens, probably 1024*768 is the most common, but pages need to be designed to work on 800*600.

Hmmm, it should be the same width as the previous site and require no side-to-side scrolling on 800*600.

Yes, all the content it requires up-down scrolling, but less than the old site. Also, the "Learn more about VEDIT" is now redundant and will soon be deleted, reducing the page height.

Ted.

 


Topic: Re: Vedit Web Page (5 of 22), Read 42 times
Conf: VEDIT Sales and Info
From: Ted Green
Date: Friday, September 09, 2005 11:44 AM

At 04:33 AM 9/9/2005, you wrote:
>
>1.) It seems that the new page layout is coded to have a fixed width of about 800 pixels. On higher screen resolutions there is much "wasted" space to the left and to the right. Is that by design?

Yes, we wanted to limit the width to 770 pixels, same as the previous site. (In the previous site, the banner went to full width). It is becoming more customary to center the page.

>2.) The font may be generally a bit small and in the "What's new" column it is not easily readable with white on red.

I agree, we will address that.
If you examine the source, you will see that there are no font commands and no positioning commands - there is no tables!
All positioning is done with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)!

In other words, the content and presentation and completely separate.

The CSS is a bit complex and with a little fine-tuning we should be able to improve the appearance.

>Those are very personal impressions, I know.
>
>3.) Is the Vedit logo on that page the new official one?
>Am I allowed to use it on my Vedit fan page?

Sure you can use it. Do you like it better than the original VEDIT box?
We still need to add the new Greenview logo to the VEDIT website.

The new VEDIT, EBCDIC and SpamStopsHere websites were all created by Carson Keith, who splits his time between programming and web design.

Ted.

 


Topic: Re: Vedit Web Page (7 of 22), Read 44 times
Conf: VEDIT Sales and Info
From: Christian Ziemski
Date: Friday, September 09, 2005 01:11 PM

On Fri, 09 Sep 2005 11:44:00 -0400, Ted Green wrote:

>At 04:33 AM 9/9/2005, you wrote:
>>
>>1.) It seems that the new page layout is coded to have a fixed
>>width of about 800 pixels. On higher screen resolutions there
>>is much "wasted" space to the left and to the right.
>>Is that by design?
>
>Yes, we wanted to limit the width to 770 pixels, same as the
>previous site.

Oh, you are right. The previous site had the same width!

(Still visible here for comparison: http://www.vedit.net)
Fascinating. I never realized that "wasted" space on the right there.

But now with the new design that feeling came up immediately.
(Perhaps due to the very different font sizes.)


>If you examine the source, you will see that there are no font
>commands and no positioning commands - there is no tables!
>All positioning is done with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)!

I'm no html expert and using very basic html on my site only.
But CSS is on my to-learn-list...


>>[new Vedit logo]
>
>Do you like it better than the original VEDIT box?

Yes, it's more modern and it has something like "speed" in it.


>The new VEDIT, EBCDIC and SpamStopsHere websites were all
>created by Carson Keith, who splits his time between programming
>and web design.

Hello to Carson!


Christian

 


Topic: Re: Vedit Web Page (9 of 22), Read 43 times
Conf: VEDIT Sales and Info
From: Pauli Lindgren
Date: Thursday, September 15, 2005 11:45 AM

On 9/9/2005 11:44:23 AM, Ted Green wrote:
>
>>3.) Is the Vedit logo on that page the new official one?
>>Am I allowed to use it on my Vedit fan page?
>
>Sure you can use it. Do you like it better than the
>original VEDIT box?

At least now there *is* a logo.

Is there a smaller size version of the logo available?
Perhaps half or 1/3 of the size? Of course I could crop and resize the one on the web page, but maybe the quality would be better if you have a version directly made in smaller size.

--
Pauli

 


Topic: Re: Vedit Web Page (8 of 22), Read 43 times
Conf: VEDIT Sales and Info
From: Pauli Lindgren
Date: Thursday, September 15, 2005 11:33 AM

On 9/9/2005 4:33:15 AM, Christian Ziemski wrote:
>
>BTW:
>
>1.) It seems that the new page layout is
>coded to have a fixed width of about 800
>pixels. On higher screen resolutions
>there is much "wasted" space to the left
>and to the right. Is that by design?

Using fixed width on web page is not good idea, but unfortunately it is quite common these days.
It is much better to allow the page to scale according to viewer's window size. Not everybody use their browser in full screen mode. And more and more people access web using PDA or smart phone.

However, IF you want to set the width, it is usually better to use ems as units instead of pixels.

>
>2.) The font may be generally a bit
>small and in the "What's new" column it
>is not easily readable with white on
>red.

On my Netscape 7.0, the text is quite small, too.

On Internet Explorer 6, the text is much larger, perhaps twice as big. For example the top menu (on orange background) does not fit on one line unless I set Text Size setting to "Smallest". And even then, the topmost menu (on black background) does not fit in the space available, and the last menu item is not visible.

One reason may be the use of Verdana font (which is generally not recommended). Verdana is much larger than other fonts of the same point size. If the viewer does not have Verdana, the text will be much smaller than what page designer expects.

However, that does not explain the huge difference in text size in this case. I suspect the reason is the fact that Internet Explorer has very limited and buggy CSS support. Therefore it is not good idea to use too complex CSS.

As for the colors, I don't like the orange background, it causes me headache. Some less saturated color would probably be more pleasant.

In addition, there are several other problems on the new design.

- On Netscape, the address bar always contains "http://www.vedit.com/index.html" on every page, instead of showing the real page address.
- If Javascript is enabled, Back button does not work.
- If Javascript is not enabled, the e-mail address on the bottom of the main page only contains "or".
- There is no visible link into the main (home) page from other pages (it took me a while to realize that the logo has the link).

I also checked the main page with HTML validator:
http://validator.w3.org/
LOTS of errors were found.

Generally, I like the new design more than the old one, but lots of cleaning need still be done.

--
Pauli

 


Topic: Re: Vedit Web Page (10 of 22), Read 43 times
Conf: VEDIT Sales and Info
From: Christian Ziemski
Date: Thursday, September 15, 2005 04:47 PM

On Thu, 15 Sep 2005 11:33:00 -0400, Pauli Lindgren wrote:

>On 9/9/2005 4:33:15 AM, Christian Ziemski wrote:
>>
>>2.) The font may be generally a bit small and in the "What's new"
>>column it is not easily readable with white on red.
>
>On my Netscape 7.0, the text is quite small, too.
>
>On Internet Explorer 6, the text is much larger, perhaps twice
>as big.

?? Not here.
The page (and the text itself) is almost identical in IE, Opera and
Firefox.

>One reason may be the use of Verdana font (which is generally not recommended).
>Verdana is much larger than other fonts of the same point size. If the viewer
>does not have Verdana, the text will be much smaller than what page designer
>expects.

My system (Win2000) has Verdana.


>In addition, there are several other problems on the new design.
>
>- On Netscape, the address bar always contains
>"http://www.vedit.com/index.html" on every page, instead of showing the real
>page address.

Not here. Perhaps Carson already changed something?


>- If Javascript is enabled, Back button does not work.

Works fine here.


>- If Javascript is not enabled, the e-mail address on the bottom of
> the main page only contains "or".

That is due to the anti-harvesting-trick they are using.

I adopted that method for my own site some days ago. If you have got
an alternative which is working without JavaScript I would be happy to
know about it :-)


>- There is no visible link into the main (home) page from other pages
> (it took me a while to realize that the logo has the link).

Me too.


Christian

 


Topic: Re: Vedit Web Page (11 of 22), Read 44 times
Conf: VEDIT Sales and Info
From: Ted Green
Date: Thursday, September 15, 2005 05:51 PM

At 04:47 PM 9/15/2005, you wrote:
>>One reason may be the use of Verdana font (which is generally not recommended).
>>Verdana is much larger than other fonts of the same point size. If the viewer
>>does not have Verdana, the text will be much smaller than what page designer
>>expects.
>
>My system (Win2000) has Verdana.

Verdana is very widely used; I believe the old site used it too.

>>In addition, there are several other problems on the new design.
>>
>>- On Netscape, the address bar always contains
>>"http://www.vedit.com/index.html" on every page, instead of showing the real
>>page address.
>
>Not here. Perhaps Carson already changed something?

The pages are actually all .php, but we map to .htm, which might
confuse some address bars. (But don't know how.)

>>- If Javascript is enabled, Back button does not work.
>
>Works fine here.

While we check pages under Firefox, we don't check with Netscape.

>That is due to the anti-harvesting-trick they are using.
>
>I adopted that method for my own site some days ago. If you have got
>an alternative which is working without JavaScript I would be happy to
>know about it

We might change that to an image someday, but we have long used
Javascript. So little of the web works without Javascript that
I just assume Javascript is enabled.

Ted.

 


Topic: Re: Vedit Web Page (12 of 22), Read 43 times
Conf: VEDIT Sales and Info
From: Christian Ziemski
Date: Friday, September 16, 2005 02:13 AM

On 9/15/2005 5:51:45 PM, Ted Green wrote:

>We might change that to an image someday, but we have
>long used Javascript. So little of the web works without
>Javascript that I just assume Javascript is enabled.

Yes, I have activated JavaScript too (in contrary to ActiveX). I just tested Paulis comments.

And I almost never use IE. Only if I really have to (on MS sites).

Christian

 


Topic: Re: Vedit Web Page (13 of 22), Read 42 times
Conf: VEDIT Sales and Info
From: Ted Green
Date: Tuesday, September 27, 2005 11:48 PM

Based on your feedback, I had Carson improve/correct the website.
* The white text is larger
* The current version is displayed on the home page (soon to be a quick link).
* The home page cannot be resized in IE; however the main text of other pages can be resized.

We are going to leave a static width (about 760 pixels) which displays fine in 800x600 mode.
We are not going to simply resize to the "window" width,; the resulting long lines would become unreadable on huge resolution monitors (e.g. 1920 x1080).

The "See it" link will soon point to some slide show we have been working on.

There is always more to do, and it is very "different", but I think it has a better look.

Ted.

 


Topic: Re: Vedit Web Page (16 of 22), Read 40 times
Conf: VEDIT Sales and Info
From: Pauli Lindgren
Date: Monday, October 03, 2005 05:46 AM

On 9/27/2005 11:48:55 PM, Ted Green wrote:
>
>We are going to leave a static width (about 760 pixels) which
>displays fine in 800x600 mode.
>We are not going to simply resize to the "window" width,;
>the resulting long lines would become unreadable on huge
>resolution monitors (e.g. 1920x1080).

You do not need to resize to window width. Browser does that automatically, as long as you do not force it to use fixed width. On the other hand, if you want to set the width, it is not necessary to use pixels as unit. You could use ems, for example, so that when user changes the font size, the space for the text will be larger, too. That is useful especially for someone with huge resolution monitor.

Huge resolution does not mean unreadable long lines. The user can adjust the window size to whatever they like, and thus have whatever line length they wish. It is unlikely that someone who has huge resolution would use the browser in full screen mode (and that is not good idea even with smaller resolution).

--
Pauli

 


Topic: Re: Vedit Web Page (21 of 22), Read 41 times
Conf: VEDIT Sales and Info
From: Ted Green
Date: Monday, October 03, 2005 09:57 AM

At 05:46 AM 10/3/2005, you wrote:

>You do not need to resize to window width. Browser does that automatically, as long as you do not force it to use fixed width. On the other hand, if you want to set the width, it is not necessary to use pixels as unit. You could use ems, for example, so that when user changes the font size, the space for the text will be larger, too. That is useful especially for someone with huge resolution monitor.

We use Pixels sizes on the home page (to disable resizing in IE) and Ems on the main text on the other pages.

I appreciate the feedback, but this is the look we have purposely chosen.

Ted.

 


Topic: Re: Vedit Web Page (15 of 22), Read 42 times
Conf: VEDIT Sales and Info
From: Pauli Lindgren
Date: Monday, October 03, 2005 05:35 AM

On 9/15/2005 5:51:45 PM, Ted Green wrote:
>
>Verdana is very widely used; I believe the old site used it too.

Using Verdana is a common mistake, but it is still a mistake. See:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~sbpoley/webmatters/verdana.html

While Windows usually comes with Verdana, other systems such as Mac, Linux, Unix, PDA's, cell phones etc. probably do not have it. Further, even if the system has Verdana, the browser may not use it, or the user may have disabled it with user style sheet.

By the way, some problems may also be caused by the use of xhtml. Internet Explorer does not support xhtml.

--
Pauli

 


Topic: Re: Vedit Web Page (20 of 22), Read 42 times
Conf: VEDIT Sales and Info
From: Ted Green
Date: Monday, October 03, 2005 09:53 AM

At 05:36 AM 10/3/2005, you wrote:
>From: "Pauli Lindgren"
>
>On 9/15/2005 5:51:45 PM, Ted Green wrote:
>>
>>Verdana is very widely used; I believe the old site used it too.
>
>Using Verdana is a common mistake, but it is still a mistake. See:
> http://www.xs4all.nl/~sbpoley/webmatters/verdana.html

Our style sheet uses Verdana if available, else it uses Arial or others. This is the look we want.

Ted.

 


Topic: Re: Vedit Web Page (22 of 22), Read 43 times
Conf: VEDIT Sales and Info
From: Pauli Lindgren
Date: Wednesday, October 05, 2005 08:55 AM

On 10/3/2005 9:53:40 AM, Ted Green wrote:
>
>Our style sheet uses Verdana if
>available, else it uses Arial or others.
>This is the look we want.

You do not understand. If the user does not have Verdana, the page will *not* look as what you wanted. Arial, for example, is much smaller than Verdana, so the text will be smaller than what you want. (Not to talk about what the reader wants.)

BTW, I found the reason why the text was so much larger on IE than on Netscape and Opera. Someone O:-o had ticked the setting "Ignore font sizes specified on Web pages" on my IE.

This is another problem caused by Verdana. Normally, when Verdana is used, the text size is reduced in order to compensate the larger size of Verdana. On IE, it is possible to ignore text size change on web page, but there is no option to ignore font change. This results in much larger font than either page creator or the viewer expect.

--
Pauli

 


Topic: Re: Vedit Web Page (14 of 22), Read 41 times
Conf: VEDIT Sales and Info
From: Pauli Lindgren
Date: Monday, October 03, 2005 05:00 AM

On 9/15/2005 4:47:09 PM, Christian Ziemski wrote:
>
>
>>- On Netscape, the address bar always contains
>>"http://www.vedit.com/index.html" on every page, instead of showing the real
>>page address.
>
>Not here. Perhaps Carson already changed
>something?

Seems to work now for me, too. Maybe it has been changed, or maybe it was just some temporal glitch.


>
>That is due to the anti-harvesting-trick
>they are using.
>
>I adopted that method for my own site
>some days ago. If you have got
>an alternative which is working without
>JavaScript I would be happy to
>know about it :-)

The normal way is to show the email address as an image.
Or, optionally, just show the @ character as image. The latter is useful especially if there are many addresses (and it allows user to copy the text and just add the @ character).

After you have done that, you can add Javascript to display the email link for those adventurous people who keep Javascript enabled. The image should then be in the noscript part for those who have brains to keep Javascript disabled. In any case, there should be *something* in the noscript part, otherwise the page looks odd when Javascript is disabled.

--
Pauli

 


Topic: Re: Vedit Web Page (17 of 22), Read 42 times
Conf: VEDIT Sales and Info
From: Christian Ziemski
Date: Monday, October 03, 2005 07:04 AM

On Mon, 03 Oct 2005 05:00:00 -0400, Pauli Lindgren wrote:

>On 9/15/2005 4:47:09 PM, Christian Ziemski wrote:
>
>>That is due to the anti-harvesting-trick they are using.
>>
>>I adopted that method for my own site some days ago.
>>If you have got an alternative which is working without
>>JavaScript I would be happy to know about it :-)
>
>The normal way is to show the email address as an image. [...]
>
>After you have done that, you can add Javascript to display the
>email link for those adventurous people who keep Javascript enabled.
>The image should then be in the noscript part for those
>who have brains to keep Javascript disabled.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Ooops, I have JavaScript enabled. Bad me.

>In any case, there should be *something* in the noscript part,
>otherwise the page looks odd when Javascript is disabled.

Pauli:

Thanks for the tips. Now implemented on my site.


Christian

 


Topic: Re: Vedit Web Page (18 of 22), Read 42 times
Conf: VEDIT Sales and Info
From: Ian Binnie
Date: Monday, October 03, 2005 08:07 AM

On 10/3/2005 7:04:56 AM, Christian Ziemski wrote:
>On Mon, 03 Oct 2005 05:00:00 -0400,
>Pauli Lindgren wrote:
>
>>On 9/15/2005 4:47:09 PM, Christian Ziemski wrote:
>>
>>>That is due to the anti-harvesting-trick they are using.
>>>
>>>I adopted that method for my own site some days ago.
>>>If you have got an alternative which is working without
>>>JavaScript I would be happy to know about it :-)
>>
>>The normal way is to show the email address as an image. [...]
>>
>>After you have done that, you can add Javascript to display the
>>email link for those adventurous people who keep Javascript enabled.
>>The image should then be in the noscript part for those
>>who have brains to keep Javascript disabled.
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

I decided to look at the site source (using Vedit of course) to follow the above discussion.

This is not pretty -

It can't decide whether in Unix or MS-DOS format.

I know this doesn't matter to those who use web authoring tools, but I still code my html by hand in Vedit.

The formatting is strange, but I know from past experience that that this is a fault of the authoring tool, but at least you could use Vedit to strip trailing spaces.

 


Topic: Re: Vedit Web Page (19 of 22), Read 44 times
Conf: VEDIT Sales and Info
From: Christian Ziemski
Date: Monday, October 03, 2005 08:24 AM

On Mon, 03 Oct 2005 08:07:00 -0400, Ian Binnie wrote:

>I decided to look at the site source (using Vedit of course) to
>follow the above discussion.
>
>This is not pretty -
>
>It can't decide whether in Unix or MS-DOS format.

Where? Can you give an example please.

>I know this doesn't matter to those who use web authoring tools,
>but I still code my html by hand in Vedit.

Me too. But I'm a beginner with that.

>The formatting is strange, but I know from past experience that that
>this is a fault of the authoring tool, but at least you could use
>Vedit to strip trailing spaces.

Done on my page.

Hmmmm, perhaps we should be sure to only discuss the VEDIT page in
this thread/conference (I was the person who mentioned my one earlier,
sorry for that). Otherwise it may be confusing ;-)

Christian