Amiga Websites

Its crossed my mind recently now that Timberwolf has pretty much landed on the Amiga platform with a resounding thumbs up how many Amiga-related websites that don't use various web standards such as frames, javascript and css to name a few.

Will be interesting to see which and how many sites will be brought up to date to support all this new potential.

Aside from the big three amiga forums (in order of positivity and pleasant to read from good to bad) Amigans, Amigaworld and Amiga.org there are certainly a lot of sites although are very functional look very dated now.

IntuitionBase
AmigaKit
OS4 Depot
AmiBounty
UtilityBase

What is the likelihood that any of these will have a touch of paint over the next few months?

Personally I would deem it absolutely essential that OS4Depot and AmigaKit be brought up to date. Especially as AmigaKit has just been named the official distributor of the X1000.

Okay so die-hards will often say what about backwards-compatibility... I would say simples offer them an alternative version of the site. And to be absolutely honest if Hyperion/A-Eon and AmigaKit want to make some serious money backwards-compatibility should be at the bottom of the pile.

Thoughts and opinions.

ssolie: fixed spelling errors (AmiKit is something else entirely)

@djrikki

Frames have been supported by most/all Amiga browsers for many years. And even if somebody is using a very old IBrowse or whatever without frames support, it is quite easy to cater for those as well (like I do on http://nbache.dk/).

CSS is nicely supported at least in OWB and has been so for several years now. Javascript to an extent has also been working in several existing browsers, but of course not everything. Still, the most important thing for look and feel is CSS, and OWB scores very well there already. So I don't think there's any reason to expect massive changes to Amiga sites only because of Timberwolf arriving on the scene.

Best regards,

Niels

@djrikki

Frames is a very old concept but has been shunned by web developers for quite some time. I don't seen why those would bring amiga sites 'up to speed' when the rest of the world aren't very interested in using them either.

Amigans is already using javascript and CSS.

As for OS4Depot, what exactly do you propose to add that would make it a better experience than it is now that would merit hundreds of hours of work?

"What is the likelihood that any of these will have a touch of paint over the next few months?"

For the sites I'm involved with I can assure you that the likelihood is firmly seated at zero.

"I would say simples offer them an alternative version of the site."

Do you have any idea how much work it would be to provide and maintain two versions of the same site?

@djrikki

> Thoughts and opinions.


I would much rather the sites remain functional in ALL web browsers than add gimmicks that force people into using paricular browsers.

Functionality is 100% more important than eye candy.



Bill.

Well, in regards to my own site (http://amigan.1emu.net/), I've never seen any reason to want to use frames, JavaScript, CSS, etc. Part of it is wanting to be compatible with all browsers, but also I really don't see how it would improve the site.

@Minuous
Imho, djrikki ask about normal amiga sites :) Not having modern features not that bad, but design then must be good. That all smeels a bit too retro and rare.

@BiLLie
Quote:
Now i understand why DU looks not eye candy :) But prepare that users today will choice eye candy + functionality. Not only functionality , or only eye candy. One without other today will give enjoyement only for zx-spectrum fans :)

@djrikki
In general, amigans, amigaworld and utilitybase are up2date and can be called "sites". Even if amigaworld.net today its somethinkg where trolls make their posts, and ppls talk too much about phylosophy of boing :) The other from my point of view "real amiga related site" its amiboing.de. Not so informative maybe, and only about games which do owners of site, but, its very good designed, and show how everything must be done (Minuous, check it too :) )

Stood on a few feet it seems, yes most are okay, but something special for x1000 would be cool. Foreinstance AmigaKit.com could easy have a dedicated section/folder for the x1000 separate to the rest of their site so A-Eon could easily point to it. Just an idea.

And yes frames on websites is very old hat and no-one seems to use it anymore - I just couldn't think of a third technology =P

Perhaps HTML5 when finalised will hold something special aside from platform-independent video playback.

At least I got you guys talking about it and kas1e's know why I brought up at this time as I am actually working on a html project website atm which for me is just to brush and refresh my HTML skills. Talking of which at work today I worked out how using Javascript I could have a different selection of url images shown in the browser depending on which option was chosen from a drop-down menu - I was quite happy with myself that I managed to work it out. *pats own back*

@kas1e

> But prepare that users today will choice eye candy...

I think you meant "choose" rather than "choice".

Yes we do live in a very shallow world these days with no substance don't we, sad but maybe true.

Just because something looks good does not mean it is and 99% of the time is actually the opposite.

To me marketing and brands is just bull-shit and most things that need marketing and "design" or eye candy tend to be total rubbish that appeal to the feeble minded.


A useable and quick website whether using IB or OWB or Firfox, is far better than some bloated site relying on too much CSS, flash, javascript etc. All these things take time to download.

@BillE

>Imho, djrikki ask about normal amiga sites :) Not having modern features not that bad, but design then must be good. That all smeels a bit too retro and rare.

It's supposed to be retro and rare. Please could you explain what is wrong with the design? It's logically organized, you can quickly see what content is available and you can quickly download whatever it is you are interested in. Content is king.

@Minuous

If it supposed to be retro and rare, then nothing wrong with it. I just not sure that any new user will be in interest to see today sites of such retro/rare design. Content is a must, but without eye-candy and modern design no new blood will be on our platform 200%.

All in all , amigans.net more about modern/new wave, not for retro :) Maybe amiga.org can be better for ..

As 2 more examples of lite, easy, but pretty modern related sites, i can show you 2 examples:

Frieden's site.
Mason icons site.

Boch are amiga related, lite, easy for understand, good designed, with normal modern layot and looks fine for eyes and for every new user. While sites are pretty simple, they looks good.

Or for example more:

AmiNeat
or
Ssolie's stie
or
Salas00's site

All is simply, but informative and good for eyes.

ps. btw, about html-articles about you ask on AW, i can send it for you on mail if it's need it

@djrikki

Especially as AmiKit has just been named the official distributor of the X1000.
Thoughts and opinions.

Did you just trip over your own tongue?! =:o I think 'AmigaKit ' is better prepared for point of sales of X1000s. Or am I wrong now? I've mixed-up the two names myself a few times in the past...

@Snuffy

Yeah AmigaKit hehe.

Been looking at CSS3 animation examples in the last couple of hours. Exciting stuff, once these become standardised I'm gonna start playing around.

Looks sweet.... eye-candy ftw. Probably need to view these in Safari or that corporate Chrome crap. Possibly work in OWB too with it relying on WebKit.

http://www.paulrhayes.com/experiments/cube-3d/

http://webkit.org/blog-files/3d-transforms/morphing-cubes.html

http://webkit.org/blog-files/3d-transforms/poster-circle.html

and finally... love this one:

http://www.gesteves.com/experiments/starwars.html

@djrikki
Quote:
I think emailing the web site owners and offering to help would be much more constructive than discussing how bad a web site looks in a web forum.

Quote:

So this is still new to you? Ok, now I understand, why you are excited. But once you calm down you might notice that:

a) None of these really work in Timberwolf or OWB right now.

b) It needs a lot of horsepower on the readers end. Some things also require high bandwidth.

c) It?s still in flux and keeping up to date with it might be a lot of work.

d) Having your own site is all about reaching your audience. Amiga-Users still love to fire up their old boxes and come browsing your site with AMosaic*. If they don?t see the content, because you didn?t have the time to make it accessible for them too, they will never return to your site.

Not that this should stop webmasters from using the "new and cool" stuff. But they should do so without haste and not in a way that alienates classic users. So if a site looks fine and works now - why bother?


___
* EDIT: OK, I was exagerating about AMosaic, but IBrowse is pretty popular among even NG-Amiga users.

@djrikki

Quote:
If they want to make serious money, the Amiga market isn't the place to do it.

@djrikki

Its a difficult problem, we don't want to break support for Classic Amiga users using Ibrowse (as that is still the largest Amiga market out there, bigger than OS 4.x at the moment).

But any CSS/DHTML we can implement without breaking the site in IBrowse, we would welcome suggestions.

Maybe we should have two web stores - a basic webstore and more advanced store with CSS etc?

Any feedback is most welcome.

@amigacooke

I think you may have read the word 'serious' the other way to what was intend. Serious as is in a well.. serious. Construct a well-defined path how to get there, up-the-ante, make everyone you rely on look professional (in website context) and not dated. Basically refresh the community content and yes with respect to Classic users.

I didn't mean 'serious' as in Harry Enfield's lotsa money! There is plenty money to be made if the path is made clear.

@amigakit

Yeah two webstores sounds a good idea. If you can auto-detect even better - no idea how's it done!

I am sure I've posted about the below elsewhere, it would be useful if Acube and A-Eon had their respective layouts. I don't know if this would break compatibility with the rest of the site, but foreinstance you could have:-

http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/a-eon/index.html
http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/acube/index.html

When visiting either of these manufacturer pages you could and its only one idea, disable/hide the Left-hand product category table and manufacturer selection area; and repeat down the right-hand side of the page. Remove Reviews and Home options menu and rename New Products to Products. The Products button would act like the Home option so any visitors can still see the rest of your products range. And of course after a user has bought the X1000 / Sam 460ep (!) through the site you auto-redirect back to the appropriate manufacturer page.

I guess there are many solutions, but a couple of glossy 'landing pages' for these two manufacturers won't go a miss.

@djrikki

Interesting idea, thanks. I think it may be a good idea to have an OS 4.x landing page incorporating all manufacturers.

@BillE

Quote:

Every time I see the word "eye candy", I feel the urge to slap someone ;)

It becomes increasingly difficult to make a good looking website without CSS. Not a single major content management system will work without CSS, and why would it, seeing that CSS is available on every single browser except for a "chosen few".

A few static pages are fine. But as soon as larger projects are involved, you can either go CMS (Joomla, Typo3, Drupal or whatever), write your own CMS from scratch, or go with a load of hard to maintain static pages.

Seeing how sensitive the web is these days, writing your own PHP is a risky business unless you know what you are doing. It's too easy to have someone inject SQL into your text field, or one of the other exploits that most of us don't even know about.

Which is also the reason not to go with older versions of, say, Mambo, that still use tables for layout. These are bound to have security exploits that only a new version fixes.

Let's face it. Amiga people's rejection of CSS is NOT based on technical merits, or the lack thereof. It is not based on the fact that CSS does something bad, or doesn't add functionality. It is merely and solely based on the fact that up to a few months ago, no Amiga browser supported it. So instead of asking for the browsers to be upgraded, the amigans ask for the web pages to be downgraded, and complain if mainsteam web sites do not follow their technological backpedaling, or if individual web admins don't want to go through the hassle of going back to non-CSS.

I wouldn't go so far as to propose that existing Amiga web pages change anything about their technology level. After all, they are there and they work. However, I would expect future web sites to go with what is available in terms of CMS and I predict that now that OWB is working fine there will be more and more Amiga related web pages that use CSS. And why not? After all, if I had to go through the work of making a web site, I would like to spend the time making the web site, not trying to get it to work with non-CSS browsers and spend hours upon hours getting the CSS out, just to get a mediocre looking site in the end.

So, to go back to the "eye candy", it doesn't have anything to do with it. As I said, the rejection of said "eye candy" is based merely on the fact that IBrowse doesn't support it. And finally, web pages are about packing information into a readable and appealing design. Try to sell a product with a 80x25 text terminal.