17 posts tagged “web design”

I wonder if Vox is fixing its problems. I have been trying all morning to get the compose screen up, and here it is, after a couple of hours (as opposed to days). The only problem is, two hours on, the inspiration for writing the post has kind of left.
   Let’s see what I’ve put up lately that I had an intention to mention: how about this guy in a Chevy Camaro Transformer costume? Watch on: there’s a bit of a surprise. (Thanks to Tanya for this one.)

I assume this is México from the cars on sale, which includes several Chevrolet-badged Daewoos from Korea.
   Meanwhile, this was an oddity from a few days back. I would have loved to have commented on this site, but putting an ad (it’s the scenic view) in front of the comment box (which did not disappear even after you clicked on it) is not smart:

Ad over comment box

   Mind you, they are not alone in having fumbles. Our Lucire site had some problems, thanks to a cars.com ad that messed up our layout:

Cars ad forcing wider column

Cars ad forcing wider column (widened ad)

I have written to the creator of the WP-Cufón plug-in for Wordpress about this bug, which caused some missing characters at the Lucire website today:

No ligatures in WP-Cufón

You just have to admire some ad creatives. There are some ads that aren’t particularly relevant which come in through the networks, but this one on Lucire’s website is very entertaining:

Rock inspiration ad

Oh, wonderful. I can finally get back in to Vox’s compose page. Since my last post, I have written to Six Apart directly, so hopefully they are now alerted about Vox’s recent and frequent problems.
   Below are some images I wanted to share. These are from a website at aharef.info, and are plots of the various web pages I fed in to them (see my post at my main blog here). Most of these are web pages our company made or is associated with. Head here to make your own.

Lucire Insider graph

It gets more fun. Here’s how my main blog page looks. It’s run off Blogger:

Jack Yan Persuader blog graph

   The plotting is animated, so you can get a bit of a kick on how the graphics unfold. I’d love to see a very complex one, if anyone wants to put a link in the comments. Here’s this Vox page, out of interest:

Jack Yan on Vox site graph from aharef

3 comments

All very “out there” in a 1960s’ psychedelic way.

This is something for the experts out there: a site I know has been infected. When one visits via HTTP, a trojan will come down the line. When I download just one page via FTP, McAfee reports that a trojan has also come down, but when I study the HTML code, there is nothing that indicates an infection.
   My knowledge of this stuff is obviously way behind current developments, but my questions are: (a) how is this done; and (b) how can one get rid of the trojan? Do any Voxers or visitors to this blog know the answer?

I will have mentioned that my father is a news junkie and goes to more news websites than most people I know. Including Fox News. You won’t get a more “fair and balanced” surfer when it comes to news.
   For the last wee while he has found it impossible to read the comments people have left on that site. If you click on ‘Comments’ on any story, you’ll just be taken back to the story. It doesn’t happen to all of them, only some.
   Yet obviously some people have been able to leave comments without any problems, which got me thinking: has the Murdoch Press blocked access to comments on its Fox News site to non-Americans? I mean, we always see messages on Hulu, YouTube and other places that prevent us from seeing TV programmes and clips.
   I know Dad has left the browser on Fox News’s site and walked away, and viruses have attempted to come in via fake ads. These are not the Murdoch Press’s fault, but it highlights how some ad networks in the US that send viruses out to people. (The Fox News page refreshes, as it has been programmed to, but eventually, it hits an ad that contains a virus, usually in the form of a fake “virus scan” message with a warning that one has been infected.)
   No online publisher who deals with US companies is immune from this (which is a terrible reflection of what passes as modern commerce these days), and we have had to alert our networks from time to time. (I should note the companies that send the viruses are not necessarily American, but they pretend to be.) The difference is we nip these attacks in the bud very early, and as far as we know, no machines have been affected. We swap out the entire ad network’s code until they tell us it has been remedied. Sadly, we have had these attacks fairly regularly via Fox News, so Dad now makes sure he leaves the browser on one of my sites (which is nice, since he has little interest in fashion publications).
   While I tell Dad that I think the Fox News site is one of the worst designed (it makes you wonder, since the same company’s Times website is rather pleasant), it really seems that the folks there don’t do much checking. No one seems to surf their own site to see if things work.
   If you head to an article referred by another one, there is no ready way to view the comments of everyday Americans. If you are a septagenarian like my Dad, you probably aren’t in to hacking. And I doubt the chairman of the company, four years my father’s senior, is in to hacking, either.
   A code, such as ?loomia_ow=t0:s0:a16:g2:r1:c0.095404:b26734424:z0, is appended to the end of the article URL, which essentially prevents anyone seeing the comments.

Fox News site with Loomia code

   You can try it with this article, on Gov. Palin stepping down (it’s the most recent one with a huge amount of comments!). Then click the comments’ link. Here’s what you see:

Fox News site with Loomia code, clicked once

   The remedy is to delete the extra code, so that the URL ends at the proper place, then click on the link:

Fox News site with comments

   So, it is accessible to non-Americans after all. But for anyone who doesn’t have a bit of experience with web design or publishing, this can prove difficult.
   I have checked this with an American proxy server, to find that the same behaviour occurs Stateside. For all those having difficulties with the Fox News site, and if you must browse the comments, then make sure the URL ends at the logical place, and delete the Loomia code.

PS.: Loomia turns out to be a real company, and Tweeted me today to say that they are investigating this issue. It has been around for a wee while, so I hope it’s fixed soon.

I have to give props to the developers of the Mimbo skin for Wordpress—it’s a very good one that takes into account the needs of bloggers. Below is one of the sites we’ve been building—it’s not ready for prime-time yet, as it doesn’t have enough entries or contributors at this point. Mimbo needed little customization and we were able to make it look more distinctive than the out-of-the-box version.
   Prior to that, we were trying a German skin called Overstand, which was quite good in appearance, but not as easy to use. That might have been down to the language barrier. Mimbo seems to use the Wordpress features better and from what I could tell of the coding, is more logically structured.

Your Wellington screen shot

I hope this is not the way the Book Depository site, which Empress Nasi Goreng put me on to today, looks—but I have reloaded numerous times and have been getting this:

Book Depository website

I spent a day helping friends—one with her CV and another, Jennifer Hamilton, with her website. This is how girl group Avidiva’s site looks today after doing something very simple: adding two pink bands left and right. It’s made a lot of difference.

090329 Avidiva home page

   What are friends for if they can’t help out with a bit of web design every now and then?
   We also updated the photo gallery and noticed how some competing groups have adopted the same idea since we put one in back in 2003. Ditto with the Avidiva blog. But it’s great that we can share these ideas—it’s not as though we have a monopoly over photo galleries and blogs!
   We also added two extra demo tracks, if you are musically inclined: