BlueSoak.net official release

[BlueSmudge]

Most of you, if not all of you know me. I like to think that I help out at the forums here.
Now that my site has a possibly presentable amount of content, I am making a release post here only on SSC.
You can see I do a bit of advertising in my signature, but the url is here anyways.

So what really is BlueSoak? Its a way for me to feel like I'm helping the comunnity a little bit more. It shows off some of my knwoledge, and skills with soakers, that wouldnt get out otherwise. Of course...there is no reason for it if no one else is benifitting from my time and efforts.
I would like you to go and just check it out, if you like it read around, and check back every couple weeks for updates. I hope to keep a steady flow of them.
The reason I'm posting this is because I've been checking the stats of my site vs. the Grunt which I provide hosting for, and the Grunt is still getting over 4 times the visitors BlueSoak is.

So...Check out Storms, and my work and see how you like it. Feedback welcomed.

[Spinner]

I'd visited it once or twice. Other will probably advise about the content, but the first thing I'd offer as constructive criticism is change the Times New Roman font and get rid of the frames. Try tables instead.

EDIT: s

[Forceuser]

Just a few spelling mistakes (yes I do have an obsession with spelling!).

In the water grenade article you spelt grenade 'gernade' and preparation 'preperation' all the way through. Also you spelt seal and hopefully wrong 'The O-rings provide a seel for the PVC so that hopfully no Co2 is able to escape'.

In the pump reinforcement article it says 'week pump' in the second paragraph instead of weak. Also the apostrophe in 'canÕt' has gone wrong.

In the pump repair article you missed a 'g' off of the end of putting, 'different directions puttin pressure', in the first paragraph.

In the trigger valve repair (which isn't there yet) it says 'exhist' instead of exist.

In the K Crazy article it says 'sacrafice' instead of sacrifice in the second paragraph and there is no apostrophe in Toys R Us. Also you spelt experience 'experiance' and experiencing 'experianceing', and some of the its should be it's. Wouldn't it be better where it says 'Go here(look in the tech section for "mini project")' to put a hyperlink in. Also after '8.' you missed a bracket.

On the 'History' page: shouldn't it just be 'BlueSoak' not 'the BlueSoak' in 'The BlueSoak wasnt always here'. 'The Wet Networks sister site' should have an apostrophe in it. 'The Grunt was then dropped do to its suckyniss' should be 'do' not 'due', plus is that really a nice thing to say? 'Finnaly' should be finally and 'truley' truly.

And finally, on the 'Thanks' page it says 'gagets' instead of gadgets.

Well those are all the spelling mistakes I found. One other thing, although basically, the whole site does work in 800 x 600 in IE if you maximise it, the main header is cut off and you can't see or use the 'Contact' button. One way you could fix it to make the 'Contact' button be seen would be to decrease the gap between 'Menu' and 'Home'.

Overall the site looks very good and has some good useful stuff on it.

[BlueSmudge]

I Don't have that much time on my hands, but I can slowly get those changes done.
Sorry my spelling scks so bad! :Hey, that's funny.:
If I do switch to tables, I will need to find a way to do it efficiantly, and it may take awhile.
I started a few changes on the homepage.

[Storm]

Nice site so far!

[BlueSmudge]

Check out the site again. I'm starting the transition to tables, so only a few sections of the site are accesable. I would like to hear feedback on how it looks. In my testing so far, it looks fine on all platforms and browsers exept for internet explorer on PC's (of course its a microsoft problem :P ).
Please tell me if it looks fine on your normal system/browser. If u have a PC with IE your input especially is apreciated.

[Monsoon]

There's a typo at the very bottom. It should be "copyright" not "copywrite". I'm using IE on a Windows computer, and the front page is fine.

[Forceuser]

Looks good. I can now see everything properly using IE on 800x 600. Just a little thing, where it says "An alternative soaker tech info-base.........", If I click on it it tries to link me to the contacts page. Is that meant to happen? It also happens if I click anywhere under the news table. Also, when I mouse over the news table the mouse changes to the link hand between the rows. I presume these are what you meant by problems. Just one other teeny thing, if you make the buttons a tiny bit smaller they will all fit on one line on an 800 x 600 display.

[BlueSmudge]

Yes, those are what I ment by problems. IE on PC's tends to want to add links to tables that I didn't set links to. It also puts red boxes around many of them. I always work on a mac, and just have the PC for testing, so I'm not too familiar with why this would happen. I do know it looks basically fine in Mozilla on a PC, so it's just IE's fault. I think I did fix a problem in the coding that was messing up the button placment but that's all I can figure out.
Perhaps the better coding guys such as Doom, Neo, and Storm could give me some help.

[Monsoon]

Just remember that most online users use IE, so that is the top priority.

[BlueSmudge]

Yeah, I know. Thats why I am so pissed off. Stupid Microsoft.
Untill Doom or someone else can help me out, I'm just going to fix the spelling misteakes in the few articles I have. I don't want to add any more pages in fear that whatever I have to do will be big.
WHERE ARE YOU DOOOOOOM![SIZE=1]and neo and storm[/SIZE]

[Ben]

One the images that you have links on, add border="0" and it should clear up any problems with the border by simply removing it.

Also, make the buttoms transparent gifs or make the white around them the same blue as the background. That will make things look better.

[BlueSmudge]

Im keeping them white because the table they are in is white. At least it is supposed to be. The table color won't show up in IE.
I might have to just make the buton bar only buttons. But I hate to do that.
Man, I hate compromising just to make it work.

[Ben]

The table color won't show up in IE.

Umm, the table color isn't showing up in either of my browsers.

Either way, you really shouldn't blame something on one browser until you use JavaScript or CSS. The browsers have got pretty much the same HTML viewing capabilities, there's a few tags that one will have but the other won't, but that's not a real issue.

<html>
<title>A soaker Tech and Article Site</title>
<body bgcolor="navy">
<table border="0" align="center" bgcolor="white" noresize="noresize">
<tr>
<td align="left"><img src="bluesoaklogo.gif">
</table
><table border="0" align="center" bgcolor="white" noresize="noresize">
<tr>
<td border="0" align="center"> 
<a href="http://www.bluesoak.net">
<img src="homebutton.gif" align="center">
</td>
<td border="0" align="center"> 
<a href="tech.html">
<img src="techbutton.gif" align="center"> 
</td> 

You see where the table closing tag is broken into two lines? Fix that.

[BlueSmudge]

OMFG! :Hey, that's funny.: :Hey, that's funny.: :Hey, that's funny.:
THANK YOU SOOO MUCH DOOM!
Wow, who could imagine that a little thing like that was screwing up so much. It was not showing color in most browsers, because the tag wasn't closed, so there was conflicting color. Also, the last link in the table was to content, so it linked all later linkable things to the content page. All of this because I missed a ">".
Wow, awesome. Now the site looks basically right on all browsers. Take a look at the homepage now. I think you will like the layout much more.
Thanks again doom.
P.S. I still can't get rid of the red borders around button href's.