A few small changes.

[zzc]

Still returning 404. Perhaps domain expired?

[Gumboots]

Nope. Domain is paid up, and if it had expired the forum would be down too. It's a weird one. I've put in a support ticket and will see what the host says. They're a good host, so I expect the problem will be fairly easy to solve.

In the meantime, if you need a direct link to any particular maps let me know and I'll haul out the url's.

[zzc]

I have a saved session on the africa maps page, so thats how I found out nothing there was accessible, even the homepage link offered on the 404 page.

[RulerofRails]

I can access the main site pages fine. Maybe it's already fixed?

[Gumboots]

Yup, it's fixed now. Turns out that the way the website treats .htm and .html files as .php (to run the PHP includes in some of them) is pretty rare. The host implemented some changes to file handling to speed up processing, but didn't think to test with the .htaccess rule our website pages use for .htm/.html/.php. That caused the files to not be recognised by the server, so 404 all over the place.

They gave their settings a quick tweak to get around it, and everything is good to go now.

[Gumboots]

Alrighty. I finally did something about this.

I haven't done every page on the site yet, but the easiest ones are up and running.
Any feedback is fine, whether you like them or not.

Website Home page: http://hawkdawg.com/index.php

Railroad Tycoon 3 Main page: http://hawkdawg.com/rrt/rrt3/rrt3_main.php

Railroad History Around the World: http://hawkdawg.com/rrhist/rrhist_index.php

Swedish Railroad History: http://hawkdawg.com/rrhist/rrhist_swedish.php

Men of the Iron Road: http://hawkdawg.com/rrhist/rrhist_motir.php

Thoughts on the End of Steam in America: http://hawkdawg.com/rrhist/rrhist_steam_end.php

Heineken & Pacific Railroad home page: http://hawkdawg.com/hp/hp_home.php

The Most Hated Man in the Southern States: http://hawkdawg.com/hm/hm_cover.php

Links page (still a bit WIP): http://hawkdawg.com/links.php

---

Edited to update links, due to pages being converted to .php format.

[AMD 103]

Nice and slick, and easily useable and readable.

Though I see this on the RT3 Main page, probably because the individual archive pages aren't done yet.

Railroad Tycoon 3 Map Archive - Updated [an error occurred while processing this directive]

[Gumboots]

Ah. Figures I'd miss one. I'll fix it now.

Edit: Sorted.

[Gumboots]

Y'know I'm just thinking about all the archive pages, which TBH were looking like a bit of a nightmare to do. The basic markup is ok at the moment. A table works, can be styled however you like, and can be made as responsive as anything else. I could just throw the new wrapper and eye candy around the existing tables and straight away that knocks out 99% of the work (at least for now).

It would make sense to rename the archive files with a PHP suffix. The whole file has to be parsed for PHP anyway at the moment, as .htaccess is set to do that for all .htm files. That's a bit pointless, because it's extra stuff in .htaccess when you could just name the files as .php and be done with it. It's also a niggle for the host (caused a 404 avalanche a while back) because it's so rare these days that almost nobody does it, so hosts tend to forget to check for it when doing updates on servers.

And if it's going to run PHP anyway it might be possible to make things more dynamic without requiring a database. PHP can filter bits directly from the page URL, which could then be used as variables for controlling other things (ie: which table you call in, and which menu button you highlight). Haven't experimented with it yet, and it may not be all that good a solution, but if it's possible to get very basic CMS-like behaviour without setting up a db that could be quite handy.

Had a thought about this too:

I think the side links are more effective now. Folks can see them and know to use them without them being to outstanding.
Looks good.

Are you planning on adding them to the other styles?

Since I'm already using the top menu extension for all sorts of shenanigans, there's no reason why I couldn't use it to add the side top/bottom links to all styles. Laziest way of doing it would be to just chuck them into the same event which calls the menu. Since they use fixed positioning anyway it doesn't matter all that much where they are called in the markup. The extension already includes CSS for each style, so that's not hard to add to.

[Gumboots]

Haven't done that extension yet, but I did sort out the Credits & Acknowledgements page.

I think I am going to have to change most of these critters to a .php suffix. It'd be one less thing to go wrong in .htaccess, and SSI isn't really versatile enough for all pages. SSI is good for pages that are directly in public_html, but it doesn't like going back up the directory tree. That means PHP makes more sense for any pages that are in one of the sub-directories.

This will mean more url's changing over the next few days. You get that.

I also did some more playing with Highslide last night, with a view to just using existing briefing images for now. Works well. It only requires one javascript file of 33kb, which is a lot less overhead than Lightbox, and it provides functionality which to my mind is just as good. Better in some ways, since you can merrily tab through every briefing on the page, without interruption, if you want to. I'll get a demo page up soon.

[Gumboots]

Got an trial archives page converted to the new format, with the new look eye candy and a .php file type. Came out pretty well. Shouldn't be hard to do the rest to this stage. I have a template set up now, so I can just rip the old maps tables from the existing .htm files and plonk them straight into the new wrapper.

Railroad Tycoon 3 Maps of Africa

Edit: Got the Asia page sorted too - Railroad Tycoon 3 Maps of Asia

Ultimately I'd like to re-do all the preview images as .jpg to cut loading time, but it's reasonable even with the old monster .png's, and it's a lot less work.

[Gumboots]

Ok, I have a test page up. It's running what I'm proposing for the new way of handling briefings. The briefing content is text instead of images, although with the old lead image (the rectangular one) called in for extra look and feel. It works much the same way as the existing briefings, except that you don't have to toggle through a series of pages and wait for them to load.

I'm happy with it, but I'm interested to see if anyone else has a problem with the presentation or functionality.

Edit: Link removed, due to test phase finishing.

Note that only the briefings and readme's for the first three maps are hooked up at the moment. "Mozambique 1936" and "Africa & Middle East" have their actual briefing and readme content. "African Dream" has filler text that is long enough to slightly exceed what the game editor will allow, so a good test for maximum content.

---

Oh, and I finally got the correct fonts set up on "The Most Hated Man in the Southern States". Looks a lot better now.

[Hawk]

Oh, and I finally got the correct fonts set up on "The Most Hated Man in the Southern States". Looks a lot better now.

I like the looks of that.

[Gumboots]

Yeah I had some fun with that. It's such a rollicking good yarn that I thought it deserved something to go with the general feel.

The fancy font is Tangerine. It's released under the SIL Open Font License, so is good to go without any legal dramas, and has a wide enough range of characters for this purpose. It's the perfect look too.

I'm using @font-face (web font) to call in the font file, which is stashed in the /hm/css directory. It's only small (31kb-38kb depending on browser/device) so hardly any bandwidth use and fast to load. It gets cached by the browser too, so only a first time hit. First time I've tried web fonts. Pretty easy to set up, as long as you don't go ridiculous with them. I had to use my own judgement though.

The Font Squirrel web font kit tells you to use font-family: tangerineregular; in the CSS, but it didn't work. What works is just using the font name: tangerine. The "regular" is just the font kit tool getting confused by the option of Regular or Bold text in the two .ttf files that come with the font (only Regular is on the server, since bold isn't used anywhere at the moment). So you set "tangerine" for normal text, and if you specifically wanted bold somewhere you'd follow that up with the standard "font-weight:bold;".

[RulerofRails]

Looks good. I think it's an improvement. The formatting in the RT3 briefings is quite limited, and obviously it's far less space than as images, especially because of the massive borders. I did notice however that sometimes there are extra images included after the briefing, for example a map of the real world lines. How are you going to handle those? For example Nova Scotia, the first map in the NA section.

My opinion is that in general the new font is prettier but also has less contrast, probably because it's thinner, and therefore is also a little harder to read, especially in white. I can increase my zoom size, but just wondering did you think about matching the font of the game, esp. in briefing texts? I suppose to some, the game's font maybe isn't that great either. . . .

Having the briefing link further from the map's small preview picture feels a little different. When I look at a map to download, after the small preview I rely a lot on the briefing to get some clues about what the map is like. I don't think it's a bit thing in the long-term, I will get used to the new system.

I did notice that with briefing and download columns next to each other there is a lot of "English" .... duplication. At a glance this is providing some clutter. In the old style, if there is only an English version it's a single "Download" link. I would imagine the present way is less trouble for the formatting. I did see that "version" was reduced to "zip". Just wondering if you thought about simplifying where there was only one English version?


I noticed on the footer of this page:
http://hawkdawg.com/hm/hm_cover.php

The link to the American Civil War map is broken:
http://hawkdawg.com/rrt/rrt3/map_arch/r ... anCivilWar

I'm getting a 404 error.

I understand it's WIP, but the direct links to other regions: Asia, Africa, Australia, Europe, .... in the old style map archive pages are also spitting errors at the moment. If you go all the way up to the drop down menu, you can still reach those pages.

[Gumboots]

Looks good. I think it's an improvement. The formatting in the RT3 briefings is quite limited, and obviously it's far less space than as images, especially because of the massive borders. I did notice however that sometimes there are extra images included after the briefing, for example a map of the real world lines. How are you going to handle those?

The idea is to do them like this: http://hawkdawg.com/rrt/rrt3/rrt3_afric ... p#ethiopia

Click the "Map of Ethiopia +" label. It's the same deal as briefings or readme's, dropping the map image into the same wrapper. They don't necessarily have to go in the briefing column though. They could go in one of the other columns.

My opinion is that in general the new font is prettier but also has less contrast, probably because it's thinner, and therefore is also a little harder to read, especially in white. I can increase my zoom size, but just wondering did you think about matching the font of the game, esp. in briefing texts? I suppose to some, the game's font maybe isn't that great either...

Yes, matching the game font and general feel was the idea. See what you think now. I changed the font from Times New Roman to Cambria (still has TNR as a fallback) and I boosted font size by 1px. I must admit it is better. I was probably going cross-eyed last night from too much coding.

(Note: you'll have to force a reload in your browser to see the new CSS, otherwise you'll see the stuff that was previously cached).

Having the briefing link further from the map's small preview picture feels a little different. When I look at a map to download, after the small preview I rely a lot on the briefing to get some clues about what the map is like. I don't think it's a bit thing in the long-term, I will get used to the new system.

I always found it weird the way it was. The first thing I want to know is the name of the map, so I have some idea where it is and what it is about.

I did notice that with briefing and download columns next to each other there is a lot of "English" .... duplication. At a glance this is providing some clutter. In the old style, if there is only an English version it's a single "Download" link. I would imagine the present way is less trouble for the formatting. I did see that "version" was reduced to "zip". Just wondering if you thought about simplifying where there was only one English version?

Yeah the labelling is still a bit up in the air. My preference would be to label things in the correct language, so instead of something like "German version" it would tell German-speaking people in German. This should make for less repetition and clutter, and also be easier for people when scanning the age for a particular translation.

And I don't want to be changing formatting depending on content. Chopping and changing is a sure way to make coding and maintenance more problematic. I want layout standardised as much as possible. Ditto file naming format, etc, etc.

I noticed on the footer of this page: http://hawkdawg.com/hm/hm_cover.php

The link to the American Civil War map is broken: http://hawkdawg.com/rrt/rrt3/map_arch/r ... anCivilWar

I'm getting a 404 error.

Thanks. Fixed now.

I understand it's WIP, but the direct links to other regions: Asia, Africa, Australia, Europe, .... in the old style map archive pages are also spitting errors at the moment. If you go all the way up to the drop down menu, you can still reach those pages.

Yup. I'm keeping the forum menu and main site menu updated, but the old pages may have some funny bits at the moment. I'll take a look at those too.

[RulerofRails]

Nice. That looks a lot better.

In the meantime I had a random idea: what about a different color for download links? Blue?

[Gumboots]

You have to be really careful with blue on a green background. It rapidly becomes hard to read. You can do a very pale blue, but it can't have a lot of depth to it. The download links have a different icon anyway.

And no, I am not doing red.

Edit: Ok, I have a plan. The Base Maps page has the sparsest content. The South America page seems to have the densest content, as well as having one map in Portugese, which is a longer word that German or English and still has to fit without everything turning to crap.

So I'll make two more test pages, for Base Maps and South America, and between the three of them I should be able to sort something that works pretty well all round.

Edit again: Got them sorted.

The Base Maps and South America pages don't much functional content yet. They're just sorted for basic layout and styling, to match the Africa page.

I'm kinda liking the idea of having the downloads last. It makes sense to me for flow. First I look to see what the thing is called, then I check out the briefing, then anything else I need to know, then go grab the zip.

[Hawk]

I like the way it's coming along.

Just curious, what's the plus sign for after the briefing/readme?

[RulerofRails]

I'm kinda liking the idea of having the downloads last. It makes sense to me for flow. First I look to see what the thing is called, then I check out the briefing, then anything else I need to know, then go grab the zip.

I like it better too. I almost suggested this in my last post. But hesitated without actually taking the time to chop it in an image program.