Does this page work in your Firefox?

[rf]

Hi all, if you could kindly test this W3C validated page specifically in
Firefox only and advise if you see the streetscape appear. (Designed for
broadband):

http://tinyurl.com/35mwxr

I have purposely avoided looking at this until now. The main reason being
the reports of huge size and slow load time. I just changed my mind.

Huge size is correct. Three megabytes. I don't load flash so I can't comment
on that.

Slow load time is correct. 1.21 minutes. This is simply stupid and no, I
don't have a slow connection, it is a 10 megabit per second cable
connection.

Now, the initial impact: Google ads all over the place. What look like ads
elsewhere, especially in the very important banner area. A bunch of images
of what look like shops. Ah, the "streetscape" that has been mentioned. The
first "shop" takes me four scroll right's to get past and the "image" is so
repetitive that it looks like a bad job of copy/paste. I didn't bother to go
any further.

Nowhere on the page is there any indication of what the site is actually
about. I tried reading the fine print (which looks just like another add)
until I came across a "click here" directive. Apart from being silly, what
if I don't use a mouse? Tab never gets to that link. Accessibility problem.
In any case "clicking here" simply jumps the page down a couple of inches.
Very informative, not.

Ok, hover over one of the images. A tooltip appears: "See street usage guide
above". Alright, scroll back up... What "street usage guide". I see nothing
at all with a heading of "street usage guide". I see an IKEA advertisement.
Is that what you mean? Or perhaps that fineprint I have already read?

Other things:

What on earth does the <title> mean? <view source> Ah, keyword stuffing. The
title is supposed to be just that, a title. You know, when I look across at
the windows task bar I see a browser icon and the title of the page that
browser instance is currently displaying.

Lots of keyword stuffing elsewhere. Do you realise this is why search
engines no longer look at meta elements?

Why is the font specified as 14 pixels?

Why does the copyright stuff (Imagery (c) 2007) sit right over the top of
the, sometimes white, images so I can't read it? An unreadable copyright
notice is not a copyright notice at all.

Why does my default hot pink background show through?

The <squint> "designed for" </squing> stuff at the bottom is illegible, as
is the <squint> "welcome to..." </squing> stuff at the top. 9 pixels is
not a font size for use on computer screens.

Ah, is that illegible stuff at the top telling me what the site is about?
<Ctrl mouse wheel *several* times>... Ah, I see it just might be. But now
that I have enlarged my font size sufficiently to view this the rest of the
page totally breaks. The font size is not horrendously large and the google
ads, apart from being unreadable because they now escape their box (and are
largely invisible) overlap the rest of your content, including the
navigation bar at the bottom of the screen.

You have a javascript error. Use firebug to find it.

Final impression: Hit the back button and go to somewhere that makes it easy
for me to shop online.

I hope you are doing this for yourself and not a consortium of those shops.
If this page were offered up to me as a solution to my needs I would simply
not pay.

 

[Bone Ur]

Well bust mah britches and call me cheeky, on Sun, 25 Nov 2007 23:44:31
GMT Mika scribed:

JS never hurt anyone with a decent virus checker, unless they tend to
frequent undesirable websites I guess.

Ahh, that one sentence synopizes your reasoning processes perfectly.

I think you guys could benefit a lot from loosening up, learning that
not everyone thinks like a programmer, that everyone is different, to
live and let live, and realise how good it feels to say something nice
to someone, even if you don't share their beliefs.

I agree, and well-put.

The frankly incredibly offensive behaviour we have witnessed here is
enough to make us stay away for life. Any good advice given by *some*
of you was completely undone by the disgusting manner in which you
speak.

Melodramatic, or actually over-dramatic is probably more accurate. If you
can't deal with reality in a normal manner, remain abnormal.

As for the others, thanks again for the constructive feedback. The
site is now better for it.

But it's still broken...

Over and out.

Under and in.

 

[Sherman Pendley]

The frankly incredibly offensive behaviour we have witnessed here is enough
to make us stay away for life.

If you find helpful advice offensive, staying away from this group might be
a good idea.

sherm--

 

[Kevin Scholl]

I think you guys could benefit a lot from loosening up, learning that not
everyone thinks like a programmer, that everyone is different,

You do realize, that a significant part of the professional Web
designer/developer job is understanding a target audience, right? If
we're doing our job properly, we're not thinking like a programmer, but
as a potential user. Ergo, it's not about loosening up, but rather
directing the focus.

 

[Mika]

Slow load time is correct. 1.21 minutes. This is simply stupid and no, I
don't have a slow connection, it is a 10 megabit per second cable
connection.

One person in Australia has a load time of 6 seconds over a 0.5Mb/s
connection, and you have 1.21 minutes. Our site is designed and focused for
UK users who don't have this inconsistency, however if there is a way to
reduce international server delays to our UK server please do let us know.

Now, the initial impact: Google ads all over the place. What look like ads
elsewhere, especially in the very important banner area. A bunch of images
of what look like shops. Ah, the "streetscape" that has been mentioned.
The first "shop" takes me four scroll right's to get past and the "image"
is so repetitive that it looks like a bad job of copy/paste.

If you visited this street you would know that shop is famous in the area
and a big department store. And no it isn't copy and paste. It is what
people landing there would want to see. We don't ask you to understand
that.

I didn't bother to go any further.

Nowhere on the page is there any indication of what the site is actually
about.

That is because you came in via a thread that directed you past the home
page. Try clicking the logo at the top and you'll find the home page, which
explains incredibly simply what the site is about. We did NOT ask for
critiques from people in the wrong country landing at the wrong page.
*Sigh* We asked 'does it work in Firefox' as 1 user claimed it did not with
JS enabled, which nobody has been able to recreate.

I tried reading the fine print (which looks just like another add) until I
came across a "click here" directive. Apart from being silly, what if I
don't use a mouse? Tab never gets to that link. Accessibility problem.

The site is designed for a mouse and would be unusable without. Sorry but
we are catering for a majority here as it is very specific.

In any case "clicking here" simply jumps the page down a couple of inches.
Very informative, not.

It centres the streetscape div in the page for the best view, as testing
showed people did not.

Ok, hover over one of the images. A tooltip appears: "See street usage
guide above". Alright, scroll back up... What "street usage guide". I see
nothing

Where is the usage guide?... It's the very obvious icon of a guidebook and
help symbol on it. We will consider renaming the tooltip to 'See blue book
with yellow help symbol above.

What on earth does the <title> mean? <view source> Ah, keyword stuffing.
The

At the advice of someone here, we amended the title to 60 characters. Our
Google hits fell through the floor. We put it back as this is a hobby to
make money, not please programmers who are the only ones that would even

Why is the font specified as 14 pixels?

Because that is a valid option in HTML, and enlarging the font causes issues
with a precisely designed page.

Why does the copyright stuff (Imagery (c) 2007) sit right over the top of
the, sometimes white, images so I can't read it? An unreadable copyright
notice is not a copyright notice at all.

It doesn't unless you right-click. It is just a right-click disable popup.

Why does my default hot pink background show through?

Because you chose it. We tried changing the body tag to FFFFFF but it
caused CSS validation errors that some text was the same colour as the
background. If you want hot pink, have hot pink!

The <squint> "designed for" </squing> stuff at the bottom is illegible, as
is the <squint> "welcome to..." </squing> stuff at the top. 9 pixels is
not a font size for use on computer screens.

That is called small print. You'll find it a lot in life. Would you prefer
it larger, talking about our copyrights? No.

Ah, is that illegible stuff at the top telling me what the site is about?
<Ctrl mouse wheel *several* times>... Ah, I see it just might be. But now
that I have enlarged my font size sufficiently to view this the rest of
the page totally breaks.

No, the home page is what the site is about! Gosh it's a wonder how you get
through life! Quite a struggle you've made out of this

Final impression: Hit the back button and go to somewhere that makes it
easy for me to shop online.

I think we can safely say the site is not designed or aimed at you.

The question was "Does it work in Firefox". Thanks for confirming it does.

Mika

 

[Mika]

It doesn't unless you right-click. It is just a right-click disable
popup.

*Correction: My colleague thinks you mean the white text that Google Maps
provide. This is their standard copyright notice for satellite imagery and
it displays over the top of anything else on a website. Ugly we agree, but
unavoidable.

 

[rf]

news:[email protected]...

I thought you had over and outed

One person in Australia has a load time of 6 seconds over a 0.5Mb/s
connection, and you have 1.21 minutes. Our site is designed and focused
for UK users who don't have this inconsistency, however if there is a way
to reduce international server delays to our UK server please do let us
know.

Perhaps dorayme's IPS was doing some caching. Or perhaps she had looked at
your site before and most of your images came from her cache. Who knows. For
me it was that long. Even if I simply press the refresh button I wait for
eighteen seconds.

That is because you came in via a thread that directed you past the home
page.

Where in your original post did you mention that this was not the "home"
page?

I saw a URL containing a directory (I assumed this was a "test" thing) and a
file called index.shtml. I feel I am justified in thinking that may have
been a "home" page. And, BTW, why shtml? There is nothing on this page that
needs security.

Try clicking the logo at the top and you'll find the home page, which

Hmmm. Bloody snowflakes. How last century. And links that leaps all over the
page when mouseovered. Egad, it just gets worser and worser.

"As bigged up by"? He he.

explains incredibly simply what the site is about.

I am telling you that it does not. I am still as much in the dark as to what
the site is about as before.

We did NOT ask for critiques

Welcome to usenet.

from people in the wrong country

So because I live in Australia I am in the "wrong" country and am therefore
prohibited from your "virtual shopping"? How arrogant. I wonder if the shops
you represent know that you discriminate against shoppers from other
countries?

landing at the wrong page.

The page you told me to land on.

The site is designed for a mouse and would be unusable without. Sorry but
we are catering for a majority here as it is very specific.

Sorry but if you pulled that sort of stunt in Australia your site would be
against the disabilities leglislation. That is, your site would be illegal
and I could not use a mouse then I could sue you for damages because I
cannot use your site to buy something.

It centres the streetscape div in the page for the best view, as testing
showed people did not.

Yes, I know. I thought it would do something much better and more inovative
than that. But that's just me, expecting a link to do more than scroll the
page an inch or so.

Where is the usage guide?... It's the very obvious icon of a guidebook and
help symbol on it. We will consider renaming the tooltip to 'See blue
book with yellow help symbol above.

This is not obvious at all. Not at all. And even after you have told me what
it is the title (tooltip) for that book icon is "popup usage guide". I abhor
popups so why would I click on a "popup usage guide"?

Informative, not.

At the advice of someone here, we amended the title to 60 characters. Our
Google hits fell through the floor. We put it back as this is a hobby to
make money, not please programmers who are the only ones that would even
know what <title> is.

Nothing pisses me off more than searching for stuff only to find that I
cannot even find the stuff I searched for on a page that has been "found".
Immediate back button.

Because that is a valid option in HTML, and enlarging the font causes
issues with a precisely designed page.

You have a lot to learn about page design then. The font size is *my*
choice, not yours. If *my* choice of font breaks your design then your
design is broken.

Because you chose it. We tried changing the body tag to FFFFFF but it
caused CSS validation errors that some text was the same colour as the
background. If you want hot pink, have hot pink!

So, *you* want to choose my font size but you insist that I supply the
background?.

I think we can safely say the site is not designed or aimed at you

Correct. My idea of a link farm is a list of links, not an intentionally
hard to use grossly over bloated thing such as this. Just my opinion of
course

The question was "Does it work in Firefox". Thanks for confirming it
does.

For whatever definition of "work" you are using. For me it does not work,
not in any browser. But I think I told you that last year as well

 

[Mika]

We don't really want to prolong this particular response, but you have asked
questions and it is polite to answer them:

I thought you had over and outed

To some.

I am telling you that it does not. I am still as much in the dark as to
what the site is about as before.

We are shocked you cannot work it out from the bullet points. It does not
get any more plain English than that. What exactly you find so mentally
confusing about "Virtual Shopping... REAL Streets" or "Walk inside famous
high street stores ... any time or weather, no hassle or crowds!" we will
never know.

Welcome to usenet.

Hello and goodbye very soon! Lol.

So because I live in Australia I am in the "wrong" country and am
therefore prohibited from your "virtual shopping"? How arrogant. I wonder
if the shops you represent know that you discriminate against shoppers
from other countries?

Oh dear you are ready to be offended... but no, it is not our choice, it is
the choice of the shops. 99% of them do not offer International delivery
you see, so unless you live in the UK, there is little point shopping at UK
online shops. Do you understand now? Is that okay? Shall we rewrite all
their websites and convert their delivery depots for you? This is a UK site
featuring UK streets on a UK server. Is that unfair? Do you want us to
move Oxford Street to Pakistan perhaps?

Sorry but if you pulled that sort of stunt in Australia your site would be
against the disabilities leglislation. That is, your site would be illegal
and I could not use a mouse then I could sue you for damages because I
cannot use your site to buy something.

'Stunt'? If you cannot use a mouse with this interactive system, then go to
Amazon - we are not stopping you. I'd love for you to report us to the
regulatory body in Australia and see how far you get based on that over
reaction! Are all video games and Nintendo Wii banned there also, because
some people with disabilities cannot grip the controllers? And what was
your complaint, that you couldn't click the small print?! Oh dear.

Yes, I know. I thought it would do something much better and more
inovative than that. But that's just me, expecting a link to do more than
scroll the page an inch or so.

Is this really worth the discussion?!

This is not obvious at all. Not at all. And even after you have told me
what it is the title (tooltip) for that book icon is "popup usage guide".
I abhor popups so why would I click on a "popup usage guide"?

To get to the usage guide.

Anyway we have changed the text now based on your feedback, thank you. See,
sometimes you hit on a valid comment!

Informative, not.
Sometimes.


You have a lot to learn about page design then. The font size is *my*
choice, not yours. If *my* choice of font breaks your design then your
design is broken.

It is valid HTML.

So, *you* want to choose my font size but you insist that I supply the
background?.

Yes, the background colour is rarely changed by anyone - most people can't
even find that setting! Font size however is commonly changed, so we have
to have some control there.

For whatever definition of "work" you are using. For me it does not work,
not in any browser. But I think I told you that last year as well

If the people here had been more honest instead of using words like 'broken'
when they mean 'takes a long time when accessed from the other side of the
world in a country it is not designed for', or 'JS streetscape does not
display', when they mean, 'we have turned JS off', it would have saved us an
entire day's work chasing red herrings. I guess that's how you guys pass
your time and get your kicks.

(Cue clever retort throwing the blame back in our direction etc. etc. blah
blah...)

Over and out

Mika

 

[Chaddy2222]

I thought you had over and outed


Perhaps dorayme's IPS was doing some caching. Or perhaps she had looked at
your site before and most of your images came from her cache. Who knows. For
me it was that long. Even if I simply press the refresh button I wait for
eighteen seconds.

It took ages to load on my 256K broadband conection as well.

Where in your original post did you mention that this was not the "home"
page?

He did not, but then again he didn't mention a lot of things.

I saw a URL containing a directory (I assumed this was a "test" thing) and a
file called index.shtml. I feel I am justified in thinking that may have
been a "home" page. And, BTW, why shtml? There is nothing on this page that
needs security.

SSI!.
A lot of people recommend that you use the .shtml extention (+ some
servers need it.)

Hmmm. Bloody snowflakes. How last century. And links that leaps all over the
page when mouseovered. Egad, it just gets worser and worser.

Yeah, my web design is much more better (just taking the piss now).

"As bigged up by"? He he.


I am telling you that it does not. I am still as much in the dark as to what
the site is about as before.


Welcome to usenet.


So because I live in Australia I am in the "wrong" country and am therefore
prohibited from your "virtual shopping"? How arrogant. I wonder if the shops
you represent know that you discriminate against shoppers from other
countries?

Richard, the UK is a bit strange, well at least some members of the
business community are:
They are yet to discover what this whole "web" thing is all about!.

The page you told me to land on.


Sorry but if you pulled that sort of stunt in Australia your site would be
against the disabilities leglislation. That is, your site would be illegal
and I could not use a mouse then I could sue you for damages because I
cannot use your site to buy something.

Ahh, Richard, they do have pritty much identical legislation in the
UK as well.
Well it's similar put it that way.

Yes, I know. I thought it would do something much better and more inovative
than that. But that's just me, expecting a link to do more than scroll the
page an inch or so.


This is not obvious at all. Not at all. And even after you have told me what
it is the title (tooltip) for that book icon is "popup usage guide". I abhor
popups so why would I click on a "popup usage guide"?

Maybe cause the designer has no idea and needs to have a good read of:
http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com

Informative, not.


Nothing pisses me off more than searching for stuff only to find that I
cannot even find the stuff I searched for on a page that has been "found".
Immediate back button.

Not to mention dicks that call people that write HTML "programmers"
come on lets get sirious people!.
HTML is not a programming language!

You have a lot to learn about page design then. The font size is *my*
choice, not yours. If *my* choice of font breaks your design then your
design is broken.

This is true although the font can only expant to a certon point
(unless you use a high resolution).

So, *you* want to choose my font size but you insist that I supply the
background?.


Correct. My idea of a link farm is a list of links, not an intentionally
hard to use grossly over bloated thing such as this. Just my opinion of
course

ROTFL: I could not agree more.

 

[Sherman Pendley]

BTW, why shtml? There is nothing on this page that
needs security.

Shtml has SFA to do with security - it's used for server-side includes.
You're probably thinking of HTTPS, which enables SSL encryption over HTTP.

sherm--

 

[Mika]

It took ages to load on my 256K broadband conection

Thanks for the feedback. This info is useful to us if you can confirm:

* Are you in the UK or behind international servers? The online sites we
link to are UK shops and designed for UK visitors as they won't ship
overseas unfortunately (this is out of our hands). If you are in the UK the
page should load in a few seconds.

* Can you define "ages" please, roughly?

We are not too convinced that 256k qualifies as fast broadband, but
appreciate the feedback.

Mika

 

[Adrienne Boswell]

And you are an individual who many disagree with. It is not aimed at
you, someone who likes Internet shopping. It is aimed at those who
DON'T, and who love real streets because of what they see, and what
they HEAR. Your advice is, make it simpler, turn the sound off.

I like going shopping. I like going window shopping. I like taking my
four year old son, Spane, window shopping as well.

I like online shopping. I like online because I don't hear "I want... I
want... I want... I want...". I also don't hear musak, chattering in
Armenian (I live in Glendale), walkie talkies, boom boxes, etc.

Frequently, I will go in the store, kick the tires, then go home and
purchase the item online, where I can do it quickly without the dreaded
"I want...".

The whole point of online shopping is to save time and get what you want
quickly, instant gratification. No sounds - musak, and/or "I want...".
Easily find things (immediately - no having to walk up and down aisles
because the marketing people decided to move things again). Quick check
out - (can't stand "extra" things like GoDaddy tries to hawk, but that's
for another discussion) done.

 

[Mika]

I like going shopping. I like going window shopping. I like taking my
four year old son, Spane, window shopping as well.

I like online shopping. I like online because I don't hear "I want... I
want... I want... I want...". I also don't hear musak, chattering in
Armenian (I live in Glendale), walkie talkies, boom boxes, etc.

Frequently, I will go in the store, kick the tires, then go home and
purchase the item online, where I can do it quickly without the dreaded
"I want...".

The whole point of online shopping is to save time and get what you want
quickly, instant gratification. No sounds - musak, and/or "I want...".
Easily find things (immediately - no having to walk up and down aisles
because the marketing people decided to move things again). Quick check
out - (can't stand "extra" things like GoDaddy tries to hawk, but that's
for another discussion) done.

Does this page work in your Firefox?

 

[Mika]

Hi all, if you could kindly test this W3C validated page specifically in
Firefox only and advise if you see the streetscape appear. (Designed for
broadband):

http://tinyurl.com/35mwxr

Thanks,
Mika

We have done some tweaks to the site and would like to know if it is any
faster for those of you who found it slow across international servers.

http://tinyurl.com/35mwxr

Thanks in advance for any constructive answers to this specific question -
that is all that is needed, thanks.

Mika

 

[Evertjan.]

Mika wrote on 26 nov 2007 in comp.lang.javascript:

We have done some tweaks to the site and would like to know if it is any
faster for those of you who found it slow across international servers.

What is that, international servers?

Or national servers for that matter?

 

[Blinky the Shark]

One person in Australia has a load time of 6 seconds over a 0.5Mb/s
connection, and you have 1.21 minutes. Our site is designed and focused for

rf didn't have it cached.

 

[Blinky the Shark]

I thought you had over and outed

He's grasped "over"; he's still reading about "out".

 

[Blinky the Shark]

I like online shopping. I like online because I don't hear "I want...
I want... I want... I want...". I also don't hear musak, chattering
in Armenian (I live in Glendale), walkie talkies, boom boxes, etc.

Heh. One of my buddies lives a couplethree doors from Lexington and
Maryland.

 

[Rick Brandt]

We have done some tweaks to the site and would like to know if it is
any faster for those of you who found it slow across international
servers.
http://tinyurl.com/35mwxr

Thanks in advance for any constructive answers to this specific
question - that is all that is needed, thanks.

If I turn off caching in Firefox and reload the page it is 20 seconds before all
hourglass activity ceases.

I have *very* good ADSL with between 2 and 3 mb download speeds.

The page is too slow in my opinion. Anyone with less than very high end
broadband will almost certainly kill the page before it finishes.

 

[Blinky the Shark]

If I turn off caching in Firefox and reload the page it is 20 seconds
before all hourglass activity ceases.

I have *very* good ADSL with between 2 and 3 mb download speeds.

The page is too slow in my opinion. Anyone with less than very high
end broadband will almost certainly kill the page before it finishes.

What? And miss the sound of the traffic and the smell of the taxi
exhausts?