Website (re-)critique requested

#1

I've asked for feedback on this site before, but have recently
redesigned the whole thing to be dynamic. The main plus for using Ajax
that calls flat files is that I only have to change the front page if I
need to make a change. Essentially it's a complex way of doing lots of
includes. The address is:

http://www.bookstacks.org/

Thank you for any feedback--constructive, destructive, or otherwise.

Ian
--
I drink only that which makes
me thirsty. (Thao Nguyen)
http://www.bookstacks.org/
http://mellowcricket.wordpress.com/

#2

Gazing into my crystal ball I observed Ian <rastallian (AT) gmail (DOT) com> writing
in news:h76sq9$hln$1 (AT) news (DOT) eternal-september.org:

Quote:

I've asked for feedback on this site before, but have recently
redesigned the whole thing to be dynamic. The main plus for using Ajax
that calls flat files is that I only have to change the front page if I
need to make a change. Essentially it's a complex way of doing lots of
includes. The address is:

http://www.bookstacks.org/

Thank you for any feedback--constructive, destructive, or otherwise.

Ian

The hover color on the default red/brown is very hard to see, same with
purple.

--
Adrienne Boswell at Home
Arbpen Web Site Design Services
http://www.cavalcade-of-coding.info
Please respond to the group so others can share

#3

On 2009-08-27, Ian wrote:

Quote:

I've asked for feedback on this site before, but have recently
redesigned the whole thing to be dynamic. The main plus for using Ajax
that calls flat files is that I only have to change the front page if I
need to make a change. Essentially it's a complex way of doing lots of
includes. The address is:

http://www.bookstacks.org/

Thank you for any feedback--constructive, destructive, or otherwise.

I find the colours (all of them except plain) garish and distracting.

There is not enough whitespace around the text. When reading a book
online, I don't like to have any distracting stuff around it. I
just want the text of the book.

I tried to read The Hound of the Baskervilles. The first chapter
appears, but there is no link to subsequent chapters.

--
Chris F.A. Johnson, webmaster <http://Woodbine-Gerrard.com>
================================================== =================
Author:
Shell Scripting Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach (2005, Apress)

#4

On 08/27/09 02:11 pm, Ian wrote:

Quote:

http://www.bookstacks.org/
Thank you for any feedback--constructive, destructive, or otherwise.

HTML 4.01 strict. Cool! And it validates. Very cool!

The site is useless without Javascript, a side-effect of Ajax no doubt.
When viewing a multi-chapter book (after enabling JS), there is no link
to the next chapter and the Back button does not return me to the table of
contents. So I can only ever read the first chapter.

--
jmm (hyphen) list (at) sohnen-moe (dot) com
(Remove .AXSPAMGN for email)

#5

Jim Moe wrote:

Quote:

When viewing a multi-chapter book (after enabling JS), there is no link
to the next chapter and the Back button does not return me to the table of
contents. So I can only ever read the first chapter.

The table of contents is found by clicking the book title again. I see
now that that isn't obvious.

You know, the more I think about it, the more I think that this needs
some reworking. I had been so keen on doing a dynamic version of the
site, I suppose because "dynamic = better" in some way, that I didn't
stop to think that I actually had more functionality with the plain HTML
version.

The version that I had settled on for quite a while was so plain that I
was convinced it was driving away visitors. Let me try and find it in
the Wayback Machine ...

http://web.archive.org/web/20060404162148/http://www.bookstacks.org/

This was, at the time, the result of all my thought on the perfect
design. Just one big div, which, incidentally, looks like a piece of
paper, and everything works inside that. Everyone I showed it to,
however, mistook me for someone who only used one big div because he
couldn't do anything more complicated. So I reworked it.

Does something like this work better? Something else, perhaps, that I
hadn't thought of?

Ian
--
I drink only that which makes
me thirsty. (Thao Nguyen)
http://www.bookstacks.org/
http://mellowcricket.wordpress.com/

#6

In article <h7881u$r4d$1 (AT) news (DOT) eternal-september.org>,
Ian <rastallian (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:

Quote:

The version that I had settled on for quite a while was so plain that I
was convinced it was driving away visitors. Let me try and find it in
the Wayback Machine ...

http://web.archive.org/web/20060404162148/http://www.bookstacks.org/

If that drove people away it was not because it is plain in looks. As
far as the general look is concerned, it is really more preferable than
your other effort (not that that was so terrible, mind you). The markup
is not the best but at least for me, this sort of plain look is like a
welcome relief from so much fancy pants that people go on with...

What happened to the pic on the Chapter 1? You surely don't need a link
*to* the bottom of the page. You hardly need one these days to the top
either... If you are going to have a page nav, I would like it at top as
well as bottom so I could flip through without scrolling down.

--
dorayme

#7

dorayme wrote:

Quote:

You surely don't need a link
*to* the bottom of the page. You hardly need one these days to the top
either... If you are going to have a page nav, I would like it at top as
well as bottom so I could flip through without scrolling down.

I think the link to the bottom was really a link to the TOC. (It's been
a while since I had the site that way.) The bane of my existence with
this site has been the previous and next links. If I knew how to do it,
I could write a script of some sort to automagically create them for me.
(UltraEdit is neat in that its macro language uses JavaScript, so if you
know some JS, you can write some pretty handy macros.) As it is, I have
to manually add the previous and next links for every file, and there's
about *thirty-five hundred* files so far.

It's much easier to add a link to the TOC, because each TOC is an index
file. So if I did a search and replace, to change:

<a href="#">Back to Top</a>

to:

<a href="index.html">Table of Contents</a>

and then did a RegExp to add the same thing to the top of each file, I
could conceivably save myself about two weeks of on-again, off-again work.

BTW, one of the benefits of that Plain Jane site was that it worked just
fine on cellphones. One wonders why to even use the <div> at all, since
it's just there for decoration. I guess the question is, how far have I
taken the eTexts at Project Gutenberg, and turned them into proper
eBooks? Shouldn't there be some kind of eye candy there? What if readers
are turned off by a site almost as plain as a vanilla ASCII file? What
do they get at Bookstacks that they don't get at PG? All this led to
making a whiz-bang dynamic version, which, as someone pointed out, has
absolutely zero functionality without JS, and can be confusing to use,
as others have noted.

Ian
--
I drink only that which makes
me thirsty. (Thao Nguyen)
http://www.bookstacks.org/
http://mellowcricket.wordpress.com/

#8

Gazing into my crystal ball I observed Ian <rastallian (AT) gmail (DOT) com>
writing in news:h7975b$e8j$1 (AT) news (DOT) eternal-september.org:

Quote:

The bane of my existence with
this site has been the previous and next links. If I knew how to do
it,
I could write a script of some sort to automagically create them for
me.

Could you do something server side?

<?php

/* $pages is the number pages for that book, however you are getting the
information */

if(!isset($_GET['page']))
{
$page = 1;
$next = 2;
$previous = 1;
$first = 1
$last = $pages;
}
else
{
$page = $_GET['page'];
$next = $page+1;
$previous = $page-1;
$first = 1;
$last = $pages;
}
if($page == 1)
{
$atstart = true;
$atend = false
}
elseif{$page == $pages)
{
$atend = true;
$atstart = false;
}
else
{
$atstart = false;
$atend = false
}
?>

<ul>
<?php
if($atstart)
{?>
<li><a href="page.php?book=1&page=<?php echo $next?>">Next</a></li>
<li><a href="page.php?book=1&page=<?php echo $last?>">Last</a></li>
<?php }
elseif($atend)
{?>
<li><a href="page.php?book=1&page=<?php echo $first?>">First</a>
</li>
<li><a href="page.php?book=1&page=<?php echo $next?>">Next</a></li>
<li><a href="page.php?book=1&page=<?php echo $previous?>">Previous
</a></li>
<?php }
else
{
?>
<li><a href="page.php?book=1&page=<?php echo $first?>">First</a>
</li>
<li><a href="page.php?book=1&page=<?php echo $next?>">Next</a></li>
<li><a href="page.php?book=1&page=<?php echo $previous?>">Previous
</a></li>
<li><a href="page.php?book=1&page=<?php echo $last?>">Last</a></li>
<?php } ?>
</ul>

--
Adrienne Boswell at Home
Arbpen Web Site Design Services
http://www.cavalcade-of-coding.info
Please respond to the group so others can share

#9

Hey Adrienne. I know enough PHP to be dangerous (to myself, I mean), but
I will try to implement that. That means the bookmarks will be broken,
although I could always use an .htaccess file to make all HTML files
parse as PHP files. Seeing as they all *will* be PHP files, that
shouldn't be a problem. (Unless that's a bad idea.)

Thank you for the help, though. It's very useful.

Ian
--
I drink only that which makes
me thirsty. (Thao Nguyen)
http://www.bookstacks.org/
http://mellowcricket.wordpress.com/

#10

Adrienne Boswell wrote:

Quote:

Could you do something server side?

Okay, I understand what you mean now. Sorry for the confusing last post.
You mean to put those flat files into a database, and call them up in
much the same way, but avoiding all the pitfalls of Ajax / JavaScript.
Yes, I completely agree. I just worry about security, because I get the
impression that working with PHP / MySQL, when one is really just a
newbie at it, poses a good risk of SQL injection attacks. Ah, I guess
it's time to hit the PDF files.

Thanks to all the posters who gave their input. It has been invaluable.

Ian
--
I drink only that which makes
me thirsty. (Thao Nguyen)
http://www.bookstacks.org/
http://mellowcricket.wordpress.com/