humble attempt of a new german website - www.vraja-bhakti.de

Radhe!

i humbly present my try+error attempt of making a homepage.

if anyone has some constructive tipps, feel free to shoot!

Nitai Gaura Radhe Syam
Hare Krischna Hare Rama

( not to be chanted in ISKCON/GM-areas!
)

vraja-bhakti

Radhe Radhe, dear Tarunji!

I tried your link and received 404 error...

Is it my provider's trouble, or you disabled your homepage?

404 is a server-end error message for page not found. I fail to see how that could be caused by your service provider. On the other hand, I see the website just fine. Perhaps you have mistyped the URL?

Hmmm... Now it works, thanks.

I didn't type URL, just clicked on a link in Tarun's post. Maybe, he was making some changes on the site in that time, and this caused an error...

I didn't like the web site!

There was no picture of Colonel Klink!

I like your effort and the result of it.
Hör nicht darauf was der letzte Beitragende zu meckern hat, soll wohl witzig sein.

I'd recommend though, that you do not point to the negative in your short introduction of Philosophy, but state the positive in an affirmative way.

Also, if you gave a translation of the first visible verse... it would not make one feel dumb in the beginning already if one does not read Bengali. there is a tendency of assumption and subtle arrogance that neophytes feel fast. I think you have to keep in mind that you will also get new people interested who have never heard of these westernized orgs propagating the Holy Names.

Good luck and many hits.
Jai Nitai.

thank you all!

very good advice.

Radhe
Tarunji

things changed.

Radhe!

I think if it was me I would enlarge the picture of the kunda to the same size as the picture of RadhaKrishna and center them on the page evenly.
Then I would put the buttons probably under the header in a linear layout, or on the bottom of the page.
Also, for those who have their display set at 800X600 the page shows too wide and you have to use the scroll bar on the bottom to see the whole page.

That is the thing that I don't like about the way computers work. People can have different settings on their display and the web page will show differently for each setting. You can build at web site to view well at one setting but it will not view well on another setting. My approach is to build the web page to view well on the lower setting because it still views on the higher setting better than a site built on the higher setting will view on a lower setting. The whole issue is a nuisance if you ask me. Too bad they don't have a program that automatically sets your display at the setting the web page was designed for. Then the OS would automatically adjust the display according to the settings that your browser detects.

What program are you using to build the web pages with?

Sparky's right, Tarun, I have to scroll horizontally to see everything. That's not convenient.

I suspect that Tarun maybe plays some of those internet games as he has his settings on the standard 1024X768 dpi that game players use. From from I have seen, most web sites are designed to be viewed at 800X600 dpi.

My son is a master gamer and he has his settings always at 1024X768. I am a web surfer and most web sites view normal at 800X600 dpi.

Madhava is the real expert here.
C'mon Madhava give Klink some tips. He's trying to build a web site!

Since I am a graphics designer, neither of the two resolution suffices for me. I have a widescreen laptop with 1440x900, so no horizontal scrolling here -- that must be considered though, keeping the majority of 800x600'ers in mind.

There could perhaps be some sort of basic borders, a box with a slightly different colour from the background in which the text is, which would appear throughout the site as the basis for the pages. That would give the site a certain touch of consistency. The visitor must feel certain that he is still on the same website after clicking to a new page.

I don't personally like Times New Roman on the internet for some reason. I suppose I think of it as too boring a choice. It is sad that there are so few fonts which are spread out on all platforms, it limits the possibilities of design to a great extent, unless of course someone wants to start embedding fonts and having people download all sorts of plug-ins etc. which is in my opinion an unnecessary hassle.

Well, it is possible to have the pages detect the screen resolution and direct the user to pages designed for the appropriate settings. Of course that would mean that you'd have to design different sets of pages for different resolutions. Then of course making updates would become a nuisance.

The only realistic approach to this is a combination of JavaScript to detect the screen resolution of the visitor and PHP to adjust various variables through the pages and pull in appropriate content according to defined parameters for each resolution. That, of course, is something one has to spend some time with, and can't be done with any WYSIWYG editors. You need to get into the code to do that.

Most users use a screen resolution of 1024 X 768 these days, both at home and in the office.

There are some template styles you can use that allow for situations where users have different screen resolutions. Macromedia have some interesting tips on their site and Adobe do also. I usually follow guidelines published by IBM and Jakob Neilsen, but then I build business sites, not public sites. I haven't updated the mandala.com.au site for about 2 years, and it is still set up as a 800-600 display.

Most of my work involves building sites for businesses and from research it is pretty clear that most users prefer a standard page layout such as this Raganuga site has, with a menu at the top or left side. If you have a lot of text on the site, keep the blocks of text to a width about the same as a page in MSWord. I don't do much layout work myself anymore, as I am working as a DBA and business process analyst (do you know MOVEX, Madhava? A Swedish database invention running on an AS400 with DB2, and not a good invention, I will add). Anyway, in my opinion this Raganuga site is easier to read than saraswata because the text layout is cleaner and there are less graphics at the top of the page.

Do you have a source for this? For what I've read, and that's quite a few articles, it's about 50/50 these days, with 1024x768 on the rise. But then again, the devotees aren't exactly the forerunners of progress in technology, so I suspect that 800x600 is more common among them.

My logs more or less confirm this. 39% 800x600, 47% 1024x768, 4% 1280x1024, 4% 1440x****, 2.5% 1600x****, 3.5% others. That's a shot of 300 visits at raganuga.org. I should take a longer look into it to know the audience I design for.



No, fortunately I do not, and from what you describe it sounds like I am better off without.

Madhava,

I don't have a source for this at hand, but I have seen it written up in a few places and I've checked various sources as it is a big issue

Radhe!

good advices.

i am using Macromedia Studio X (=dreamweaver).

i just tried like hell to resize to 800X 600 but i can not do it.



?

how to resize?

Tarunji

Make a table 750px wide and paste the text inside it.

Radhe!

thank you for your kind advices.

how to make the WHOLE PAGE in 800x600?

Tarunji

Radhe!

i like it better now.

thank you so much!

PS:

me not a gamer at all.
could not vare less....

rather some nice movie like "THe Lord of the rings" now and then.

games are stealing time.

RAdhe

Smeagol

That may be true about screen resolution settings on the user end, but from what I have seen and what I am trying to say is that most web sites are built to be viewed at 800X600 as far as the layout goes. It don't take much surfing around to see that. If a web site was built to be viewed at higher resolutions I would have to use my horizontal scroll bar to see the whole page, just like I had to at Klink's site. There are very few web pages that don't view perfectly with the 800X600 pixels setting. I personally prefer not to have have to scroll horizontally to view a web page, so I build web pages at 800hX600v pixels.

Set your own resolution at 800X600 before you build your web pages. Then they will view on all resolutions higher than that within the screen size.
From the looks of your web site the first time I viewed it you must have had your screen resolution set at the highest setting when your built your web page. Therefore, when somebody views that page from a lower resolution is will be wider than the screen. That is why if you build your web pages with your own settings at 800X600 it will fit on most all screens without having to scroll horizontally. In my opinion it is better to have the page smaller than the screen than to have it bigger.
If you go to a web site like msn.com you will see that the web pages view perfectly at 800X600, they will be a little smaller than the screen at 1024X768 and they will be about half the size of the screen at the highest setting. That is why if you build the page while you are using a higher setting it will be bigger than the page for those who have lower settings.

I just viewed your home page again Klink and it looks like the top image that has the title box and the other parts could be centered on the page better. Same thing with the image of Radha-Krishna. If you select these two items (one at a time) in your web design program and then choose the button in your tool bar to center paragraphs and images it will center them to the middle of the page. That is unless you want them aligned to the left side of the screen.

I'm moving this under MISCELLANEOUS DISCUSSIONS since the thread has evolved far beyond an announcement.