JCwolf's site being updated...

[JCWolf]

Originally Posted by Laufen zum Ziel

JC,

Just reviewed your site again . Everything loaded quickly
without problems. Love the graphics they make my
site look like it was constructed by a 10 year old. I
love the music and would like a DL site if possible for the music.

I will link to Silent Hunter Addict ASAP. GREAT WORK.

You have a PM..

[Jimbuna]

Just looked for the first time since yesterday and must say I am deeply impressed

[JCWolf]

Originally Posted by jimbuna

Just looked for the first time since yesterday and must say I am deeply impressed

Waite untill you see the GWX page that I am scratching....

A page for you guys to post links to your place...

Thanks Jimbuna...

[Jimbuna]

Originally Posted by JCWolf

Waite untill you see the GWX page that I am scratching....

A page for you guys to post links to your place...

Thanks Jimbuna...

Sounds great........~SALUTE~

[JCWolf]

Web update...


Silent hunter Page on my web site as been updated,
and have now the U-Boat page and downloading pages
of bouth u-boat released untill date...

Check the out by clicking the u-Boat link on my sig...

[robbythesub]

Site running smoothly with music immediately- looking good and now bookmarked for progress reports!

Thanks

[JCWolf]

hello everyone,Just a fast info..The Web haves now a new forum,and its already wayting for you people ...Doesn't have any Downloads board yet, all the dowloads will be made on my main site andthe forum will be reserved for us and posting otherKind of stuff...Check it out guys...

[Kpt, Otto]

Hi there JcWolf,

I am afraid ive been "out of action" for some months and so have not kept up with this forum for a while and have only just read this thread.

I have a couple of websites and both use sound although only on rare occations because at times for those who visit regularluly it can get on their wick after a while!

When I was programing the pages I found it cumbersome to get it to work in Firefox and/or Opera because they tend to use plugins to produce the sound. If a user does not have the plugin then it simply will not work.

When I did use the "embed" tag, Firefox would render the page and come up with a suggested plugin to download which would in theory produce the sound. The only problem was that the plugin could not be found and so in the end I gave up trying.

After a lot of research on the web it seems many people have come to the same conclution and have found that getting Firefox to play sounds is a lottery at best. Its one thing that that paricular browser doesnt do very well.

Aparently with the proposded introduction of HTML 5 this will all be sorted out but for now were all stuck in the same boat! What I did was to concentrate on using IE instead and all my sounds work ok in that browser.

On this one I have installed a fire alarm when you click "report a bad link"
http://www.wiredplanet.org.uk/Networ...fice/index.htm

What it does is preload a small sound file and then uses javascript to trigger it. This creates no lag when the link is clicked. The sound file is only 145kb and kept in a central place on the website so that many pages can access it without uploading/downloading it several times.

I liked the fire alarm it tickles me everytime I click it!!

On my Silent Hunter website (unfortunately I havent updated it recently) I have a simple system in the contact page which simply uses the "bgsound" tag only supported in IE. This can be demonstrated here:
http://www.ubootwaffe.org.uk/BdU/B_D...Gn_Contact.htm


When it comes to Firefox, JScones's advice hits the nail right on the head but you may still have problems with users having the right plugin to make it work.


Looking at your website which might I add is really taking shape and looking as stunning as your previous one, I found that its design is inspiring and the graphics are great also it loads very quickly.

The good thing is that it has multi-res support which was one of the problems that your previous site suffered from.

Your previous site however was very unique and very differant which was a good thing especially as a lot of pages today look very similar, yours are always very differant.

(On a side note, one of the things I enjoy about Laufen zum Ziel's site is that it is clear he is an enthusiast and although a simple design it has a lot of content and has had a lot of time spent on it giving the community a valuable source of research.)


There was one thing that doesnt seem to wotk well however and this is when I enter the "Silent Hunter Main Menu" and then click on "workshop" or "U-boat mods". What happens is that a new window opens which is very narrow proberbly only 150 pixels wide which I then have to either resize or press the maximise button in the browser to display it full screen.

If a may make a suggestion perhaps have all the links open in the same window rather than open a new window. People can then always use the back button to go back to where they came from. ... just a thought!!

Otherwise the site is looking great and I wish you the best of luck in its development


Here are my sites, (both are still ongoing & I need to get round to updating them.)

http://www.ubootwaffe.org.uk
and
http://wiredplanet.org.uk

I am just an amateur and for me its just a hobby but I would appreciate any feed back given although I dont want or wish to hijack your thread so if anyone else wants to give me any feedback please could you be sure to do it here in my Thread instead.

To all... Good hunting!

[JCWolf]

Originally Posted by Kpt, Otto

Hi there JcWolf,

Otherwise the site is looking great and I wish you the best of luck in its development


Here are my sites, (both are still ongoing & I need to get round to updating them.)

http://www.ubootwaffe.org.uk
and
http://wiredplanet.org.uk

I am just an amateur and for its just a hobby but I would appreciate any feed back given although I dont want or wish to hijack your thread so if anyone else wants to give me any feedback please could you be sure to do it here in my Thread instead.

To all... Good hunting!

Hey Kpt Otto,

Thanks a lot for the outstanding post and way of explaining all this
in your above post...

As for the sound part Mate, I have no meens of adding something diferent
from what real the site haves at the moment, I know people using FireFox
(At least some of them) Have problems with catching web sounds or
any site background music, but for good the solution JSCones gave me
it would still not be completly free of sound bugs for FF users...

As for the sugestions about the popup windows, I am really still fiting all
pages toghether, as you see there are loads of stuff there that still doesn't
work, In the end I will refit all opening windows the way you sugest as I agree
entirely with what you say...

As for you being an Amateur , Let me just say that for what I see in your
SHIII web that I am the one amateur mate, the diference is that maybe
I have skills with graphics and you for sure have with building web sites and
other stuff, taken what I have read above...Your site is great and I take
this oportunity to ask you the permision to include it on my SH links page that
I am making today...


Thank you for your compliments mate
I will give a detailled feedback soon to you mate...Promise !

[Kpt, Otto]

Ah Haaa!!!

A solution for sound in Firefox allbeit a work around rather then a bonefide solution but it works.

Actually its Laufen zum Ziel we have to thank for this allthough at this moment I have not as yet done so!

What it is is that I just went over and visited his website using Firefox and low and behold it plays his background sound without downloading an apple media plugin to do it. How is this possible I asked myself?

Well Laufen zum Ziel if you are reading this then I dont know if you managed this by accident or if you engineered it by design but whatever way you look at it amounts to a genious solution!

So many web designers have tried to solve this problem and failed.

Anyhow here is the solution and why it works. On his site he is not using an mp3 or a wav file but a wmv video file instead. This means the browser doesnt look for a sound file to play but instead a video file. Most Firefox users have played video files on their computers before and therefore have already downloaded the correct media plugin by default when they installed their browser. If not then soon after cos the plugin for the video player is easy to find and install and it also is more friendly.


So the first step you would need to do is to convert your sound file (mp3 or whatever) to a WMV video file.


************************************************** **********************************************
EDIT:

*You can do this here for free: http://media-convert.com/

*Scrap my original suggestion as it doesnt always convert properly using that website because an audio file doesnt contain any video data.
************************************************** **********************************************

Try instead using Windows Movie Maker that comes free with Windows XP instead.

Step 1)
Add a simple picture to the timeline this gives the file a picture to play whilst playing the audio. The smaller the picture the better

Step 2)
Add the audio file to the timeline at the beginning.

Step 3)
Click save to my computer.

Step 4)
Select video for broadband 150kb per second

Step 5)
Make the video file.

This conversion method works every time!


Once you have done that then download the example I have put together here:
http://files.filefront.com/FF+sound+.../fileinfo.html

You can use notepad text editor which comes with windows to veiw and edit the html as required. Many of the parameters can be changed added or removed and simply inserted into your webpages. Remember to edit the path to the media file.

To see a working demo here that I uploaded:
http://www.wiredplanet.org.uk/Testbed/

for a hidden control panel see the demo here:
http://www.wiredplanet.org.uk/Testbed/index_0.htm

There is one drawback however and you may notice this in the first demo or may have noticed it in Laufen zum Ziel's page. In Firefox because it see the soundfile as a video it will play it as a video therefore if the width and height parameters are too small the control panel will not show and instead you will get a black box or a pixely image.

The solution to this is shown in my second demo with the hidden control panel. Unfortunately this has a side effect where users cannot turn off the sound! The simple solution to this is to provide a link the a mirrored page which does not have sound embeded into it.

There may still be one or two useres who cannot play sound in Firefox but this will be because they do not have even the basic plugins installed and so how they manage to browse the net boggles the mind!!

In IE there appear to be no problems and this solution also works fine.

I hope this may have been of some help.

************************************************** ****
************************************************** ****

In reply to your post:

As for you being an Amateur , Let me just say that for what I see in your
SHIII web that I am the one amateur mate, the diference is that maybe
I have skills with graphics and you for sure have with building web sites and
other stuff, taken what I have read above...Your site is great and I take
this oportunity to ask you the permision to include it on my SH links page that
I am making today...

You are quite right ...I have always felt that I seem to struggle a bit with creating graphics and have only just got used to creating layered vectored stuff !! But its a great learning curve for me and takes my mind off other worries for a while.

Also please do add my site to your links page I would be most gratefull. I do intend to add some links into both my pages and I will add yours with your logo as soon as I can.

Thank you agian for your reply your thoughts are much appreciated, and I do hope the above solution may have been of some help.

[Laufen zum Ziel]

Well Laufen zum Ziel if you are reading this then I dont know if you managed this by accident or if you engineered it by design but whatever way you look at it amounts to a genious solution!

I would love to have the genious credit. However it is an accident. As a matter
of fact I have tried to add some wav/mp3 files without luck to my site. From your
reply to JC I might be able to do so now.

[iambecomelife]

JCWolf, you have a PM.

Sorry to threadjack.

[JCWolf]

Originally Posted by Kpt, Otto

There is one drawback however and you may notice this in the first demo or may have noticed it in Laufen zum Ziel's page. In Firefox because it see the soundfile as a video it will play it as a video therefore if the width and height parameters are too small the control panel will not show and instead you will get a black box or a pixely image.

The solution to this is shown in my second demo with the hidden control panel. Unfortunately this has a side effect where users cannot turn off the sound! The simple solution to this is to provide a link the a mirrored page which does not have sound embeded into it.

There may still be one or two useres who cannot play sound in Firefox but this will be because they do not have even the basic plugins installed and so how they manage to browse the net boggles the mind!!

In IE there appear to be no problems and this solution also works fine.

Hello my friendo I was resting a cople of times this
Solution that we have been talking about and reached a conclusion
of just don't use it mate, and let me explain why..

In the text here above quoted from you,
you're right about the empty box without movie
showing on the web site, in fact that's really what happends..

I don't want that on my pages, cause it doesn't look
well in the overall final work a blank movie apearing
over a page, at least in my opinion...

As for the secound option , a page without volume controls
and another just similar but without music that is not
a good option specialy for sites with many pages , and
in my view no music is what FF browser people have right now without
having to do all that so I do prefer to leave it the way it is now also...

This is a good advance in this subject for sure but I do prefer having it the way it is...

People can allways instal IE also, I have both browsers instaled and can
use one or other as I want or prefer for certain things...

[Kpt, Otto]

Originally Posted by JCWolf

This is a good advance in this subject for sure but I do prefer having it the way it is...

I dont blame you! For my pages in the end I decided to only support sound in IE and kept the sound to a minimum in obscure areas of the site which are not visited often. I kept the sound files short and made them only play once everytime the page was visited because after several visits the sound can get on your wick.

Looking at my visitor statistics the most popular pages appear to be the movie pages in the theatre and also the screen shots, not many seem to read the war diary... I can sort of see that, but for me I write it so that I can look back with nostalgia in the future when systems advance to when playing SH3 is no longer possible, and remember what a great time I had playing the game.

ah well best of luck

[JCWolf]

Update and running...


The maine menu page is now fully linked but the mail button,
that I will still have to configure...

forum is fully connected and all menu buttons (But Mail) are
now operative...

Its time now to move into the Silen Hunter main menu and
start working on the Mods and Super Mods download pages ...

Then to the final i am leaving the Hellheims Seals page cause it
will take more pages and other stuff to make...

I figure that another week and it will be complete in all is
structure and menus...

By that time I am planing on starting the gathering materials
that will make part of the next U-Boat III mod, and than
start finaly moding the UB III...

Thanks for all your support and
comments...