Re: [HACKERS] Developers Globe (FINAL)

>
> jwieck(at)debis(dot)com (Jan Wieck) writes:
> > I checked that it works with Netscape 4.05 and MS-IE 4.0.
> > Does anyone have problems with it?
>
> It fails rather spectacularly for me --- I'm watching a Netscape image
> placeholder icon bounce around the empty frame as if it were a ping-pong
> ball. Kinda fun to watch actually, but I'm sure it's not the intended
> effect. It's sucking up an unreasonable percentage of my CPU, too.

I know that there is still a bunch of problems with it and be
sure, I'll work on. Finally it should display a static map by
default and only if it finds a known browser, fill in the
flash images into empty layers and start blinking.

What it is currently is only a point I'm starting from.

>
> This is Netscape 4.08 for HPUX, auto image load off, and I currently
> have Javascript but not Java enabled. With Javascript off (my more
> usual browsing setup, but I chanced to leave it on today) the page
> behaves a lot more reasonably; I get one placeholder that I can click on
> if I feel like looking at the graphic.

Ech - auto load off. Thanks for the hint.

>
> I realize that you spent a good deal of time on that "flashing dot"
> effect, but I'd counsel you to forget it. It doesn't add a darn thing
> to the useful content of the page --- the red dots are perfectly visible
> without flashing. (You could make them a tiny bit bigger and brighter,
> if you find them marginal.) What it *will* do is create all sorts of
> portability headaches, of which you've seen only the beginning; you
> have not tried to get it to work across multiple browser versions or
> multiple platforms, to say nothing of browsers other than the Big Two.
> "I hacked it till it worked on the two browsers I use" is just about the
> definition of bad Web design in my book. You'd be embarrassed to ship
> C code that unportable --- why are you willing to accept it in HTML?

But then you have to vote for removing overlib from the main
index too since as far as I've understood the code it does
too less checking about browser versions etc. We want such
attracktive things even if only the big two support them -
no?

Jan

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