New WinWorld
I'm proud to announce our new site which has been several months in the making along with a long, tedious process of adding downloads thanks in large to our VIP users. We are still ironing out some kinks and will be adding new features as we go although this new refresh comes with a brand new home page and downloads library. We offer you far more organization and information with the new system than compared to before.
If you see any bugs note them in this topic.
If you see any bugs note them in this topic.
Comments
Portrait | Landscape
I am seeing some mixed content errors, though. So there may still be some page resources being pulled over HTTP. Would be nice if everything was HTTPS, as I know mixed content errors are very violently protested by some browsers.
Is the forms going to be transformed in to the same layout as home page and or something similar?
Also what browser(s) is the new page made to work / view on?
Thank you most of that is Bootstrap to thank and there's a few elements I need to reposition as I'm sure you have noticed. It should be equally sane on a mobile phone as well.
Thanks. Ideally yes the forms will eventually tie into the site in design and functionality. I was hoping to have a phpBB SSO with the site implemented before the launch but alas, that did not happen. For the theme we'll likely eventually migrate the bootstrap WW theme to phpBB3 although I have far too many reasons for wanting to get pff phpBB so I'm not keen on spending too much time with anything forum related.
Most of the development was done with (in order of use): IE 11, Safari 7, and Pale Moon. It should theoretically work in anything modern, although I haven't done some extensive testing. Opera 10+ should render almost anything fine which gives you some legacy options. Modern otherwise being: Chrome, Firefox 4+, IE 9+, Safari 4+. I would like to ultimately like to introduce a light theme for older browsers since it is somewhat realistic to eventually expect that. There's also a Bootstrap DOS theme I could probably easily make as a 3rd alternative option. Under the hood there is a theme engine although you just only see one theme and no option to change.
Some of the stuff that's still to be added is mainly screenshots, emulation instructions and information. We're adding in those things so if you see information missing on the download pages, that's why, don't worry about it.
Some issues with my ISP this morning gave me a clue. This happens after I get a new IP address.
If I log in, then force a new IP address, and try to access winworldpc.com again, I get that error on all pages except in /winboards. I can't get to anything else, and the error will only go away if I clear my cookies. Happens in any web browser.
Can you try and replicate it again?
What html version do you have in mind for making a lighter themed website?
Then another odd thing happened when I made a post. I posted with the quick reply as usual, but it redirected me back to the full editor just before redirecting me back to the thread.
EDIT: It happened again as I posted this. So at least it seems to be repeatable.
EDIT2: Also seems to happen when I edit posts as well.
The contributions system is now complete as well with the admin ability to process incoming uploads and make them public on the site. I've done Excel 2.0 and PageMaker 4/5 in French via this system from SomeGuy and Constance.
Will there be an automated query or a forum thread to list new additions?
Should there also be a thread further describing what we have uploaded?
I see your preference is just raw disk images. Just a heads up I have some exceptions that must be in TransCopy, ImageDisk, or CopyIIPC format to re-create a usable disk. I'll be sure provide details in the release description or installation instructions.
Don't forget to make site DB backups! :P
For what it is worth, from a user perspective I have preferred phpBB forms to most others. Fast loading pages, simple organization, usually works in older browsers, and easy to navigate. But I don't know how bad the back end really is.
Thanks! I see the few new ones you pushed and will try and publish before I goto work. No further thread is really needed unless you're doing a batch or there's something highly interesting. I could theoretically automate a query to list contributions they all retain in the DB. I do prefer raw images when available and whatever's needed to make a usable disk should be done.
We do make DB backups. There's a cron job to generate them and Duff, Kirk, noone and myself can retrieve them. I like some things about phpBB's front-end but the backend is a disaster. My plan of action really at this point is to start looking at integrating some forums into the new site and migrate the data over.
Lets see how you handle some oddball media formats - A couple of 8" disks, an IBM PC cassette tape, and a PCjr *CARTRIDGE*.
Not sure if I should have just used the existing 1.x release for the additional MS-DOS 1.25 versions. Hopefully however you automated it lets you put it wherever you want.
BTW, for my own archives I normally dump disks in as many different ways as possible. Usually this includes any combination of files, raw, ImageDisk, CopyIIPC, and Transcopy. I'll try to omit irrelevant or unusable ones.
For 160k/180k/320k images I find it extremely handy to have both File, raw, and ImageDisk dumps. Many raw disk writers can't handle less than 360k, while many emulators can't handle ImageDisk files. Additionally, Winimage or similar utilities can not extract files from DOS 1.x formatted disks.
Those are all really things we're trying to avoid. The new site is 100% custom. I'd like to build forums into it at some point.
e~ Well not necessarily scratch, but point is given.
Agreed.
I think the difference was that this time I had left my browser open to winworldpc.com. Other browsers that weren't open don't appear to be affected. Again, clearing the cookies fixed it.
Much like these forums, it's also an accessibility train wreck. Illegible colour contrasts mated to absurdly undersized fixed metric fonts reeks of "WCAG, what's that?" and is generally speaking NOT how a site should be designed. I mean, dark grey on black, 12px and smaller text? I'm pretty much having to override the entire style with user.css and dive for the zoom to even TRY to use this.
The gibberish use of numbered headings makes non-mouse navigation a PiTA too. H3 with no H2 before them? tsk. tsk...
Of course it being a bloated inaccessible mess isn't a shock since it uses bootcrap. Do us all a favor, and find a stick to scrape that off with; 460k of scripting and 130k of CSS is ridiculous when you're delivering 4k of plaintext in a plain-jane layout? Absurd.
Nope, can't say I like it. Can't say I like it one bit.
Though it is very much what I've come to expect when I see an HTML 5 doctype, just further proving that the target audience for HTML 5 are the people who never pulled their craniums out of 1997's rectum... it's "The new transitional" and sure as shine-ola doesn't seem to be about writing better more useful websites.
--- yet there is an upside, after years of me lurking, you finally got me to join the forums.
I've heard no real other issues about the fonts. The yellow-white text on top of the dark backgrounds seems to be working fine for everyone else. The only usage of the dark grey should be in heading <small> tags and are of rare use. We can certainly change the heading orders which is the only real valid complaint you seem to have. The fonts and layout are fine if you use your browser's text zooming features. With all due respect, after having looked at the high amount of obnoxious blue glow on your own website and getting a subsquent headache from it, I think you need to take a step back, re-think all of this from a "what all can I realisticly suggest to better this" instead of "how can I be the most pompous and arragont".
I don't see what's wrong with 460k of scripts and 130k of CSS you can download once over your 10mbit+ time warner cable line, and then cache on your what, 500GB, 1TB hard disk?
Um... am I missing something? I know other download sites have that shit, but there's none of that on WinWorld as far as I'm aware. There's no ads at all...
There are as of recent. I'm experimenting and may end up removing or changing them. I'll elaborate more on them once we make a final decision. I mean, I know the regulars are using AdBlock and I fully expect that.
Long story short I'd like to do more cool things with our site. Those things cost money to do. We're also going to eventually need more space, especially if the contributions do keep growing like they have. Disk space and hypervisors are not something that we can just pull out of thin air.
https://winworldpc.com/library/applications
There's no consistency too it, making it WAY harder to browse through; I preferred the directory style listing as I could scan through it far, FAR easier.
Then you get to say... a page like this: Which is in the wrong category BTW
https://winworldpc.com/product/borland-turbo-c
No offense, but just show the blasted mirrors and variants as a list on the product page... or maybe a table. (whichever makes more sense semantically). Even BETTER, show it on the index, would be far better use of available screen space than that two columns where nothing lines up and it's impossible to skim for what I'm looking for.
The old system you got into a category, you had the filename, you clicked on it and boom. You're saying it's only one more click, to me it feels like a half dozen more. Admittedly I was bypassing the main site and the stupid malfing iFrame and busting that out into it's own page on the old one -- making it three less clicks from the start.
Much less the wasted time of extra clicks and navigation just to find the different versions, with again the uselessly absurdly undersized px metric fonts. (WCAG, READ IT!)
Though I think that's a lot of it, the back-and-forth-and-back-and-forth... Took me forever just to find the Turbo C download; laughable since I was coming here for things like that as trying to find it on Embacardo's website is like pulling teeth. Also odd you don't have the ones they are giving away free like TP3
Assuming you know what you are searching for. A good browse is often better and right now you don't have that.
I can kind-of see trying to make data scrapers life harder, but not at the cost of the user.
I'm a large font/120dpi user, so you declare PX I'm gonna bitch. MOST 8514 / Large font / 120dpi / 125% / Windows 7 "normal" / whateverTheyWantToCallItThisYear users will do the same, particularly when bootcraps alleged responsiveness just results in a broken design when you have to dive for the zoom.
It's a little harsh, but that part is fine as it has CONTRAST. This however:
You mean like the invisble menu that actually takes you to the LIBRARY, that I damned near couldn't even FIND?!? Literally it was invisible to me and the reason is hardly a surprise, it's WELL below the 50% minimum contrast as specified by things like the WCAG, much less the 75% ideal.
It's good for keyboard navigation and screen readers, and creates your document structure (so you don't need HTML 5's pointless code bloat allegedly semantic "structural" tags). Remember, a H1 is the heading under which EVERYTHING on the page is a subsection, making the site title/logo the most likely candidate for that. H2's indicate the start of a subsection of the h1, h3's are the start of a subsection of the h2 before it, and so forth. That's why skipping to a high level heading without all the predecessors before it is gibberish, and why things like HGROUP (which was FINALLY stricken from 5) and pairing headings for a title and tagline is also gibberish.
No, no it isn't. First if you used %/EM like a good little doobie (as the WCAG says) I wouldn't have to dive for the zoom. Second bootcrap is buggy broken garbage in both "real" Opera and Firefox, no matter how many mouth-breathers sing the praise of that bloated halfwit nonsense and it's pissing all over the entire reason HTML and CSS even exist.
Actually that was a harsh joke as a response to the site's original subdued greens (meant to look like an old green CRT) that people bitched about. I really should do something about that now.
This is more typical of my work: (if it looks much the same, it's the same custom CMS and template under the hood)
http://www.ewiusb.com
Which as you can see from these screencaps:
http://www.cutcodedown.com/images/ewiUSB/
Gracefully degrades and auto-adjusts. It's semi-fluid, elastic and responsive, the three things all modern designs should be. Good for a laugh since the site design is like five years old now.
Sorry if you found it that way, I'm just being honest with you -- Pesci forbid we be blunt and honest about things. There's a lot of bad practices and halfwit garbage being advocated as "better" and "easier" when they are the exact opposite; jQuery, bootcrap, turdpress, LESS, SASS, HTML 5... and the web is becoming slower and slower and less and less useful because of it! Perfectly good websites being flushed down the toilet because of sleazy shortcuts, developer ineptitude, and frameworks that piss all over everything they touch.
Much less the outright ignorance of accessibility norms that runs rampant these days... Sadly some people seem to think that bootcrap fixes it, when all it does is introduce even MORE issues.
25mbps and 10tb actually... but that doesn't matter when that scripting and CSS has to be parsed by the CPU and is costing you bandwidth and probably server execution time as well... Particularly when looking at your main page there's NO excuse for it to be more than probably 70k TOTAL for HTML + CSS + IMAGES + SCRIPTS. (not counting the advert code which always gets down behind the proverbial equine of short stature).
Much less that unlike you and I, not everyone is sitting on multiple mbps connections still; or our friends in Canada and Australia with their METERED connections who curse code bloat to the ends of the earth; or folks on mobile where metered data plans are the norm.
I tell you what, if I have time later I'll do a rewrite of your main page and toss it up in my rewrites directory. I often do free rewrites of people's templates to show what I mean by code bloat and how to fix accessibility issues. (feel free to have a look in that directory -- it's a hodge-podge of different stuff from different web development forums)
You've actually been a great resource for me the past few years -- I wouldn't mind giving back a little. It's actually why I chimed in, I hate seeing a useful site suddenly be painful to use.
For the longest time WinWorld was download-centric and this obviously shows as you had one of the http://wdlX.winworldpc.com mirrors directly bookmarked. The new WinWorld is now information-centric. It is certainly not stopping the bulk of users from locating and obtaining their downloads as our bandwidth transfer has not at all decreased, infact it's increased slightly on average over the last week on wdl1.
I will fully admit however that the listing of downloads is not the best and I've been thinking of ways to better list those. Part of the issue is that there are some products that currently have 10+ downloads linked and that makes eliminiating the mirror list page a no-go unless we want to have those product pages even more cluttered than they are now. I also want to introduce some more tags that we can apply to products so you can sort the main library list by say, C compilers, Pascal Compilers, Word Processors, Spreadsheets, etc...
I can certainly see about getting the font sizes within points next free moment I have along with changing some navigation bar font colours and contrast. Those should be fairly easy fixes. We can also optimize the BootStrap CSS and JS and only include what is relevant for us (and minify it). With that said though, while you don't seem to like it very much BootStrap fits in with my overall goals, including features of the site I would like to introduce in the future.
Currently we don't put too much focus on mobile because, well, very few folks currently browse in on mobile. The only way this will change will be through our focus on more information. The remainder who have the metered connections are likely using a substantial chunk of that bandwidth allocation to obtain our downloads. I'll take a look at the full non-cached response of the home page and see where savings can be made but given the state of our site and the fact a vast majority of that caches I think this is being blown up into a much bigger problem than it really is. I have Core2 era hardware that I use as my regular machines and they process the javascript just fine. I don't really notice a fresh page load taking anything more than a second. I can see that being an issue if you were say, using IE 7 or anything else with a classic interperted javascript engine but it's 2014.
I also have 150% HiDPI on - the site looks fine - images are smooth and not blurred because upscaling.