[JayBee]

Hello people!

Okay, this might seem a little off topic, but I've got a website for you people to look at:

www.sketchboard.co.uk

Now, why am I putting such a blatant plug here? Well, about a month and a bit ago, there was a thread here about starting up a bi-monthly theme-based thread that people could produce work for.

The idea was that people could interpret the themes any way they wanted, and post their work to the minimum of crits. The best examples of this recently have been the "Post your Portraits" threads that are still going strong.

Well, this idea was cool, and some people came up with some themes. However, the thread disappeared within a couple of days, mainly because of the turnover that these forums have. Ceenda and I then decided to follow up on a related idea - we'd set up a separate forum where these themed threads could run their course without fear of being "knocked off" by a sudden rush of wacom queries

So, after much toiling, sketchboard is here!

PLEASE have a look at it, rip it to shreds, sign up and post work for the themes that are already there and, most importantly suggest new themes!

Right, I think that's about everything. Please forgive me if Ceenda and I keep replying to this thread to keep it alive, but a lot of work went into this project, and I reckon it could be really good if we get enough enthusiasm behind it.

Thanks for listening!

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. . : : j a y b e e

www.sketchboard.co.uk


[This message has been edited by JayBee (edited September 01, 2000).]

[Xcal]

The site design is very cool. Visually, its very clean and quick-loading, which is crucial for art sites. My only beef is: why do you have to have another window open for the main site? I don't use remote.open's unless I *absolutely* have to. Personally, I think remote.open's should only be used if the content in the remote window is a dead end, like an image (click open, see image, click closed), email-form (click open, type message, send message, and click closed), etc. Hope the site takes off. It's a cool concept.

[extralobe]

What a great idea!

Just please don't open a new window, i'm very picky about how i size them; and when you open that window you take away my back-and-forth buttons - which are essential for forum reading.

One suggestion: how about some "sketch" themes? where rather than a paragraph of text, someone puts in a quick loose and somewhat ambiguous sketch and everyone redoes it from their own perspective. kinda like the "very fast pig" thread (man, i love that thread.. )

[mr easy]

great site !

[ceenda]

Thanks JayBee!

I've put a couple of quickly done posts up so that people aren't worried about being the first to post.

Also, they're not very good... so all the more reason to join in!!!

Have fun people!

[JayBee]

Right, thanks everyone who's been to see this! I'm soo glad people are taking an interest!

However, I think it's time for a little explanation about THAT new window...

mr easy : cheers!

Xcal and extralobe : Thanks for the feedback. To tell you the truth, the new window is kind of an essential fudge for just now.

The problem I've been having is that there's several frames on that page, and the nav bar, title and content frame all change when you move to a new page. Of course, the problem with this is that when you hit the "back" button, it moves back through the content frame history, and leaves the nav bar stranded where it is, thus rendering it impossible to navigate BACK to the page you've come from.

Removing the browser controls stops this problem happening, and also frees up a lot of screen real estate, which is important if you're viewing an art forum at 640x480 or 800x600 (believe me - try looking at sijun on an ibook and you'll hate your browser nav buttons too ).

But yeah, there should be an option to NOT open a new window. I'll probs just take away the title bar at the top, leave a static one, and make the nav bar universal...

Anyway, that's my excuse :P

for the "official" reason the site looks like it does, navigate to:

sketchboard :: help :: site help

And cheers for taking an interest !

------------------
. . : : j a y b e e

www.sketchboard.co.uk

[ceenda]

Something I should perhaps point out is that any news pics go on a thread of their own(hmm, have I got that right JayBee ?).

[Slicer]

the biggest problem is that it is a bit hard to bookmark the page. Atleast I wouldn�t like to click on the link to open the window everytime I want to check if anyone had posted something.
atleast I won�t have to now...I have hacked the system and made me a nice bookmark =)

[extralobe]

personally, i stay far away from frames. they make bookmarking, navigation etc difficult. What's wrong with tables?

I sympathize with the browser-back-button problem.. i was stuck on a 640x480 grey-only monitor with a refresh of like 30hz for a while.. Ugh.

[JayBee]

Cheers for the responses people! I get the impression a lot more people have been following the link than have commented, so thanks to all of you for taking an interest!

I'm listening to the crits, tho, so there's an update now that lets you open in the current window. The history issue seems to have been solved (i hope!), so the browser back and forward buttons should work as you'd expect.

As for the bookmarking, yeah... I'm working on it. I'd give a URL for the "forums" frameset, but there are browser probs with the frames, so that might take some time...

Finally, frames vs. tables. Yeah, I hate frames too. This is the first site I've ever used them in, and I only did it cos there really was no other way:

The first problem was the history thing, which has now been solved, but there's also the problem of hosting the forum remotely. I COULD set it up so that the ezboard forum loads as a normal page, but that would kill the look+feel of the site, and I worked bloody hard on that!

Seriously, though, putting the ezboard forum in a frame was the only way to provide an unbroken experience for the user, so I had to do it....

May I burn in the fires of design hell for going to the darkside! I promise not to use frames again

Keep the comments coming people!

------------------
. . : : j a y b e e

www.sketchboard.co.uk

[JayBee]

A blatant bump back up to the top of the board list for this one. Sorry!

Need people to suggest themes! PLEASE go to the site!

Okay, I'll stop pestering you now

Thanks for putting up with this, BTW!

------------------
. . : : j a y b e e

www.sketchboard.co.uk