[thelist] Aaaaagh! http://www.act-e.com

[Martin]

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Bev wrote on 9/6/01 6:52 am

>http://www.act-e.com
>
>Now it's a really "cool" site in terms of design 

The qualifying quote marks are entirely appropriate. It's trying
so hard to be cool that is isn't. I gave it 20 seconds before it annoyed
me enough to make me leave. If I'd just strolled apon it, I wouldn't have
given it beyond the 1st popup.

>but it's (IMO) highly
>dysfunctional.  It's running on Apache/Unix so CF & ASP are not an option
>(and I know absolutely no Perl or cgi beyond validating forms).

CF works on Unix (HP-UX, Solaris & Linux from memory, and as
it moves towards Java, presumably BSD and OSX too)

>The original "coder" did the whole thing in DHTML layers and used framesets
>inside framesets inside framesets.  The directories run 5-6 levels deep,
>with image names that make no sense (many of them the same but using
>different names and exiting in multiple folders, which makes them have to
>reload).  I'm talking images named of1.gif, of2.gif, name.gif, bar.gif,
>left_bar.gif, map.gif etc.--many of these being in deep, deep, folders in
>each sub-directory.  Nothing so simple as a regular "images" folder in root
>that has names like look_on.gif (a nav image) or lev2_title_whatever.gif or
>even look_map.gif...  just thinking about it makes me want to wish for all
>sorts of nasty curses to be visited upon the head of the original coder.

>
>I'm doing this project on a completely
>volunteer basis, so if some sense cannot be made out of it real soon I'm not
>gonna deal with it.

No *way* would I do this on a volunteer basis. This is a *vast* amount
of work just to get it into the state where you can actually work on it
(ie you'd have to name all the images sensibly, do a large amount of 
documentation etc).

Actually, if I were doing this on a paid basis, it would be with the
special "Client is annoying the hell out of me and making my life
difficult" supplementary rate.

If you're a volunteer, the power is yours. Expecting the work
to rationalise the site (rather than rip it out and start again)
is not realistic unless they are going to pay for it.

Let them know that if they expect your (highly skilled) work on
it for nothing, then it needs to be done properly in a way which
respects your time and sanity.

Cheers
Martin

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_______________________________________________
email: martin at easyweb.co.uk             PGP ID: 0xA835CCCB
       martin at members.evolt.org      snailmail: 30 Shandon Place
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