How do I dubstep my chiptune?
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sweden
Bit Shifter wrote:
How do I dubstep my chiptune?
Just wub it!
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here is my display of one-upsmanship (pun intended i guess):
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Philly, PA, USA
Ok, I hate you for making this thread FOR THE FOLLOWING REASONS
One, you're website isn't even remotely 8-bit, it just looks like any number of pieces of junk from geocities.
Two, the layout is absolutely primitive, not only is it hideously painful to use, it's just outdated and ugly. That's not being retro, that's being lazy.
That's really it, but if you want me to be ~*constructive*~ allow me to expand.
If you want to do something really 8-bit or resembling an NES or even something like the C64, you're going to need to work at it, not just make it bare. The thing is, internet primitive, and serious primitive hardware are entirely different things. What you have now, is essentially just primitive code. If you want it to have that 8-bit look take a page from the new Blip Fest website. It doesn't look like it's being run on an old system but it has the aesthetic, or that kind of thing, which is really the best you're going to be able to do while still viewing the website on modern hardware.
If you want it to really feel like an old computer/game system, you're going to need to put some real work into it and make something that gives that kind of feel not only in the way it looks but in the way you use it. For example, the website http://chiptune.com/ basically has a recreation of the amiga workbench on that functions as the website. Your layout on the other hand, is a few columns, one for navigation and ads, one for page content, and another one for ads. The biggest issue is really your content area, it's not well defined and is made up entirely of awkwardly long paragraphs. Having a more well defined text area would just be nicer to read. Also the graphics on your site don't really seem to have much significance, the background is some weird diagonal tiled brick thing, which looks as though it was intended to be pixelated, but... it's diagonal, and then the banner has those music notes which, while not anti-aliased, still aren't the big blockey pixel style type things that would evoke and 8-bit look and feel. The same goes for the background of the banner, the sizes are weird, and you might want to look into the palette of your site, if you want it to look more 8-bit, try using an NES color palette.
Now, you said you liked the way it looks outdated. If you want to go for the ye olde internette look, yes your site wins, just throw in a few animated gifs of spinning musical notes and have one of those annoying auto-playing midi embeds. but really you're neither here nor there. You need to decide whether you want to look 8-bit, or whether you want to look old internet, you can't do both without just looking inept, so your best bet is to pick one and go with it. Personally I would say, oh just fuck it, make a modern website, it's a modern technology, don't try to make it something that it isn't, but you won't listen to that so i'd say go with 8bit, because then you might at least have some hope of making it useable. Just use some proper CSS please. It helps.
Also one more thing, about the ads, you can't really honestly expect anyone who doesn't want to look at stupid ads for random bullshit to use firefox adblocker. really it's almost criminal to expect people to use firefox. Chances are you're not really gonna make too much money off of that, and if you want anyone to take your site seriously at all having ads is not going to help. if you feel you positively must at least just go with some simple google text ads, because seriously, I got an ad for sexy russian chicks or something, that doesn't make me think your website is really a great palce to hang around.
tl;dr hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate
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Sweden
Thank you for the constructive criticism finally. I must correct you on one thing though. The code is far from old and outdated. It validated against XHTML1.1 and CSS2, the most recent Actual W3C standards. Sure, HTML5 and CSS3 are on the way and such, but they are not done. And as a webdesigner I take pride in using proper code. I'm well aware that I could probably slab something together in Drupal in 5 minutes that is going to look more "modern" or whatever, but that would throw my SEO-work away and would probably make google webmaster tools puke all over the place.
Regarding adblock on Firefox I already stated that there are probably alternatives for other browsers as well. If you are too lazy to download the proper addon for your browser of choice, that is not my fault.
Regarding the content area: would it help if I had some sort of index at the top, like I have on my album pages? That would guide people to the content they are interested in a bit quicker.
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São Paulo, Brazil
Oskar Hanberg wrote:
If you are too lazy to download the proper addon for your browser of choice, that is not my fault.
You do have great ways to promote your work.
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Sweden
Standards compliant != "proper" code, whatever that is. For example you use <b>bla</b><br> for some headers on the index page, which imo isn't atrocious, but not "proper" by any means when it comes to semantics.
And no, being able to remove ads with a third party plugin is not a good excuse to put them all over your site. If you really think so, then you could stop worrying about the design, because we can all just turn off CSS rendering if we don't like it. In fact, we could all just not go there at all. Catch my point? I don't personally have a problem with ads in general, but for your own benefit, you should probably make sure to have absolute control over the content of a personal website. Are these shitty make-money-doing-nothing schemes something that you want to be associated with personally?
As for some criticism regarding the design, I think that the index page shouldn't have to explain what the buttons in the menu do. The names of the pages are (or at least should be) self-evident. Apart from the actual index (the menu), just put the bare essential things people will want to read on the index page.
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Sweden
Like I said I'm currently evaluating two ad companies. Dating and gambling is not something that is relevant content, no. Which is why I will probably opt for the other one.
Regarding the header, It was a valuable peace of information. Exactly the type of criticism I came here for. I will change it to Header tags instead. It's probably better to do that from a SEO point of view anyway. Thank you.
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Los Angeles
Oskar Hanberg wrote:
Thank you for the constructive criticism finally. I must correct you on one thing though. The code is far from old and outdated. It validated against XHTML1.1 and CSS2, the most recent Actual W3C standards.
Technically so could a web page from 1996 as long as the tags were closed. Just say'n. 
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Philly, PA, USA
Oskar Hanberg wrote:
Thank you for the constructive criticism finally. I must correct you on one thing though. The code is far from old and outdated. It validated against XHTML1.1 and CSS2, the most recent Actual W3C standards. Sure, HTML5 and CSS3 are on the way and such, but they are not done. And as a webdesigner I take pride in using proper code. I'm well aware that I could probably slab something together in Drupal in 5 minutes that is going to look more "modern" or whatever, but that would throw my SEO-work away and would probably make google webmaster tools puke all over the place.
Regarding adblock on Firefox I already stated that there are probably alternatives for other browsers as well. If you are too lazy to download the proper addon for your browser of choice, that is not my fault.Regarding the content area: would it help if I had some sort of index at the top, like I have on my album pages? That would guide people to the content they are interested in a bit quicker.
Basically just agreeing with Linde here. But, yes your code works, and in that way it's proper, but by modern web design and coding standards it's not up to par. Admittedly, I'm not a professional web designer, but I have a bit of experience with code, and plenty of experience with design. While the backend might not be entirely outdated, from the front end that's what it looks like; and there are very, very few people who are going to look at the code of your site to make sure it's actually using some modern coding techniques.
The biggest problem with your website has nothing to do with content, or even how it's coded. If I had been visiting your site for anything other than critiquing, I would have left immediately. There is no way I would pain myself to use that webpage, except as a favor to another person. Were I looking for more information, even about you as an artist, I would rather just google for something that looked like it had been updated more recently than 1993. Seriously, this could even be helped just by making it not take up the full browser width. Give it some breathing room, look up anything, and I meant absolutely anything at all about web design (try smashing mag) and it will give you some clues about layout and composition of a website. I'm not going to go into this any more because i'll just end up repeating myself. But really. Your website being hideous isn't just an issue of taste, it will drive away users.
tl;dr moar moar moar moar haet haet haet haet
Last edited by pixls (Apr 10, 2011 6:55 am)
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Sweden
Pages NOT taking up the entire browser space is poor coding though, according to W3C, who currently maintains modern web standards. The reason people code pages to not fill the page is because they learned to do layout with fixed tables and a fixed 640x480 resolution, THAT is very 1993. And in 1993 people used Frontpage express and such, again with fixed tables, style attributes directly on the page and suich.
People may not look at the code, but search engines will. And if you cram a bunch of Javascript and Flash and such to make it "look nice", you will garble the code.
The fixed with can't be changed without breaking compliance with several "Best practices", such as WCAG and WAI, and I care about that stuff. But like I've said I'll get to fixing the headers thing. That was a mistake on my part.