New GrandPrix Race Central Website

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gpraceman
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New GrandPrix Race Central Website

Post by gpraceman »

I am getting ready to launch the new GrandPrix Race Central website, but wanted to give the members of this forum a preview first. Please check out the new site and let me know what you think.

http://grandprix-race-central.com

Here's some of the new features for the site:
  • Site search
  • New photo gallery that is even searchable.
  • Members can submit articles, news, web links, files to share, product reviews, comment on articles and polls, and more.
  • Polls
  • Random banners for those that would like to do a banner exchange.
  • and more...
Overall, the new site should allow visitors to more easily find the content they are interested in and be able to provide information and resources that can be of benefit to other visitors.

Once I get the new site launched, I'll start working on some upgrades to this forum.

Thanks,

Randy
Last edited by gpraceman on Thu Dec 09, 2004 12:08 am, edited 2 times in total.
Randy Lisano
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TurtlePowered
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Re: New GrandPrix Race Central Website

Post by TurtlePowered »

Very nice Randy!
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Re: New GrandPrix Race Central Website

Post by gpraceman »

TurtlePowered wrote:Very nice Randy!
Thanks. I'm glad you like it.

I'm still doing some tweaks and have a bunch of car photos to add to the photo galleries before I switch over to it.
Randy Lisano
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Re: New GrandPrix Race Central Website

Post by GILLS »

Good job Randy!

It is laid out very well. I like the download section that you added with info on helping any group organize and run a derby event. Very nice upgrades, it looks like you invested many days of thought and new creation of great info from the forum. 8)
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Re: New GrandPrix Race Central Website

Post by gpraceman »

GILLS wrote:It is laid out very well. I like the download section that you added with info on helping any group organize and run a derby event. Very nice upgrades, it looks like you invested many days of thought and new creation of great info from the forum. 8)
Thanks. I can't take all of the credit. The site software is PHPNUKE, an open source project (just like this forum software) that packages up a lot of great features so you almost get a website in a box (so to speak). PHPNUKE provides the bones but the fun part is getting it all setup with the meat, customizing the look of the site and then adding in any extra modules (like the photo gallery) for additional functionality.
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Re: New GrandPrix Race Central Website

Post by Whistler »

Randy,

Looks like it must be a great site, but for some reason I can't read most of the type. Don't know if the font is just too small with my screen resolution, or if there is some other reason. No trouble with your older site so you might want to check into this.
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Re: New GrandPrix Race Central Website

Post by gpraceman »

Whistler wrote:Randy,

Looks like it must be a great site, but for some reason I can't read most of the type. Don't know if the font is just too small with my screen resolution, or if there is some other reason. No trouble with your older site so you might want to check into this.
You may want to check your browser setting to see if you have your text size set to "Small" or "Smallest" (assuming you are using IE). The fonts will scale based on your browser font setting.

Many sites (probably the majority) just set their fonts to be fixed, so no matter what you have your browser set on the fonts will not scale. However, it can be better for those with not so good eyesight or just prefer larger fonts to be able to adjust to their preference.

If others have this problem, I may just have to go back to fixed fonts to make sure the majority will not have problems.
Randy Lisano
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Re: New GrandPrix Race Central Website

Post by Darin McGrew »

gpraceman wrote:You may want to check your browser setting to see if you have your text size set to "Small" or "Smallest" (assuming you are using IE). The fonts will scale based on your browser font setting.
Unfortunately, they're set smaller than the normal font size, and they're set recursively smaller. So <body> is 95%, <form> is 90.25%, <td> is 85.74%, <font> is 81.45%, <a> is 77.38%, etc.

It hits the minimum font size that I've configured my browser to use pretty quickly.

The solution is to leave the font size alone for normal text, to size exceptional text (e.g., bigger headings, smaller legalese) relative to the normal font size, and to avoid this kind of recursive adjustment of the exceptional font sizes.

You shouldn't use fixed font sizes: http://css.nu/faq/ciwas-aFAQ.html#QA02
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Re: New GrandPrix Race Central Website

Post by Darin McGrew »

Ah, you've also triggered a bug in MSIE's CSS support. If you specify font sizes in em units, then the font size setting gets applied recursively, making font size settings of Larger or Smaller useless, and making font size settings of Largest or Smallest really useless. Which defeats the whole point of using relative font sizes...

The workaround is to include

body { font-size: 100% }

which fixes things so that you can use em units elsewhere. Or you can just use percentages everywhere.
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Re: New GrandPrix Race Central Website

Post by gpraceman »

One of these days I'll get the hang of these relative font sizes. So much easier to deal with fixed font sizes, but I know that is not a PC thing to say.

Please try now to see how the fonts are showing up.
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Re: New GrandPrix Race Central Website

Post by ExtremePWD »

Randy - Much better. The first time I went in the type was really huge and a pain to navigate. Looking forward to the site's growth.
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Re: New GrandPrix Race Central Website

Post by gpraceman »

ExtremePWD wrote:Randy - Much better. The first time I went in the type was really huge and a pain to navigate. Looking forward to the site's growth.
Glad to hear that the fonts seem to be tamed. Now to work on filling up the car photo gallery.
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Re: New GrandPrix Race Central Website

Post by Darin McGrew »

gpraceman wrote:Please try now to see how the fonts are showing up.
They're 80% of my normal font size, so my browser enforces the minimum font size that I've configured it to use. 100% of my normal font size would be better, more PC, etc.
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Re: New GrandPrix Race Central Website

Post by gpraceman »

darin_mcgrew wrote:They're 80% of my normal font size, so my browser enforces the minimum font size that I've configured it to use. 100% of my normal font size would be better, more PC, etc.
When I try 100%, the normal text appears way larger than I would rather have it. That is why I went for 80% at a medium text size setting in MSIE6. This looks pretty comparable to the font size that I am seeing in Opera 7.23.

What minimum font size are you using in Opera?
Randy Lisano
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Re: New GrandPrix Race Central Website

Post by Darin McGrew »

gpraceman wrote:When I try 100%, the normal text appears way larger than I would rather have it.
If it were my browser, I'd adjust its default font size so that normal text didn't appear way larger than I would rather have it. See also http://css.nu/articles/font-analogy.html
gpraceman wrote:What minimum font size are you using in Opera?
I use a minimum font size of 12 pixels. My normal font size is 13 pixels, so there isn't much room for fonts to shrink.

My normal font size is fine as it is. I used to set my minimum font size at 11 pixels, which is legible, but not very comfortable. But too many sites that I visit frequently use microfonts for important text (like the main navigation links at the top of http://derbytalk.com/ ), and I want to be able to read that text comfortably.
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