Pid needs to be shot! :-)

October 27, 2002

I toddled down to the Aylesbury area today (from Cambridge) to attempt a load of caches with a friend, and had merrily gone to a load of likely-looking caches' pages and clicked print in IE, then collected my big pile of printouts and toddled off in the car.

Get to Aylesbury to discover that the graphics used on the pages are wider than A4, and that the text is printed as far as the graphics go, meaning we didn't have the right-hand side of most of Pid's cache pages!

Descriptions, hints and sometimes he co-ords for multi-part caches were therefore mangled and/or missing

I call for a blanket-bombing of Aylesbury to erradicate Pid!

(sorry Pid, nothing personal! It's a combination of IE and my failure to check the printouts.)

And did we miss some sort of Private Joke with the Travel Bug Clink?

--

Huga

"Chris, the GPS says it's 53 feet that way [points through hedge]. Oh, I'm standing on it."

October 28, 2002

quote:
(sorry Pid, nothing personal! It's a combination of IE and my failure to check the printouts.)

It's a well known fact that web pages that rely on the viewing area (in this case the printable part of an A4 sheet) being wider than a certain width are poorly designed. Therefore you can blame Pid.

I have the same problem with Streetmap pages.

-------

jeremyp

The second ten million caches were the worst too.

http://www.jeremyp.net/geocaching

1k · October 28, 2002

Sorry I dop not agree that this is entirely my fault! YOU SHOULD check the print before you go for the caches....correct me if I am wrong but its your own fault for not checking, you could have checked and then re-printed them after pasting into MICROSOFT WORD

Just aswell you couldnt find travelbug clink because I am in Germany at the moment in an Internet cafe.

Pid

Ben Piddington http://www.buckscaching.co.uk

October 28, 2002

Well, yes maybe I should have checked them all, but it's a bit rude to have to paste a web page into Word just to get it to print...

Ho hum, another Aylesbury trip beckons :-)

And what is the deal with this clink thingie?

--

Huga

"Chris, the GPS says it's 53 feet that way [points through hedge]. Oh, I'm standing on it."

October 28, 2002

quote:
Originally posted by Geo Weasel:
Sorry I dop not agree that this is entirely my fault! YOU SHOULD check the print before you go for the caches....correct me if I am wrong but its your own fault for not checking, you could have checked and then re-printed them after pasting into MICROSOFT WORD

Well, no it's not your fault that Huga tried to do a cache without checking that he had printed everything he needed. However, it doesn't alter the fact that your web page designs are printer unfriendly. Why not take it as constructive criticism for your future pages?

BTW apart from the inconvenience of having to do all that cutting and pasting into Word, don't assume that everybody has Word installed.

-------

jeremyp

The second ten million caches were the worst too.

http://www.jeremyp.net/geocaching

October 28, 2002

oops, double post

There's a first time 4 everyone...!

October 28, 2002

quote:
Originally posted by jeremyp:
I have the same problem with Streetmap pages.

If you press the "show small map" (or somethimg simelar) button then you get a map that fits nicely onto 1 page

quote:
Get to Aylesbury to discover that the graphics used on the pages are wider than A4, and that the text is printed as far as the graphics go, meaning we didn't have the right-hand side of most of Pid's cache pages

I recon It's because he uses HTML and javascript on his pages. If you put images into caches, it always seems to make the page wider. I never use HTML on cache pages unless i have to.

On a different subject, why are the tags in forum quotes different to most "standard" HTML tags.

For example:

On the forums: see [ URL = ]http://www.fakesite.com] here [/url]

Standard Html: Here

Does anyone know why this is?

Michael aka 1/2 of Team Blitz

If life iz a game, then y aint it fair, im alwayz the lonely 1, u dont even care :S

October 28, 2002

Does this apply to my pages aswell? i always assumed that the way we presented them would be a good thing as they have a lot of effort gone into them, however I had no idea it may make it harder to print? Maybe there is a way we can compromise, keep it looking good and easy to print at the same time.

P.S I'm not sure this will work for everyone or will be to everybodies taste but i find printing landscape looks far better and it seems to fit more info onto a page, give it a try next time you print one of ours and you may have a pleasant suprise.

Dan Wilson - www.Buckscaching.co.uk

1.2k · October 29, 2002

Not sure if this just applies to Dan & Pid's colourful pages. Anything with a photo is liable to mis-print as well.

The simple solution is, when printing, just specify Landscape mode. You may get an extra page or two but everything is now visible.

_________________________________________________________

It is better to regret something you did, rather than to regret something you didn't do.

October 29, 2002

The things that make web pages too wide are anything with a fixed width that can't be wrapped e.g. big photos, long URLs, tables with wide fixed width columns. The thing to do is probably to avoid them where possible. If you make your photos smaller, the page will load quicker too. You can always create it as a link to the full sized version. Printing in landscape is a reasonable work around (it would be better if the browser was able to scale prints or at least produce tiles), but don't forget that not everybody will be looking at your cache page with a PC. There are people who like to take handheld devices out into the field with them.

-------

jeremyp

The second ten million caches were the worst too.

http://www.jeremyp.net/geocaching

October 29, 2002

quote:
Maybe there is a way we can compromise, keep it looking good and easy to print at the same time.

Dan Wilson - http://www.Buckscaching.co.uk

Dan Wilson - www.Buckscaching.co.uk

October 29, 2002

With reguard to handheld devices, surely the entire page is still visible eg the coords and clue? If one of these devices cuts half a page off and doesn't offer an option to see the rest of it i can't believe anyone would purchase it - I have no experience with these so this is a total stab in the dark by the way maybe you could explain so we can know exactly which way to go forward with this.

Dan Wilson - www.Buckscaching.co.uk

October 29, 2002

Dan (and/or Pid)

I doubt handheld would 'cut off' the extra length but please bear in mind the following, although I don't think I've tried putting any of your cache's on it yet.

The way I use my PDA (an old Palm) to browse html it can't do complicated nested tables,

it can't do big piccies (and it only has 16 shades of grey toplay with - or is that 8)

Plus if I'm going 'live' (something I nearly never do) I'm using a 9.6kbps modem in my mobile phone.(approx 1/6 the speed of the one on most PC's and definately not up to cable/ADSl speeds)

In fact I'm in the process of setting up some scripts using sed and awk to strip the 'standard' geocaching pages into just the relevant text sections for my Palm. they being the ones under

id=location

id=shortdescription

id=long description

and the clue

Roddy

p.s. what's word ?

October 29, 2002

Good point, i may start adding a pop up window to my pages containing simply the coords, usefull info and clue. Does this sound like a good idea to anyone or am i missing the point?

Dan Wilson - www.Buckscaching.co.uk

October 29, 2002

quote:
Originally posted by Team D&P:
Good point, i may start adding a pop up window to my pages containing simply the coords, usefull info and clue. Does this sound like a good idea to anyone or am i missing the point?

Dan Wilson - http://www.Buckscaching.co.uk

I (and a lot of other people) dislike automatically appearing pop-ups and unless you can do them without Javascript, don't bother. (The kind of browser you're aiming at is unlikely to have Javascript support).

Just don't make the photos too wide. I try to limit mine to 320 pixels wide - 640 at the most. Make sure that any information is available in text form as well as in the images (the browser in my Palm does not even attempt to download images). You might consider getting hold of a text browser (e.g. Lynx) just to see what your pages look like in text only mode.

-------

jeremyp

The second ten million caches were the worst too.

http://www.jeremyp.net/geocaching

October 29, 2002

I ment a link to a pop up. I apologise, my computer lingo knowledge isn't that huge. Anyway, i ment something you could press to get a pop up to appear, at the top of a page so loading time of the first page would not be applicable.

I have also tried printing some of my pages and they come out fine. The printer just puts them on a separate line (probably just a printer that recognises the problem i dont know) My images are also never particuly large, i tend to keep them at a height of 150 which makes them no wider than about 250 with the odd exception but never bigger than your stated largest posibility and never anywhere near as large as a standard screen. I also rarely use tables. I am no doubt just used to having reasonably good technology to run things with. I am really interested to know which cache Huga had problems with printing? i would love to give it a whirl on my machine. Can anyone give me an example of one of my caches that prints wrong so i can test that too - its really annoying to think that so much hard work has come to no avail...... sob sob

Dan Wilson - www.Buckscaching.co.uk

October 29, 2002

quote:
Originally posted by Team D&P:
i would love to give it a whirl on my machine. Can anyone give me an example of one of my caches that prints wrong so i can test that too - its really annoying to think that so much hard work has come to no avail...... sob sob

Dan Wilson - http://www.Buckscaching.co.uk

I think it was actually one of Pids that was giving trouble. The clue is in the title "Pid needs to be shot"

I think the idea of a "raw details" section / link / pop up - whatever you like to call it - is a good one. i.e. somehow get just the basic details in a really cut down text form.

-------

jeremyp

The second ten million caches were the worst too.

http://www.jeremyp.net/geocaching

1.2k · October 30, 2002

quote:
Originally posted by Team D&P:
With reguard to handheld devices, surely the entire page is still visible eg the coords and clue?

I use a Palm Pilot and get regular updates from the "Pocket Query Generator" available to charter members on Geocaching.com (Roddy - isn't this what you are trying to achieve?)

This is a great tool but it only downloads text portions of the cache pages. Anything graphic (photo's, graphic representations of co-ordinates or clues etc.) is not downloaded. For these sort of pages a printout, probably in landscape, is required. I don't know how you would make popups or external links work in these circumstances.

Maybe some expert computer *geek* could help

_________________________________________________________

It is better to regret something you did, rather than to regret something you didn't do.

October 30, 2002

Dan: Most of the issues occur on the pages with the wide "Bucks Geocaching" graphic on them, as this pushes the right hand side of the page past the limits of A4 paper.

Printing in Landscape is an option I guess, but it uses more paper, which usrely is a waste, when all the vital info is much more condensable.

We all appreciate effort going into cache pages, but there's a fine line between a great-looking page on-screen and one that's actually useful and easy to print

--

Huga

"Chris, the GPS says it's 53 feet that way [points through hedge]. Oh, I'm standing on it."

October 30, 2002

Dan: One that had particular issues was Creepy Graveyard, as the bit where the description says:

"Use this, and use the numbers you will locate to fill in the blanks. N51 45.(1)--- W000 (2)--.40(3)- "

Is cut off at the N51 45.(1), so we couldn't even attempt it (this was with text size 'smaller' in IE6)

It's mainly the wide "Bucks caching" logo I think.....

--

Huga

"Chris, the GPS says it's 53 feet that way [points through hedge]. Oh, I'm standing on it."

October 30, 2002

Dan,

the 'bucks geocaching' link graphic is 706 pixels wide.

The 'creepy graveyard' one is around 600 pix wide.

so it does sound like these are the ones most likely to fix the page width when printing, hence the text being formatted to unprinted sections.

For those who experience this - have you tried reducing the left-right print margins for the page in printer settings. The formating can often go a bit astray when the software enforces much larger margins than the printer requires.

Hornet - yup, the pocket quereys do sound a bit like what I'm trying to do. But without wanting to get too far off tppic I just prefer iSilo to mobipocket and the scripts to produce 'cut down' debannered, clean html are normally quite simple. (They get simpler when the base html file is fairly clean too)

As for the pop ups (click to activate or automatic) - less keen on them as an idea.

A straightforward traditional link would be well worth considering though.

The kind of scripts I set up would preserve the link and give me the document below as well

I certainly wouldn't want to discourage Dan and Pid from continueing to produce attractive pages. The mere fact that Dan's taking part in this discussion is encouraging in itself. Plus he hasn't yet resorted to 'It looks fine to me, must be _your_ problem' .

So guys, do just bear in mind not all things possible in html are possible on all browsers and not all 'screens' (or pages) are alike.

Roddy,

ps does the bgsound stuff actually work when used that far into the page ? (I have no soundcard on my PC so wouldn't know - I just saw it in the html source)

October 30, 2002

Sorry folks if I upset anyone, but let's all stand back a bit.

The "objective" of the cache page is to inform "all" of where the cache is, and how to find it. 99% of cache pages do exactly that. You pull them off the net and print them - everything is OK.

I do not believe that you should have to have a degree in HTML programming or Java scripting to be able to get the information in a usable form (ie - a printout you can take with you.)

If you feel it is necessary to add "ambience" to the cache description, put it elsewhere with a link for those interested.

No offense meant to anyone,

Neil

October 30, 2002

It sounds to me thats it my buckscaching link which is causing most of the probs so i will get to work on a new link image tomorrow (One that is a lot smaller) I personally think it is one of the nastiest grafix i have ever produced so this wont be a difficult decision to get rid of it My goal is to produce pages that show everything needed to do a cache, quickly and without missing parts, and at the same time produce pages which are nice to look at, I think we would mostly agree that this sounds like a good thing. Thanx for all the info and ideas, i will remember everything next time i produce a page.

Dan Wilson - www.Buckscaching.co.uk

October 31, 2002

Sounds good Dan.

I'm very impressed that you've actually taken part in this discussion. So often forums can result in a lot of nastiness

I look forward to some fab caching!

--

Huga

"Chris, the GPS says it's 53 feet that way [points through hedge]. Oh, I'm standing on it."

October 31, 2002

Nope, no nastiness here - just trying to find the best solution to a problem so next time you come to Aylesbury you might be able to do half my caches Sorry you had that problem last time! Oh yeah and if you do come back don't forget that dingy srh28 mentioned

Dan Wilson - www.Buckscaching.co.uk

October 31, 2002

quote:
Originally posted by Huga:
Dan: One that had particular issues was Creepy Graveyard, as the bit where the description says:

"Use this, and use the numbers you will locate to fill in the blanks. N51 45.(1)--- W000 (2)--.40(3)- "

Is cut off at the N51 45.(1), so we couldn't even attempt it (this was with text size 'smaller' in IE6)

It's mainly the wide "Bucks caching" logo I think.....

For what it's worth, I recently printed out several Dan & Pid caches, including Creepy Graveyard, and they all came out perfectly. I also use IE6 with text size set to 'smaller'. Maybe it comes down to printer resolution?

W ezlf fr Cnzfajnzb Omdg, mlx mxx w prf emq fjwq nrhqb abojzd.

October 31, 2002

quote:
Originally posted by SimonG:
For what it's worth, I recently printed out several Dan & Pid caches, including Creepy Graveyard, and they all came out perfectly. I also use IE6 with text size set to 'smaller'. Maybe it comes down to printer resolution?

W ezlf fr Cnzfajnzb Omdg, mlx mxx w prf emq fjwq nrhqb abojzd.

Hmmm, OOOOOOOPS!

I've never noticed the "Make it printer friendly" option. Never used it. 'till MCL pointed it out yesterday.

Creepy graveyard comes out fine in printer-friendly mode. The "Bucks caching" logo is compressed so it fits on the page fine.

Looking at the source, it's because it's set to width=90%. On the normal cache page, I'd imagine when it prints, it's set to 90% of something, but when it's on the printer-friendly page, which doesn't have the complex table structure of the main page, the image comes out as 90% of the printer margins.

SO.......it seems that the issue is that Dan's/Pid's/whoever's pages aren't bad in their own right, just incompatible with the table structure used on the main cache page.

Stick it in printer-friendly, and all is OK.

Well, I say it's OK...Printer-friendly mode has no logs. I often find the logs invaluable for helping to find a cache, so I still suggest that people carefully consider their cache page layout.

If you didn't get all that, here's a conclusion:

Printer-friendly mode allows these pages to print OK, but that shouldn't be taken as the solution since those pages have no logs.

--

Huga

"Chris, the GPS says it's 53 feet that way [points through hedge]. Oh, I'm standing on it."

1k · October 31, 2002

quote:
Dan: Most of the issues occur on the pages with the wide "Bucks Geocaching" graphic on them, as this pushes the right hand side of the page past the limits of A4 paper.
Printing in Landscape is an option I guess, but it uses more paper, which usrely is a waste, when all the vital info is much more condensable.

HEHE.

And there was me thinking it was all my fault! Please could you change the title of this thread to DAN instead of PID now. LoL

In my pages the 3 pictures that normally lie across the top I have always thought hte HTML would be better arranged when the picture are thumbnails linking to big ones rather than the big ones linking to big ones, that would also make the loading time less.

As far as Microsoft word goes Jeremy....Not all of us are MS haters, mainly because not all of us like to reply on free Oerating Systems like UNIX and LINUX and have to use things like Lotus smartsuite to make documents....

HAPPY CACHING

Pid

Ben Piddington http://www.buckscaching.co.uk

1k · October 31, 2002

quote:
Hmmm, OOOOOOOPS!
I've never noticed the "Make it printer friendly" option. Never used it. 'till MCL pointed it out yesterday.

Creepy graveyard comes out fine in printer-friendly mode. The "Bucks caching" logo is compressed so it fits on the page fine.

Looking at the source, it's because it's set to width=90%. On the normal cache page, I'd imagine when it prints, it's set to 90% of something, but when it's on the printer-friendly page, which doesn't have the complex table structure of the main page, the image comes out as 90% of the printer margins.

SO.......it seems that the issue is that Dan's/Pid's/whoever's pages aren't bad in their own right, just incompatible with the table structure used on the main cache page.

Having just read Hugas post, I take back what I said....just change the thread name to LOL HUGA!!!!

Ben Piddington http://www.buckscaching.co.uk

October 31, 2002

Sorry Pid. We couldn't work out which caches belonged to which person, since your name crops up so much all over the place.

Indeed it's Dan who uses the wide graphics, but you still deserve some retribution for the background music

Oh BTW Pid, the text under the big swirly picture thing on the "Intergalatic Microcache" page prints out very strangely indeed. Sort of slopy and cut through the middle. That's on both the normal and printer-friendly options. Using default print settings with a HP Laserjet 4050 from IE6 in Windows XP.

--

Huga

"Chris, the GPS says it's 53 feet that way [points through hedge]. Oh, I'm standing on it."

October 31, 2002

quote:
Originally posted by Huga:

Well, I say it's OK...Printer-friendly mode has no logs. I often find the logs invaluable for helping to find a cache, so I still suggest that people carefully consider their cache page layout.

If you didn't get all that, here's a conclusion:

Printer-friendly mode allows these pages to print OK, but that shouldn't be taken as the solution since those pages have no logs.

If you go to the print-friendly page you will find another link "Make this page print-friendly (show 5 logs)" which solves the problem. In fact you can view as many logs as you like by changing the "numlogs=5" part of the new URL.

October 31, 2002

quote:
Originally posted by Gary & Jane:

If you go to the print-friendly page you will find another link "Make this page print-friendly (show 5 logs)" which solves the problem. In fact you can view as many logs as you like by changing the "numlogs=5" part of the new URL

Or, change the log=n part of the printer friendly URL to log=y to get all the logs.

Clever.

--

Huga

"Chris, the GPS says it's 53 feet that way [points through hedge]. Oh, I'm standing on it."

November 3, 2002

Another thing I have noticed about Dan and Pid's pages is the midi music file they have playing in the background. They have provided no way to turn it off for those of us who may be listening to something else while surfing the web.

The insidious thing about it is the way that, even if you go to your mixer, and kill the fader on the midi channel, the next time you go to the page, it automatically assumes you want to hear the music and ups the fader again. This is one of the most annoying things I have ever encountered and is enough to make me want to shoot someone on the spot, regardless of whether it is Dan or Pid or the ruddy tooth fairy...

Do something about the music pleeeeaase!

November 3, 2002

quote:
Originally posted by MCL:
Do something about the music pleeeeaase!

Music on web pages doesn't bother me at all, because a long time ago I went into Internet Explorer's Options dialog and unchecked the box that says 'Play sounds in web pages' next to it. If it annoys you so much, just do the same.

W ezlf fr Cnzfajnzb Omdg, mlx mnn w prf emq fjwq nrhqb abojzd.

1k · November 3, 2002

Try pressing the 'stop' button next to refresh on you browser. Always works for me and takes 2 seconds sorry to have bothered you so much.

Ben Piddington http://www.buckscaching.co.uk

November 3, 2002

quote:
Originally posted by Geo Weasel:
Try pressing the 'stop' button next to refresh on you browser. Always works for me and takes 2 seconds sorry to have bothered you so much.

That is one way of doing it yes, but by that time the system has already set the fader back up to maximum again on the synth channel.

Also, the problem with SimonG's suggestion above is that there are some web pages where I *do* want the sound...

Ah well, life ain't perfect is it?

No trees were harmed during the production of this posting, but a large number of electrons were terribly inconvenienced....

1k · November 3, 2002

quote:
Originally posted by Huga:
Oh BTW Pid, the text under the big swirly picture thing on the "Intergalatic Microcache" page prints out very strangely indeed. Sort of slopy and cut through the middle. That's on both the normal and printer-friendly options. Using default print settings with a HP Laserjet 4050 from IE6 in Windows XP.

Reason is because of a cheeky bit of CSS which makes the text look all frosty in the background, the Intergalactic microcache page is totally way over the top with all the applets etc, like the coloured taskbar for one....with that page I was just testing things out.

Its pointless I agree but hey....the Aliens did it!

Pid

Ben Piddington http://www.buckscaching.co.uk

November 4, 2002

Now here is a thought...

What one new killer-function would we like to see added to our GPS units? (Its gotta be one not yet available on any model)

C'mon, get wishing!

1k · November 4, 2002

Hmmmm has to be some sort of voice thing....that tells you when t turn....if pointless at least it is rather funky! I think Ulrika Johnsson could do the recording for the voice!

Ben Piddington http://www.buckscaching.co.uk

Pid needs to be shot! :-)

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