New CMAK Battle at the Scenario Zone, and other stuff.

[Pzman]

Well the boys at the Combat Scenario Design Team (CSDT) have now finished working on a new battle, CSDT-Canadian Contact. This battle covers one of the Canadian 1st Divisions, first encounters with German troops in Sicily. Canadians from the HastyP's run into an ambush set up by units from the Hermann Goring Division in Grammichele. The battle is on the Scenario Zone and will be posted at the Scenairo Zone within the next day or so.

I have also updated the website, a somewhat new look, and hopeful more eye pleasing than the last go around. We are all so looking for a few new testers, if there is anyone interested let me know via email given in my profile.

Use link below to get to the website.

[Pzman]

Evil bump. :D

[GJK]

Hi Panzerman,

Cool site! I love your guy's work, and as if I don't get to play enough of your scenarios from The Proving Grounds, I have your site to go to know for even more! :D

Couple of suggestions if I may:
1. Text at the top of your home page reads "Home of the Combat Scenario Desigen Team". Of course, that should read "Home of the Combat Scenario Design Team".

2. The links have the default coloring on them, meaning that after I visit the link it turns purple. That purple is very hard to read on the dark green (the blue is a bit difficult as well). You might use a CSS to control the color of the links. The gold looks really good on that green.

3. "CSDT-Canadian_Contact.zip" shows up whether I click on CMBB or CMAK scenarios.

4. Screenshots of your work would be a great bonus as well. smile.gif

Look forward to trying out some of these!

[Pzman]

Thanks for the heads up, I always miss some things when I do some updating. Not sure what you mean by CSS, I just use basic HTML.

[GJK]

Originally posted by Panzerman:
Thanks for the heads up, I always miss some things when I do some updating. Not sure what you mean by CSS, I just use basic HTML. CSS: Cascading Style Sheets. You can link to a single external style sheet from your pages and then remove all the <font> tags that you have on those pages and control the layout from that single style sheet. Then, if you decide you want to change font type, color, size for any element (table, paragraph <p>, etc) then you just update that one sheet and it globally changes the fonts on all your pages that have a reference to it.

Sounds complicated but it's very simple really, might check htmlgoodies.com or webmonkey.com for some good tutorials on CSS.

[Pzman]

Thanks again GJK. I'll have a look and see what I can do.

[WWB]

Yes, css is definitely the way to go. See Boots & Tracks for an example of a completely CSS based site.

Also there are other advantages like search engine optimization, faster loading smaller pages etc.

WWB

PS: Also, one comment on the site. Overall pretty good, but I would ditch the green page background. Anything too far from white for the main text is inadvisiable.

[Pzman]

Thanks for all the help guys, most likely wont use CSS for a while, as I have to figure out how it works, but the background colour change should help viewing.

[GJK]

Originally posted by Panzerman:
Thanks for all the help guys, most likely wont use CSS for a while, as I have to figure out how it works, but the background colour change should help viewing. Real simple CSS code for controlling the color of the links:

</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">&lt;!-- this needs to go between the &lt;head&gt; and &lt;/head&gt; tags --&gt;
&lt;style type=&quot;text/css&quot;&gt;
&lt;!--
a:link {
color: #CC0000;
}
a:visited {
color: #FFFF00;
}
a:hover {
color: #999999;
}
a:active {
color: #CC0000;
}
--&gt;
&lt;/style&gt;</pre>[/QUOTE]Don't use those colors (unless you like a "Christmassy" feel) but plug in your own hex values that you can find from your graphics program or from a web site such as this one (http://www.webcolors.freeserve.co.uk/).

Now, if you want to get a little more professional, copy that code into a plain text file and then call it "style.css" (or whatever you want). I call mine by that and then place it in a folder called "style".

Now, instead of posting that code on each page, just post this within the head & /head tags:

</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">&lt;link rel=&quot;stylesheet&quot; href=&quot;style/style.css&quot; type=&quot;text/css&quot;&gt;</pre>[/QUOTE]Then, if you ever want to change the color of the links again, you just edit your style.css page and save it. All pages with that call to it will be updated immediately.

Forgot to add:
If you want to set the background color for the pages, add this to your style.css:
</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">body {
background-color: #006600;
}</pre>[/QUOTE](again, that's just a randomly picked color, choose your own if you don't like it.) smile.gif

[ January 22, 2004, 03:20 PM: Message edited by: GJK ]

[Pzman]

Thanks GJK, it's simpler than the sites made it sound.

[WWB]

Hehe. Websites are notorious for overcomplicating CSS. Though you can really go nuts with it (see Css Zen Garden).

Also, you can do things like change fonts globally:
</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">body
{
font-family: Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-size: 10pt;
}</pre>[/QUOTE]Also, if you have access to a pc for web design, I highly reccomend Top Style as it makes stylesheets much, much easier. Dont use macs so I cannot reccomend any software for them.

WWB
And then remove

[GJK]

Originally posted by WWB:
Hehe. Websites are notorious for overcomplicating CSS. Though you can really go nuts with it (see Css Zen Garden).Neat resource, thanks Wyatt!


CSS Zen-Garden (http://www.csszengarden.com/)

[WWB]

No problem.

I would also reccomend www.alistapart.com (http://www.alistapart.com) --some awesome articles. The 2 parter on retooling slashdot to comply with web standards converted me to CSS-based design.

And, in the realm of books, if you are at all serious about web development, get Zeldmann's Designing With Web Standards. It is the classic in the field.

WWB

[Michael Dorosh]

I get an error message when I try and open this one in the editor, and it doesn't show up at all in my scenario screen. The error message tells me I need a newer version of CMAK to run this. AFAIK there hasn't been a patch release yet.

EDIT - first downloaded version was from the Scenario Depot. Just downloaded it direct from Panzerman's site and that one worked fine.

[ January 24, 2004, 09:20 PM: Message edited by: Michael Dorosh ]

[Pzman]

It may have been corrupted when I sent it to SD, it seems to be happening far to often with files I send there now.