SRD 3.5 Competition

Conaill · Aug 13, 2003

stephenh said:
I have put a draft html version of the SRD at

http://home.earthlink.net/~shelsdo/srd/index.html

Good work, stephenh!

A few comments on areas that I feel could use improvement...

- Definitely run your html through some sort of validator or clean-up service. Right now, I'm getting 324 errors from validator.w3.org for your MONK class file alone! It actually matches HTML 4.01 Transitional better: only 248 errors. (Most of the errors in the MONK file are actually superfluous font close tabs </FONT> in the class table.)
[Edit: Looks like all the files should have the 4.01 Transitional DOCTYPE, because you're using <BODY LANG="en-US"> everywhere. There's missing or extra </FONT> tags all over the place.]

- I would prefer to cram some more content onto the first page. Right now, everything is at least 2 clicks away. You could for example put in an A - Z list of links for spells, monsters, etc.
[Edit: Ah, I overlooked your Detailed index . That one's perhaps a little too detailed though.]

- The hyperlinked entries within the text stand out a little *too* much, to the point where they reduce legibility. You may want to set a more subdued style for links, so they blend in better (especially if you plan and hyperlink even more terms).

- I'm not terribly fond of fixed-width tables. The Monk table has a width of 831, which means I have to scroll to see all of it. Not sure how to work around this. You could hand-tweak the very largest ones: reduce some of the spacing between columns, use abbreviations (lvl, BAB, AC, ...), etcetera.

- Monk class table: The first, 16th and 17th rows are formatted different from the other rows for which the "Special" entry is split across two lines (i.e. 4, 6, 10, 11, 12 and 20). On my browser (Netscape 7.0), the first set looks fine, but the second (where you force a split in the Special abilities using paragraphs) looks really bad, with a lot of whitespace between the two lines.

stephenh · Aug 13, 2003

Thanks for the comments everyone!

Sulaco: I'll have a look at doing a frames version -- I just need to read up on how to do it first. This is actually the first time I have ever made any web pages. I want to try and finish a rough index first though.

Conaill: I'll run everything through the the clean up service. -- I knew there were lots of unnecessary < /FONT> entries. This was a leftover from the automatic conversion of the original rtf files, which I then spent a long time cleaning up. The split lines (and fixed width) in the Monk table is also an effect of the original conversion. I'll try to clean as much up as possible.

I'll also try to work out how to alter the link style.

I would also be willing to send out a zipped-up copy of the pages to anyone who wants it. -- let me know.

Conaill · Aug 13, 2003

Question for the community:

How do people feel about splitting the SRD into lots of small html files, as stephenh did, keeping it in the medium-sized chunks like the original rtfs, or combining them like in reveal's pdf version?

Personally, I think I prefer the medium size to large chunks, especially since you can jump into the middle of a file anyway. I do understand that there is a latency issue regarding accessing large files over a slow connection, but since these files are almost pure text, that shouldn't really be a significant factor.

Sage · Aug 13, 2003

Conaill said:
How do people feel about splitting the SRD into lots of small html files, as stephenh did, keeping it in the medium-sized chunks like the original rtfs, or combining them like in reveal's pdf version?

Hmm. My version is at about 1500 files. lol.
Yep, lots of small files.

Sage

Estlor · Aug 13, 2003

Conaill said:
How is everybody doing in terms of completing before the deadline?

I've got to do Magic Items, Psionic Items, and Monsters before all the text is the way I want it. I finally nailed down the fonts I want to use for everything but the tables, and I'm almost decided on the page layout I want.

All things considered, I should be done with some time to spare (but not much). That, of course, assumes Word doesn't do something evil to my working draft.

Dimwhit · Aug 13, 2003

I'm going to post this here, then I'll add it to the original post at the top of this thread:

To submit your entry for the contest, .zip it all up and put is somewhere I (and the other judges) can download it. Then email me at srd@dimwhit.com and give me the download url. If that won't work (you're doing an SQL database or something) just email me the url. The email should be sent before the deadline (11:59:59, August 31).

I decided to do this because there are so many links on so many posts in this thread, some of which aren't for actual entries. Sifting through this whole topic, given its current size, would be tedious.

By the way, if you don't have anywhere to post your SRD, and you need to email it to me, send me an email first and let me know how large the file will be. We'll figure it out from there. (In other words, don't just email me a 10 MB file!)

Any problems, concerns, or questions about this? I may not be thinking about something I should, so let me know.

Conaill · Aug 13, 2003

Dimwhit said:
The email should be sent before the deadline (11:59:59, August 31).

GMT, I assume? Or shall we be lenient and say PST (midnight GMT would be 4 pm PST).

GMT = Greenwich Mean Time
PST = Pacific Standard Time (i.e. California etc.)

Dimwhit · Aug 13, 2003

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by Dimwhit
The email should be sent before the deadline (11:59:59, August 31).
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

GMT, I assume? Or shall we be lenient and say PST (midnight GMT would be 4 pm PST).

GMT = Greenwich Mean Time
PST = Pacific Standard Time (i.e. California etc.)

Hmm, forgot about that. Well, I'm in Mountain Time. Really, I'm fairly lenient. A couple hours either way won't hurt much.

But, for the sake of allowing the most time possible, let's go with PST (give you GMT people plenty of time!).

(Kind of hard coordinating a deadline when you're dealing with a worldwide audience.)

Dimwhit · Aug 13, 2003

By the way, Conaill, are you entering the contest? If not, are you on my judges list? (I don't have screen names for most of the judges.) If not, you should be.

(Send an email if you haven't already - srd@dimwhit.com)

Conaill · Aug 13, 2003

Dimwhit said:
By the way, Conaill, are you entering the contest? If not, are you on my judges list?

I'm not, but I don't know if I can afford to spend as much time on this as I think it deserves.

How many entries do you expect in each category, and how many judges do you already have for each?