Star Trek RPG Web Index - Version 2

[Ergi]

It had been a long time since the last update of the web index, but real life has kept me bussy. Now, after moving my trek site to woosah.de and giving it a new look, I have finally got around to bringing my links section up to date. Little has changed, apart from the integration of a lot of new CODA netbooks. Some pages were dropped from the list ( I hope none of them unintentionally ), some other pages were added.

A preliminary version can be found here: Star Trek RPG Web Index

I call it preliminary for two reasons:

• I will do two version, one for Internet Explorer and one for Netscape (the latter one will have a nicer layout)

and, more important,

• because I want to hear your comments and suggestions. What pages and files did I miss? What should be changed?

[Sho-sa Kurita]

Cool. Indices are a good thing. Couple things. A couple of the links on Starbase Coda should be to the sites themselves, as they actually don't reside on SC, but are just referenced by Space_Cadet (I've actually been meaning to mention this to Space_Cadet but keep forgetting...) . These two are

1) the ESO (http://rpg.lionelkw.com/trek/eso.htm), and
2) Artilects 2.0 (http://home.att.net/~Sniper.7R/HD/st...g_netbooks.htm)

Note than you can also find Scott's latest, the Alien Compendium on the same page as Articlects.

I would also suggest, in sections where it matters like netbooks, grouping things by system. It'd make for an easier browse.

[Ergi]

1) the ESO (http://rpg.lionelkw.com/trek/eso.htm), and
2) Artilects 2.0 (http://home.att.net/~Sniper.7R/HD/st...g_netbooks.htm)

Alien Compendium

I will correct/add these. Thanks.

I would also suggest, in sections where it matters like netbooks, grouping things by system. It'd make for an easier browse.

Hmm... I had the netbooks grouped by system before, but I changed it because the way I see it there is a lot of material in all those books that can be helpful to everybody, no matter what system he uses. In most cases the rule-specific parts make up only a very small proportion of the books. Therefore I thought it would be better to group them all alphabetically in a single list.
However, it is slightly inconvenient, despite the colored system tags I provided as visual cues for faster browsing.
Nothing is final, though. How do the others see this?

[Tobian]

That's a hugelly useful list on there! Keep up the good work, so i don't have too

[Ergi]

That was the idea.

Okay, I have finished the Netscape/Mozilla/Firebird version. Originally I wanted to to make the padd interactive, but then I first decided against using Javascript, and then against making things more complicated than they already are, by using ordinary link maps. So, you will have to live with this:

http://www.woosah.de/trek/webindex_ns.html

And this really won't look good if you are using Internet Explorer. Once again Microsoft's fault, since IE doesn't support layers and fixed alignment.
Your needs will be taken care of tomorrow. I'll go to bed now.

[Hirogen Alpha]

This is a great list, Ergi. Perhaps when all the upgrades are FINALLY finished on this site, it could reside here.

Excellent work.

[Ergi]

Thanks. I wouldn't really mind if there were copies of the index on external sites, since my ultimate goals are to make the life of everybody out there a little bit easier, and to promote the great fan-created material available. However, since I hope that there will never be a "final" version, due to a constant flow of new material, it would be better to host the index just in one place. Otherwise I would be pestering everybody hosting a copy, every time a small update was made to the master file.
Links to the index from external sites would be appreciated, though. Maybe then google would finally acknowledge the new sites existence (I've submitted it twice now).

I've got one question for the IE users. What do you prefer, an lcars style font (for example click here; [No, don't. I've removed the image. ] images would be magnified to correspond with the font size ) or ordinary bold arial. I would use Microsoft WEFT (web embedding fonts tool) for the lcars font, the problem is that anything below a size of 22 px is hardly readable, and even at this size it is difficult to read.
Could you live with the loss of trek flavor in favor of legibility?

[Tobian]

Hmm I had heard you could embed fonts, but had not seen how

The question is.. does it work across all platforms? Does that work on, say, Safari, on the Mac, as mac's use alternate font technology? (the same but different, like all things Mac )

I'm not sure the find adds anything, because, annoyingly, LCARS looks great on Trek screens, but it sucks for readability and flexibility on a regular computer display. The crew of most starships would have migranes from looking at it all day

You could always simply use the font and provide a link to the appropriate download site.. it has to be said you could be violating liscence agreements for the font, if you are not providing the readme etc. that comes with the file?! I'm not sure on that?

Another route is to use a flash page, which gives you absolute controll on the layout, and with the latest versions you can still behave like more regular HTML, with tweaking, including access to the text for copy paste purposes.. but hat has it's problems too

[Ergi]

No, it won't work accross platforms, it only works with Internet Explorer. First, WEFT scans a html file to see what fonts besides the ones that come with the Microsoft browser (Arial and Times New Roman) are used. Then it creates a copy of that file with a small css section in the head, referencing to an .eot file (whatever that means). Third, it creates the .eot file, which contains all the necessary information for displaying the used letters with the used font-face.
These files can then be transferred to your server. To prevent abuse, you have to specify the domain name where the html pages will be located. This way, others can't use your .eot files for their own site.
Now, when someone with IE and without the required font in her font folder loads the web page, the necessary information is extracted from the .eot file and things should look exactly as if she had the font installed on her computer.
Two minor problems of WEFT:
- Only the used letters are added to the .eot file, which means that every time you update your site and add new letters, these won't be displayed in the specified font unless you create a new .eot file (or create an .eot file with all possible letters and font-faces and use this instead of the one that would be created for the html document.

- Some fonts come with restrictions, sometimes embedding them into other documents is forbidden and therefore just as illegal as making the whole font available for download. Usually this isn't a problem. If you want to know more about the permissions that come with your fonts, you can use Microsoft's Font Properties Extension.

[Tobian]

Fascinating, but I also see it as yet another 'point a big sign at my computer and walk right in' Windows hole IMHO!

I believe PHP can also do font embedding too, again not sure how.

I think you're best trying to come up with a compromise which works on as many as possible I guess

[Ergi]

Yes, so simple it will be.

BTW, congratulations to post no. 2000!

[Ergi]

I have finally finished the index for lamers. You can find it here:

http://www.woosah.de/trek/webindex.html

Since this site's code works with both IE and Netscape, I suggest that all links should point to the upper address.

The Netscape version will still be available, of course.

[Hirogen Alpha]

I'd stick with the bold arial font. It looks great, way better than the poor LCARS fonts that circulate the internet.

[Ergi]

I'd stick with the bold arial font. It looks great, way better than the poor LCARS fonts that circulate the internet.

Well, I used Swiss911 Ultra Compressed BT, which is, if you ask me, the same as Helvetica Ultra Compressed, the font used on the show. So much for poor LCARS fonts. Besides, I'm sure there are some decent versions available for free. The poor look is mainly caused by the design. Obviously Arial is much better suited for the internet, since it doesn't has many features to loose on low resolution.

[Ergi]

A little update:

I've added ditl.org and phasers.net. I also made some minor corrections and added some code to the default version (the one with frames), that makes sure that the target sites no longer open in the mother frame.

I've also given the home directory a nicer look, by replacing the provisional text link with a image link. http://www.woosah.de/index.html

The real reason for posting this message, however, is that this looks so cool if you invert the colors. http://www.woosah.de/californication.html