today, i spent most of my sunday afternoon and evening in unplanned meetings with officials concerning their security.... after returning home, i logged into the various poser websites to "relax." poser is a hobby; and i've enjoyed using the software a lot.

websites such as poserpros, poserworld, and runtimedna have friendly and helpful communities. and they always seem happy to support their members.

however, this website leaves me conflicted.

i have spent thousands of dollars here. i have posted images; and i pay for the right to post more than one image a day. i also pay for an e-mail address which i do not use - as a way of supporting this website and this community.

why do i feel so insulted when i visit here?

i still believe that the problems with the navigation bar have been documented well by me and by others. and i find that the suggestions made by members to resolve the problems reported have been made in good faith and with good intent.

no one wants renderosity to change the look-and-feel of the website. the only thing that we want - that i want - is for this website to fix this.

in response to multiple requests, we have been told that a decision has been made; that a certain inexplicable demographic's needs are being responded to; or we have been ignored.... and to add to the feeling of insult, where follow-up might be expected, i and others have received nothing but petulant silence from those people that are employed to respond to their members' and customers' needs.

WHY do you want to do this to people who WANT to use your website?

the caching is AGAIN NOT WORKING CORRECTLY. and i really don't give a damn whether or not you can recreate the problem. what i'd like for you to do is to respond to your members and - behind the scenes; without conceding any fault or losing any face - FIX THIS WEBSITE.

if i can spend my sunday working with the international community to answer their questions about why and how someone might want to blow up their buildings, the least that you can do is to correct one small section of code.

Message edited on: 08/02/2004 01:30

It's funny. I am no expert, however I think it's a combination of different configurations of computers interacting with Renderosity. My main PC is a Pentium 2.6Ghz/1GB Ram/240MB HD/128MB Graphics card/Windows XpHome, 10mbit/s downstream and 128 KB upstream cable connection, Flash enabled/firewall and virus protection running all the time. On this PC the Slow loading menu (see the individual items comming in one by one) is a "pain". My backup PC (when the kids are playing Star Wars on line on my main PC) is a Pentuim 850/512kb Ram/ 60GB HD/ 32MB graphics card/ 56k dial up internet connection,No Flash installed/ no firewall and only manual virus scanning/ Windows 98. (I never access Mail on this pc). The Renderosity Menu is not a problem on this PC, you go to a new page and there it is almost immediately and you can't see the individual items comming in at all. Running internet explorer on both sytems.

Other Poser sites load fast (relatively speaking) on both PCs, albiet slower on my dial up internet connection.

Message edited on: 08/02/2004 04:45

I believe Rendo has GREATLY underestimated the number of people having a problem (not everybody gets into the "I wanna rant also" mode on the forums). Anyway...I'm stuck with a 56k dial-me-later, and this has been driving me nuts (short drive in my case). After trying different browsers,codeing my firewall and ad stopper to block the menu,etc,etc,I found something that works like a charm. After I let the menu cache/load once,(if you browse the MP,do it there also, as it seems to have a separate cache),under Temp Internet settings in IE6,set to NEVER...not automatic like we've been told by the PTB (sarcastic remark omitted). Been running like this for four days now, and the menu caching problem is 101% fixed for me. IE6 WinXP Home Maxwell House French roast Happy SWAMP

Yea,I thought for sure that's how it would work,but as it turned out,that wasn't the case for me...I do see new post,threads,etc. I kept hitting the Refresh button to see/test if I was missing anything (even going back to auto)...but I wasn't. Funning thing was...hitting the Refresh button was still faster...the menu still had to reload,but nothing else waited for it this time. I know it doesn't make any logic...but it's working,and I won't have my cabel back for another two months (constuction work on my street).

Hmm....the help file for the automatic setting states... "Specifies that when you return to a page you viewed previously, Internet Explorer should NOT check to see whether the page has changed since you last viewed it. If you select this, Internet Explorer will check for new content ONLY when you return to a page that was viewed in an earlier session of Internet Explorer or on an earlier day."(empathise mine) So, it supposedly isnt checking in auto mode either,untill your next session. (I clean out the cache every time I get off the net anyway)

But we shouldn't all have to modify our computer settings just to view this site. This is not the only site on the internet although to some I am sure it is, and I never have this problem ( the 15-20 second page wait for that top menu to load ) on any other site I frequent be it poser or what.

I was part of one of the other threads on this issue. I think the bottom line is.. the powers that be DONT CARE if it bothers you. They really just dont care. They have made excuses for not going back to a text based menu. Saying some users had probs loading it. I for one dont get how any browser will run better with a graphic loading than a text loading? I dont buy it. I still hope for the change to come. For now, I have decided to not buy from the RMP and a new texture for Poser I have about done, I will not put in the RMP. And spook, you want to make an impact? Cancel your sub. to upload more than 1/day and tell them why you are cancelling. There are plenty of other sites to upload too around the www. my $0.02

I think they will eventually give in and see the light of reason. A text menu clearly makes more sense and is compatible with older browsers, provided their style sheets don't exclude early version of Netscape and Exploder. But in the meantime, it's just one little programming error, not worth getting upset or insulted. We don't know what goes on behind the scenes, but I've known coders to get hysterical and refuse to cooperate when somebody tried to muscle in on their little patch of turf, so the management may have a delicate problem on its hands, and they're trying their best to keep everything cool.

At the very least, change the links that open in a new window so that they open in the same window. I've about had it with watching that damn menu load. And I too won't buy a thing from this site.

the "insult" is partially a function of being used to better treatment from service providers and organisations whom i pay for a service; and it is partially a function of the repeated requests for some form of satisfactory answer which have been denied.

however, if your surmise is correct, then the above image is the result when amateurs get together to play at business (the naviagtion bar of this forum upon entering a 2nd time).

Message edited on: 08/02/2004 23:12

I'm sure that the coders all know how to code, and they may be really good at "back end" stuff, but so far I've never seen anything on this site to make me think anyone has any genuine understanding of how to handle the "front end" of a user-based website. The stubborn and pig-headed refusal to listen to valid input just furthers my opinion that there's a sore lack of professionalism. Real professionals know how to take good advice (and know not to deliberately piss off paying customers when it would be a super-easy thing to fix). If this had been addressed weeks ago when it first came up, people would have been grateful and thanked the management for their prompt attention and concern. Now, even if they do take one of the several valid suggestions as to how to fix the problem, it's going to just result in, "Well, it's about time!" bonni

I came back after a bit here and saw what you were all talking about with the menu. However, I set my browser setting to Everytime IE starts and have had no problems with the menu loading or getting new information. Maybe that's how the powers that be have theirs set.

Some programmer probably spent several weeks devising that table of image links, and all we can do is complain. I suppose we should count our blessing and be grateful s/he used text jpeg images at 80% quality, instead of 40 or 50% quality, so at least they aren't TOTALLY pixellated beyond all recognition.

Let's hope that not too many rowspans were injured during the making of this one. :)

I don't pay anything to use this site. I've been coming here for years now, and everything always loads up just fine. All the graphics load up within a second and it all looks good. Being a web designer myself, I'm amazed at how great sites that I built look on my computer, then I go to a friend's house and nothing's lining up right. Making a site that looks good on all machines and browsers is pretty hard, especially when you don't have every type of computer and browser laying around to double check all your code on. I'm not saying that's an excuse not to learn how to code for other browsers, versions, and user settings, but don't take it personal when the code doesn't work as well on your set up and the webmaster isn't sure how to fix it--let alone fully understand what the problem is on your end. If you really want to fix the problem, as well as stop adware, and hackers being able to see your keystrokes(as you type in passwords and credit card numbers), then switch to Mozilla Firefox and leave Internet Explorer for good.

I've made the point before, but as a professional Code Monkey/designer a "quality" site should never go live without...

a) Rigorous testing
b) Being put to the test by a focus group using every sort of connection and every sort of browser (and every level of web user too).

It's time consuming but it avoids situations like this, and it pays for itself in user satisfaction which equals site stickyness.

W3C web standards dictate that all images will include alternate text (the "ALT" tag) simply adhering to this specification would eliminate the problem totally. The text would display until the image loaded. All modern web browsers support this. Alt text is also required because non-visual browsers use this text to represent the content of the page. The (unnecessarily) graphic navigation bar missing this text means non-graphic browses can just go-away. For a site that seems to be so worried about being politically correct, that is a very politically incorrect move.

Nerd < Shakes head... 700 bytes of image to represent 7 bytes of text. What a waste of bandwidth. P.S. Someties it's even solw to load for me and I'm on cable! FX 0.9.2 W2K

Message edited on: 08/06/2004 19:52

I tried Tagarack's suggestion and it helped it cache correctly. I am getting the occasional reload update issues though.

I am also a programmer and a fledging web designer. I would never get away with this at work. I am perfectly fine in admitting that I'm wrong when it comes to design issues and even after exhaustive testing, have made changes to suit the customer's requests. I don't expect them to be able to check it on every browser in focus groups. I do expect them to be a bit more bending for people who are having issues, especially in a current browser like IE6.

ShadowWind

Making a site that looks good on all machines and browsers is pretty hard

There are plenty of professional developers around here who are well aware of this.

There have been several possible solutions for this problem presented, some of them with the exact code required.

THEY REFUSE TO EVEN TRY TO FIX IT. THAT is a problem.

bonni
Message edited on: 08/06/2004 22:43

Can't say I've encountered many problems with the Renderosity site but I do feel Renderosity should try to resolve, wherever possible, individual problems. I use a DSL connection using (most of the time) MSN v9.