I thought it would work nicely with my site since I was getting a lot of stupid people who couldn’t figure out how to play any of the games because they didn’t notice my smaller icons. I made a couple of modifications, however you can the original script from dhteumeuleu.com. Try some of his other stuff, he’s a brilliant DHTML programmer… You could also create this effect with mootools.
Well currently my wonderful host doesn’t charge me. It started as a favor from a guy who owed me $1400 but he passed me off to somebody who owed him a favor, and then we ended up getting along and the guy liked my site. I have also managed to weasel my way out of being suspended for various things like threats from Microsoft Lawyers and the DiGG effect (which I haven’t done in a LONG time btw, probably about time again).
The games on the site don’t take up that much bandwidth as once you are playing them (and they are small to download) that’s all there is to it. I don’t have the artwork available in a gallery so that people won’t try to steal all the images or hotlink to them. The audio files I keep on free off-site storage and the video files, well… they aren’t mine… but I thank youtube and other fine video hosting sites for allowing me to embed their FLV files ; ) Also because I make the site in AJAX (i know, everybody wants a back button to exist with AJAX but you can’t have everything) it doesn’t take too much bandwidth to insert new content into my pages.
Ultimately I keep trying to reduce the size of my pages, scripts and files so that I use less bandwidth so that I can stay with my free hosting. However on the current course that I am on (#5 on Google for just the word smartass, plan to be #1 by the end of the year) I do suspect that soon I will have to start paying for the hosting which is why I started my Good Stuff section to try to make money. So far it’s just merchandise (that nobody really buys) but I will eventually add links to affiliates, however they will all be on that page and will all be products that I personally buy and recommend, so perhaps some of the visitors could simply buy through my referral links instead of just going direct to the site like amazon and newegg (come on, you know you shop there). I am doing this and hoping that it works because I despise ad-banners and don’t want to force people to pay to use features on my site. I figure I have donated to sites that I liked, eventually somebody will do the same for my own. Alas, only time will tell.
Well, I have too many images (over 600) on random. I didn’t want people going through and stealing all my bandwidth just to try to save the images. So you will have to steal them from the same places I did. The actual artists. .. 90% of the artists were found on the following 2 websites:
Yes, for the most part working from templates is a pain in the ass. You are using other people’s shitty bloated code. So all you need to do is look for generic CSS templates. Those are fantastical because they give you the layout you need in very little code.
I haven’t used any of these because I have my own after so many years of development but all of the below sites nailed down what templates really should be.
Yeah, a non-retarded question. I will answer this one first and ignore the other stupid ones for now. My website is transparent & semi-transparent on Opera. You can probably see this better on the old design since there is more semi-transparency. It’s really easy to do it with just CSS once you understand how to do it properly, and you can use CSS in everything. You could also use transparent png’s / gifs and dither is so every other pixel is totally transparent, but the css code looks and works much better.
The standard css code:
<style type=”text/css”>
.totallytransparent{
background-color: transparent; //Works on most browsers, yeah for standards
}
.semitransparent{
filter:alpha(opacity=’70′); //This is microsoft’s “direct-x filter” It works great, but only if Direct-X is installed on pc.
opacity: 0.7; //This is the CSS3 standard. It works on firefox 1.5+, Opera 9+, Other Gecko browsers (in future it will work on everything)
-moz-opacity: 0.7 // I don’t bother with this, screw old browser support, upgrade
-khtml-opacity: 0.7 // Konqueror (again, i don’t put this in, because most linux people prefer firefox
}
</style>
Ok, that was all there is to the code. Now here’s where everybody screws it up. People toy with semi-transparency and they make a <div> semi transparent. Then they put text in it and it to is rendered semi-transparent even if it’s floating above the content.
The way to avoid this is by using z-index and float, (though absolute positioning will make it even easier) to put your semi-transparent box above the image or whatever you want people to see. Then another box above that with another z-index higher.
Example:
<div id=”coolimage” style=”position: absolute; top: 0px; left: 0px; z-index: 1; width: 100px; height: 100px;”><img src=”coolimage.jpg” /></div>
<div class=”semitransparent” style=”position: absolute; top: 0px; left: 0px; z-index: 2; width: 100px; height: 100px; float: left; clear: both;”></div>
<div class=”totallytransparent” style=”position: absolute; top: 0px; left: 0px; z-index: 3; width: 100px; height: 100px; float: left: clear: both;”><p>Hey,this is some sweet non-transparent text floating above a semi-transparent layer which is floating above an image.</p></div>
I did that off the top of my head and did not test it, however I use semi-transparency so often that I don’t believe it will render any bugs.
FYI: You can absolute position inside another div. So just make a div to be your container and then absolute position from within the container. It took me a couple years to realize this since you had to know exactly where on the page the pixels would be because to position it. I thought everything had to start from one of the page corners and count pixels. Nope, you can count pixels from within another div, you just needs a container to be trapped in.
Sometimes I am not a smartass with my answer, it all depends on the question, my mood, and how many questions I have left to answer. I am only one guy, and since my site makes $0 profit, I have to have a full time job, and do other things as well. However if I made it a free for all on who could answer, it would be chaos and people with conflicting beliefs that don’t jive well with my own would then post. Besides, if you wanted a normal answer, you would <a href=”http://answers.yahoo.com/”>ask yahoo</a>.
If you want to put your own spin on it, post a comment. Until I resurrected the section comments were not allowed, but now they are. True you have to actually register to post a comment, but that’s just to prevent spam and weed out the id10ts who want to just write “your gay” all over everything.
What is any like any other individual, you found your way to my site because you were searching for something that I just happened to have. Be it a response to a question you have always wanted to know, or you just wanted to know how to bypass windows vista activation and I happened to be the one Google recommended to tell you.
Or perhaps you are just here to play that old “Smash TV” game you used to enjoy as a kid.
Whatever it may be, a site is nothing more than the contents that are on it!
Man, that was in 2004 that I said i was an example for that…. Alas, the old design still exists: Look in the center of the page and you will see it slowly fade in and out. http://www.thesmartass.info/index1.php
For those who don’t know what I am talking about, I just wrote more about this earlier: “how do i fade 1 image into another in javascript”
I decided to take 5 different worthless questions and change them into a more thorough FAQ, so I wrote a new question and will link this from the game pages as well. FYI: future questions must be put in either emails to me from contact page, or in the comments of the post or it will be deleted!
Nes / Sega FAQ:
Q. Did you create the games? A. No
Q. Did you create the emulators? A. No
Q. Will you upgrade the emulators? A. The nintendo gets upgraded typically once a month, the sega I paid a bunch of money for to get it as well as upgrades, however the people who sold it disappeared and won’t create new builds.
Q. Will you add more games? A. Yes, I will add more games, when I either sort the games into genre’s or just cave in and upload an unsorted category. Problem is, once I do it takes time to program in the forms to list all the games.
Q. Is this legal? A. Yes, the emulators are legal, the Roms are borderline. You need to own the original game for you to legally play them.
Q. Can I download them from you? A. No, that would not be legal. You can however download them from: romnation
Q. What’s wrong with controls for player 2? A. Many things, just learn to enjoy the games with just one player
Q. Can you upload X game? A. Send me a request, VIA my contact form, NOT through Ask-a-Smartass and then yes.
Q. Can you fix X game? A. Maybe, sometimes there are bad dumps that I can fix otherwise I can remove it. Please let me know on my contact form if there are any broken games.
Q. Why won’t it load for me? A. Install the newest Java from java.com
Q. It occasionally freezes my browser, can I prevent this? A. It helps (and speeds up) if you disable the java console, and logging, but if it still freezes on you then you are SOL
Q. Can I get something to play them offline? A. Yes, in fact the emulators for offline use are better. For NES try NESTopia, for Sega try Kega Fusion. Hell, go wild and get Zsnes and play the good games!
Q. What’s with the clicking noise when I change games? A. It seems to be a Java flaw where sound gets stuck when improperly closed. It is easily fixed by restarting your browser. I would recommend using firefox’s convenient ‘Restart Firefox’ option to get right back to the same place
Q. Why don’t the buttons work? A. You just need to click on the Java Applets before you can use the game buttons. It doesn’t focus itself automatically.
Q. Can I get a direct link without the AJAX? A. Sure, Sega, Nes, Other Games
Um… For the right amount of $$$ anything is possible. Go back to the main page and click donate on the bottom left corner. In the comments on the donate field tell me your website and a username and password for your site’s hosting.
I will “fix” the site to whatever degree you pay.
I think this is a fair way to get a good redesign.