www.llew.co.uk Relaunches
An article about this? Better late than never. Robert's been a busy boy. As the press release goes, it features "100% new material", including:
- "latest Red Dwarf movie news"
- "latest Scrapheap Challenge series 7 news"
- "Blue Helmet now with 2 new chapters"
- "10 new movies on all new llew.TV"
- "brand new message board"
- "major biography section with new, never seen before pics"
All of which sounds great; and feedback on it has been universally positive. So why am I unconvinced? Well, for a start - I just don't like Flash sites. I don't like the feel of them - and I don't particuarly like the philosophy behind the format; I believe web formats should be in the hands of a non-profit-making organisation such as this, and not a commercial company. They're also not particuarly accessible to certain groups of people. But it's not just that; they also seem to encourage bad web design.
A very obvious example of this occurs with the absolutely fantastic idea of (eventually) putting the entire text of The Man in the Rubber Mask online. This is such a great thing - but when you actually get round to reading it (in a visual browser), the text takes up... ooh, 20% of the screen? Perhaps less? Compare this to the article you're reading now. A really good example of bad web design. It's very annoying to read.
There are other examples; I don't want to have to wait for a page to fade in and out before reading it, for a start. And it's very, very irritating not being able to link to specific parts of the site. But you've heard enough. Content-wise - great. Really great. (I particuarly enjoy the way Robert writes, as well - very enthusiastic.) But I really can't be arsed with how the site itself works; therefore I probably won't be spending much time there. A shame.
Still, loads of other people love it, so what do I know?
Comments
Some problems with the site design, yes - but I found that if you right-click the screen and zoom in, the text for Man in the Rubber Mask takes up most of the screen.
Posted by Austin Ross at April 6, 2004 09:27 PM
The other thing I don't like is having to use scrollbars *inside* the website, rather than the actual browser window. Although that's not exclusively a Flash issue, again, it seems to encourage it.
I've just got a thing against Flash sites, to be honest; I really, really don't like the feel of them.
Posted by John Hoare at April 6, 2004 09:30 PM
Yes. But I do have to say that The Man in the Rubber Mask is rather brilliant so far - I love his description of Rob and Doug.
"Doug walked around in a circle nodding and saying "No, no, yeah, no, yeah." Rob smoked another five cigarettes and said, 'Very funny Bobby.'"
Posted by Austin Ross at April 6, 2004 09:45 PM
Oh, TMITRM is just brilliant. Probably the best factual book about Dwarf ever written.
Posted by John Hoare at April 6, 2004 09:48 PM
You'll all be surprised that I agree with John, but this actually isn't the greatest example of Flash design ever, even though the site has clearly had a lot of work done to it. http://www.zappa.com/ is an example of Flash being used to enhance rather than restrict the viewing experience, and it offers an excellent html option too.
I don't want to seem ungrateful, but if you're going to use Flash, you need to be careful, especially when the content is so good.
Posted by Tanya Jones at April 6, 2004 09:51 PM
I'm not a great Lover of Flash either, and do find some of the bits slow to load, Having said that the overall site is suberb and the content is really enjoyable with the promise of loads more to follow. I have visited almost daily for some considerable time and find Mondays re-launch a great improvement. I suppose the main highlight is Robs personal involvment though and his banter with the users, surely there can't be that many sites where the 'Star' is so directly involved.
Posted by Cpt-D at April 6, 2004 10:26 PM
It's because the content is so good that I find the design so irritating. If it was crap content, I'd just never visit the site again, and it wouldn't matter...
Posted by John Hoare at April 6, 2004 10:31 PM
I wasn't too impressed either plus there's a fine line between a "minimalist design" and a "boring design".
Posted by Pete Martin at April 6, 2004 10:36 PM
> there's a fine line between a "minimalist design" and a "boring design".
*looks at G&T*
...Wah!
Posted by John Hoare at April 6, 2004 10:37 PM
*looks at The White Hole and realised it looks like a newspaper*
Posted by Cappsy at April 6, 2004 10:51 PM
Yeah, great content but I genuinely had to close it because it was so awkward to read.
I'll be fucked if I can be bothered reading TMITRM online, despite the fact I'm absolutely desperate to read the book. It's just a very uncomfortable way of reading something.
Let's hope Mr. Llewellyn arranges a HTML alternative before too long.
Posted by Darrell Jones at April 6, 2004 10:53 PM
Well almost a year on from me asking him at DJ to give me more Happy Farmer I get it! He did that for me, you understand. Just me.
Not sure about the animations rather than streaming video, though.
Posted by Cappsy at April 6, 2004 11:15 PM
Hmmm. This was the 250th News/Site Updates article on G&T since the relaunch in September.
Have I really got nothing better to do?
Posted by John Hoare at April 7, 2004 12:04 AM
Things learnt from reading Robert's guestbook #1: People who write 'da' instead of 'the' are the most irritating people in the world, and deserve to bleed to death from an anal fissure induced by me.
Hmmm. I've got nothing better to do than post random comments to my own site. I'm off to bed.
Posted by John Hoare at April 7, 2004 12:34 AM
I mentioned this to John earlier, but the llew.co.uk version of TMITRM appears to be an extended draft, with a few sentences here and there which weren't in the book, as well as a few errors that were presumably proofread out of the published version ("Guilded Balloon", etc).
I expect a G&T article on this within minutes. Come on.
Posted by Simon at April 7, 2004 01:39 AM
Fuck off, Simon.
Posted by Ian Symes at April 7, 2004 02:02 AM
Wow, that is the slowest website I've used in *ages*. Totally agree with everything you say here John - I guess the designers were too busy thinking about making it look pretty to consider that people might actually want to use the thing.
Posted by Rick Mason at April 10, 2004 05:36 PM
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