Media Lab Forums

tsummerall · Site Admin Joined: 29 Sep 2005 Posts: 1714

What do you like? What do you hate? What's missing?

ylon · Joined: 26 Oct 2005 Posts: 5

You should probably focus more on Flash movie demonstrations of the software. The current flash that you have up is very quick and nice to see the capacities of SiteGrinder, however it would be better if you would go down some more advanced paths and make some very complex sites with various layers overlapping and so on. This, in my opinion, is far more important than the documentation. Have four video tutorials and then one piece of documentation:

Videos:
Beginner Usage
Intermediate Usage
Advanced Usage
Expert Usage (show some tricks and methods of using the software that may not usually be considered kosher or normal)

Documentation:
A very comprehensive discussion of each tag in table form that can be printed and posted to wall for quick reference while working with SiteGrinder. Very similar to what you currently have for your tag descriptions, but more comprehensive and include usage tips at the end of the description. This would allow a quick lookup of all tags available to users and jog their memory of the videos.

youngeddie · Joined: 21 Dec 2005 Posts: 8

I would just like to say that I agree with "ylon" 100%. More Flash tutorials and more visual learning tools would be very very much appreciated.

I think Site Grinder is what artists like myself that are proficient in Photoshop have been waiting for. I'm just having a really hard time getting the basic concepts down. (I just completed a site using SG, but it was mostly from the "hunt and Peck" system and it mysteriously worked out)

Thanks for this forum. It's been very helpful. I've got a web design project that is paying well and Site Grinder is the perfect solution.

Keep up the good work!

Thanks,

Eddie

Babassboy · Joined: 28 Dec 2005 Posts: 3 Location: K.C.

A video on the workflow process of creating a complex webstie would also be helpful, such as file naming, order of operations, compression, and other fine points of making a well processed site.

robscheid · Joined: 19 Feb 2006 Posts: 7

A movie showing the building of a substantial website from scratch would be great. You assume too much about what we know about using your program.

Thanks,
Rob Scheid

tsummerall · Site Admin Joined: 29 Sep 2005 Posts: 1714

I agree. A few problems:

1. Movies require the greatest time and effort to create so they often go on the back burner even though they are very good teaching tools.

2. A start to finish movie showing a substantial site could be very long, depending on the level of detail. (when is it okay in such a movie to say "then we do the same thing with different photos for eight more pages"?)

3. The more detail we go into for a specific site the less useful it is for people making sites that don't have a lot in common with it. Our current demo movie shows: pages, buttons, rollovers, popups, graphics, styled text, scrollingtext. These are common to many sites.

4. The longer a movie is the less likely it is people will watch the whole thing - this means we may put maximum effort into something seen by a minimum of users.

Having said all that, I agree that we need more and more thorough movies.

If any Robodemo jockeys out there want to bid on making some of them, feel free to contact us!

robscheid · Joined: 19 Feb 2006 Posts: 7

I totally understand. Now that I have found the forum all should be well.

Thanks Tom!

contentverlag · Joined: 21 May 2006 Posts: 4

illostraight · Joined: 07 Nov 2007 Posts: 134

A google type search within your tutorial website. For example, if I want to find info on uploading or specific hints, I could quickly find info by typing a keyword. Thanks for all your help!

tsummerall · Site Admin Joined: 29 Sep 2005 Posts: 1714

Thanks for the suggestion!

We will be adding a search box. Until we do you can do a google search of just the support materials by typing your search term in google and then adding site:medialab.com/sitegrinder/support.

Some other suggestions for navigating the support area:

1. The feature list has links to detailed info
2. The hint list has links to hint-specific docs
3. The FAQ is organized by feature

illostraight · Joined: 07 Nov 2007 Posts: 134

I'd like a book I can refer to when I want instead of using the website. I don't know how expensive it would be to produce. Just a thought. Thanks for creating the program.

Eric Hussmann · Media Lab Support Joined: 12 Mar 2008 Posts: 3847

Thanks for the suggestion!

This is a request we get often, and a PDF and hard copy format of the SiteGrinder documentation is on our list of things to do. Keep an eye out, it'll probably accompany future releases.

totitu · Joined: 27 Jun 2008 Posts: 24

I found helpful downloading psd. files of already created pages, like for -interiorgrow tile.
For some reason, I could not get my files to work so I used yours just replacing graphics. Cool

Later I found why I had problem with my files but I lost few days trying. Embarassed

Chris Perkins · Site Admin Joined: 29 Sep 2005 Posts: 5665

SiteGrinder installs with over two dozen different sample files, many of which show off tiling. You'll find them in SiteGrinder's sidebar. They are very handy.

Chris

mathewhadley · Joined: 19 Sep 2008 Posts: 1

I considered using a slicing service such as psd2xhtml or htmlizer but they seem expensive for just one page.. then there are the software.. I have used Dreamweaver before and hated it (I even preferred to write the HTML code myself from scratch) am now looking into Rapidweaver but it seems limited and all the themes/templates look Blog-like and same-ol same-ol.

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mathew
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