Before anybody panics, I would preface this by saying that the plug-ins I have installed on my computer are actually quite basic and I tend to be lazy/nervy about updating them. :oops:
However - I have just gone to the front page of our site and tried to load it twice. The first time I got an error message saying that “An error occured on a plug-in contained with this page”, which, when I hit “OK” tells me “The plugin did not intialise properly.” At the same time as this, every time I visit the front page of our site I now get a message flash up below IE’s address bar, stating “This site might require the following ActiveX control: ‘Adobe Flash Player’ from ‘Adobe Systems Incorporated’. Click here to install…”
After all of which, I hit “refresh” for our front page, and it crashed Internet Explorer, with a message flashing up saying that it had encountered a problem with that page and would have to close it, asking me if I wanted to send an error message, I guess to Microsoft! IMO this is a [B]VERY[/B] serious problem - whilst my setup here is very basic, at the same time a site like TCL needs to be accessible to all and if we have a technical problem with our front page, that is going to make a serious dent in our traffic!
MannyF, if you read this my friend, could I respectfully suggest that this is something that needs looking into very urgently? Hopefully it won’t be too difficult to fix, and hope nobody minds me bringing this to the team’s attention.
While it did take several seconds for it to load for me, it did come up completely with no errors or pop up boxes. (Running IE7, up-to-date, and on a cable modem).
Thing is, with the kinds of things you have embedded in the site, people are going to have to come in with their stuff updated to see it and/or have it load properly, I guess. I sympathize with all-encompassing accessibility, but I think, unless you want to run a very plain-jane basic html-only site with no bells and whistles, the visitor has an end of the bargain to uphold as well.
Granted, I’m still a novice web designer myself and I’m sure Kyle or somebody else knows far more than I do but I don’t really know of a good method to have it both ways myself.
Yeah, it loads fine for me. It might be the Flash stuff that’s causing the problems for you Chris. It’s one of the reasons why I haven’t added the other stuff yet…it’s not quite working the way I want it.
Oh absolutely, I definitely concur with what you guys are saying - my set-up here is stone age stuff, LOL! The only comment I’d make is that you guys may recall the animated flash banners that we had on the front page of our site right in the very beginning - I think one of them was advertising the “Exodus” pilot materials we have hosted in the Animation Art Section. Those used to load for me 100% perfectly with no problems whatsoever, as do the Flash animatics on the front page of www.he-man.org.
Additionally, Kyle & I were experimenting with some Flash animations he was adding to his personal site the other day, and I was encountering similar problems loading them - Kyle advised me that he wanted to make his site as accessible as possible, and so running stuff past me was actually able to come up with Flash animations that, again, worked perfectly for me, yet did exactly what he wanted them to.
shrugs Nonetheless, I do accept that my set-up is very basic and could do with an upgrade - however, perhaps some of the above may be food for thought?
Yeh its all to do with Flash optimisation. The action script version and flash player preset you embed into the swf file. Also the way that you embed the file into the code. The lower you set the bar the more people who will be able to access it.
My new site I am working on will now work with browsers quite far back.. Just have a look at the way you are exporting the flash swf’s.. If you need to know more LMK..
Just tried to open our front page to look up a previous post relating to ThunderCast, and every time I try (each of three attempts) it now crashes Internet Explorer…
Whilst I accept that my set up is very basic, I still consider this to be a serious problem that could have serious ramifications for our site!
Without wanting to sound in any way “catty” (no pun intended, LOL! ), could I respectfully suggest that this is something that should be taken very seriously and looked into as a matter of urgency? Whilst I have had rare technical issues with TCL webpages before, I have never in two years had a problem accessing our front page, which is the one bit of the site that should be (and always has been) as accessible to as many web browsers as possible…
If you guys could investigate this as a matter of urgency, I think that would be an excellent thing to do!
Ah, now this one I suspect is a “Mac vs. Windows” issue, because that isn’t a problem I have - so, at least that’s one worry we don’t share here!
However, without wanting to cause any offence to anyone, something I think we can both agree on is that the front page of our site needs some urgent attention - as much as I love the Flash animation, I think it may need scrapping or replacing, which is a great shame…
Don’t mean to double post, but I removed the flash stuff which hopefully helps Chris and Kyle’s display situation. I guess I’m gonna have to start from scratch again. Let me know if it’s working for you now Chris.
Yep, just checked it and it works again now! Really sorry that the Flash animation had to go, as thought it looked great, but now the front page does work much better for me, and thus should work for everybody. Thanks for sorting that out, Manny my friend!
Hey Manny, If you don’t mind, I might have a go at the flash animation for the front page as I in the past have been able to make flash for people with minimal systems..(tested with chris)
So as long as I am not stepping on toes.. il have a go..
Could you send me the .swf for the one we had before for reference or if you still have the .fla, again that might help.
Thanks
Kyle
I know MannyF is going to want to stick pins in a voodoo doll of me for finding yet another problem with our front page - but, since the removal of the Flash animatic, I’ve suddenly noticed that all of the Amazon.Com affiliate links to the region 1 ThunderCats boxed sets have disappeared!
To be fair, it didn’t seem to me as though we were making a lot of revenue from these links being present anyway - in fact, for all I know they may even have been removed deliberately. But, again I felt it was something I ought to point out - I hope nobody minds me mentioning this.
It was taken out deliberately. In fact, it hasn’t been there since I added the Flash stuff. I made a Flash animation for the Amazon stuff, but I couldn’t figure out how to put more than one Flash animation so I was never able to add it back.
Sorry Kyle! Umm, I believe some of the swf files are still on the site…in the main directory titled news.swf and in the folder titled amazon. I ended up using a software that creates the Flash stuff, I just didn’t have the time to learn all of the Flash elements.
Hopefully it won’t be too difficult to fix, and hope nobody minds me bringing this to the team’s attention. 
), could I respectfully suggest that this is something that should be taken very seriously and looked into as a matter of urgency? Whilst I have had rare technical issues with TCL webpages before, I have never in two years had a problem accessing our front page, which is the one bit of the site that should be (and always has been) as accessible to as many web browsers as possible…