Yellow Bar beta test results/comments.

[Ledi]

Excellent question Kiwi! Lots of people do use Mozilla ... I was thinking of looking into it myself.

I can now confirm that the premium.neopets.com does not work - get a can't find page. So I'm suggesting that since so much is being done that a link be put on the site? I looked in my magazine - the one that talked about the portal - no addy there. I did want to check it out, see if you can get JUST the Portal - nothing else, and if there's anything on getting the portal with more than one account.

One other thing, and people who have this please don't fling dung at me, ok? Lookups + music + dial-up and now this big flash banner? I'll never get to some peoples' lookups! Just takes too darned long now, without the extra ad. I thought the music code was disabled and music wasn't allowed on lookups anymore. Seems people are using an alternate code.

Heh, I have a better way of getting around that. I go into my 'net options and tell it to play no animations and no music. Which is a darn good thing when I go shopping for volcanic rocks.

Any news about the disability-friendly ads?

[SierraRaven]

Heh, I have a better way of getting around that. I go into my 'net options and tell it to play no animations and no music. Which is a darn good thing when I go shopping for volcanic rocks.

Ledi, which browser are you using?? I've heard that Opera has those options built in, but I know that my Netscape 7 doesn't. I believe the new updated version of Netscape (7.3?) comes with Flash banner blockers, and I understand that you can d/l an extension for Mozilla.

Oh, I almost forgot... I just played Faerie Crossword, and it was extremely slow. I almost didn't make my 600 NPs. Don't know if this is due to the new banner ad, or if it's just the site being laggy tonight.

[everconfused]

Ledi! You genius you ... how do you do that?! I use IE6 ... don't see anything to disable music. It's not even the music playing - I have my speakers off....it's the time that it's still downloading, and for some reason it seems the people who have music also use png for their backgrounds. Yeah, I'm going to wait 5 minutes for a lookup to load...NOT.

EDIT: Found something in IE - Advanced, under Multimedia. There's a checkmark in play animations, play music. You just uncheck those? Doesn't that affect games? Or do you just recheck the animations for that?

NO word on anything re: disability-friendly ads. I think it's either not possible (though I still don't see why the topbanner ads couldn't be more like Pogo or just static html that changes when you refresh or go to another page - just in general) ... or someone high up just doesn't think it's that big a deal. There are alot! of people on the site with problems. I read more and more, I guess because I'm really aware of it right now. Gonna be many upset people - possibly quitting, who knows?

Sierra - looks like just about all Flash games are down right now - people on the boards are complaining....I guess alot are going to play the non-flash and that may be slowing something down?

I went to that link someone posted for the Mozilla add-on? Looks interesting, confusing as all get out, but interesting. I don't know if it technically would be allowed, though it should be - it's just part of a browser! Then again, I use my Dragon for "typing" here and I'd never use that on the site. Be too scared they'd think I was using some sort of downloaded program or something. I have inoperable carpal tunnel with nerve damage, so typing alot is something I just can't do. But I sure can talk

[SierraRaven]

NO word on anything re: disability-friendly ads. I think it's either not possible (though I still don't see why the topbanner ads couldn't be more like Pogo or just static html that changes when you refresh or go to another page - just in general) ... or someone high up just doesn't think it's that big a deal. There are alot! of people on the site with problems. I read more and more, I guess because I'm really aware of it right now. Gonna be many upset people - possibly quitting, who knows?

I went to that link someone posted for the Mozilla add-on? Looks interesting, confusing as all get out, but interesting. I don't know if it technically would be allowed, though it should be - it's just part of a browser! Then again, I use my Dragon for "typing" here and I'd never use that on the site. Be too scared they'd think I was using some sort of downloaded program or something. I have inoperable carpal tunnel with nerve damage, so typing alot is something I just can't do. But I sure can talk

Everconfused - I don't see why it would be "illegal" for us to use banner blockers. I know there is a lot of controversy on marketing forums regarding them. Some marketers believe that we are "cheating" them out of their revenues by not viewing Media Rich ads, such as Flash. Some sites even detect whether you're using a blocker, and if you are, then you are denied access to the site. Mostly this seems to be publishers though. A lot of other sites put up a static HTML ad if the Flash ad is blocked by the end-user. If you look up "banner blockers" on Google, you'll see what I mean on the 1st page of hits.

I strongly believe that all people should be better informed about disability compliance issues. Neurological symptoms are much more prevalent in the general population than most people are aware of. Neurologists have been aware of these problems ever since the original Atari games came out in the early 80s. Viewers who don't even have diagnosed seizure disorders, such as epilepsy, sometimes experience both generalized and partial seizures. Many, many others' experience vertigo, headaches, and nausea. Well, enough for my ranting, lol! Take care, my friend....

[Ledi]

EDIT: Found something in IE - Advanced, under Multimedia. There's a checkmark in play animations, play music. You just uncheck those? Doesn't that affect games? Or do you just recheck the animations for that?

I've never had any problems having to recheck for games...then again, most of the HTML games that I play have no animations in them anyway, and it makes them a LOT faster to load. I unchecked mine months ago, and I've had no problems with flash game sounds or animations, which is a good thing.

[Rachel]

=O They listened to my idea! And now the order of the buttons is exactly like how I changed them in PSP for my example =O **shocked**

Heh. We figured people would use search more than a link to their own lookup so that's why it was at the top. But several people from lots of different testing groups said otherwise, mostly because of the NP line, so we just moved it up. We also had to consider placement of that ad but we pushed it down anyway. Bwaa haa haa!

i have noticed now, i dont know if it's the case for everyone else, but on my screen there is no possible way to have both ads showing at once.... surely this is a good thing, partic to do with the disability/fhashing stuff/falling off chairs stuff...?

[TDG]

I'd still like to see a general icon (random neopets picture for example ) that we could choose a link for (Neopets.com links only of course )

That way everytime you use a new computer for one reason or another you don't have to save a favourite. OR for people on shared comps they don't have to clog up the favourites list

That way I could finally have a direct link to my Inventory/Shop Wiz/Chocolate Factory/Tombola etc on the side bar

[HollyPop]

I can now confirm that the premium.neopets.com does not work - get a can't find page. So I'm suggesting that since so much is being done that a link be put on the site?

http://premium.neopets.com

Works for me...

[Missing Maui]

I'm sorry if this has already been reported, but I'm not getting notification when I get a new avatar. It's happened twice. The first time I thought I just missed it when I was refreshing quickly and later found it in my chat prefs. But just now I bought an HT item and got no notification of the avatar -- once again, when I checked my chat prefs it was there.

[anaslile]

You don't get a notification when you get the HT avatar, or at least I didn't and I still have the regular toolbar. Can anybody else confirm this?

[DM was on fire!]

I'm sorry if this has already been reported, but I'm not getting notification when I get a new avatar. It's happened twice. The first time I thought I just missed it when I was refreshing quickly and later found it in my chat prefs. But just now I bought an HT item and got no notification of the avatar -- once again, when I checked my chat prefs it was there.

That's only happened to me once, with the Kass - Minon avatar.

[CrescentMoon]

Completely new member!

Hmm... don't have beta, but I shall give my feedback based on the screenshots posted here.

The biggest thing I see is the amount of space taken by banners at the top. If the ad banner's a necessary evil, can the page banner (the one below the ad banner with the name of the page and a neopet picture) be removed? To keep the formatting (and leave the new event icon its place...), something else that adds a little more to the site could be put there.

Maybe have some icons that the user can choose links for. a "favorite game" link? "neohome"? Allow the user to put a certain number of links in that space, and have a selection of little icons that the user can choose to represent each link. Only requirement? The links MUST be on the neopets website!


Or, you could give the user some more at-a-glance detail about random events next to the icon. So... we'd have the icon on yer left, and then some text right next to it:

>You have 7 events waiting.
>Most recent event: Mail from doggieluver1998
>Enqued Events: 2 Mail, 5 Neofriend requests

When there are no events waiting, you'd have a "nothing" icon of some sort (an empty circle, perhaps?) and just have a text bit that goes:

>You have 0 events waiting.



Meh, it doesn't really get rid of any extra scrolling after all... but it DOES make the scrolling required for more purposeful stuff... which is always lovely.

[plushie]

You don't get a notification when you get the HT avatar, or at least I didn't and I still have the regular toolbar. Can anybody else confirm this?

Hidden Tower Avatar? You don't get notification of that one...

EDIT: BTW, i dont have the beta testing

[rageaholic]

I noticed doing an illusen's quest that the have it and don't have it buttons are misaligned-

http://venus.walagata.com/w/rageaholic/screenblah.jpg

This is also true for the accept don't accept quest buttons in the beginning, but I didn't take a screen shot of them.

[Nani]

Although it's been said that it's not up to the techmonkies to decide this, I'd like to put forward this idea. Maybe it was already thought of and rejected?

Alternate Advertisement Placement

Most Neopians play at least some flash games. There are already short animations on the load screens. Why not replace those with neo or sponsor advertisements instead of having this in your face flash advert? I certainly stare at my loading screen longer than any of the pages.

It seems quite a few people don't like the top bar or the banner advertisement. I wouldn't mind seeing an advert for Sparkle Happy Fresh Deoderant while I'm waiting for Freaky Factory, or a screen after I sent my score that says Like this game? Why not play Teenage Popstar Rampage next?..

Just a thought...

Don't have time to read the next 5 pages, but unless this has been vetoed, I'm behind it 100%. Brilliant idea.