WSA Winner
Tuesday March 16th, 2004
Tim Murtaugh and Mike Pick have collaborated to bring us an online art gallery for emerging artists. The site is designed to give ample room to the art work while at the same time "present the art in a friendly, somewhat whimsical atmosphere, as opposed to the black or white treatment usually given to online art galleries."
If the crop duster is a metaphor for the fertilization of creativity, I might add that Cloud King is not only an open canvas with plenty of room for artistic expression, but also a very well stretched and gessoed one.
Reviewed by Johan Edlund
#1
I can't access the site or ping the hostname. Any ideas?
Posted by coda :: March 17th, 2004 at 11:30 AM
#2
Site doesn't seem to work on either a MAC or a PC, perhaps i'll get the "it's your broswers fault" excuse ... :)
Posted by Graham Sanders :: March 17th, 2004 at 12:27 PM
#3
Doesn't work for me either.
Posted by danbee :: March 17th, 2004 at 12:43 PM
#4
Very nice looking site, but fails to display properly in IE 5 pc (my browser at work, sorry) which I expected as IE 5 is hardly a standards compliant browser. But it should work in IE 5 but sadly it doesn't. When trying to enlarge a thumbnail only the border of the image is clickable which is only 1px thick, It took me about 10 clicks to realise the problem, less persistent users would have given up much earlier and missed all the great art work. I'm sure I will have no problems when I get home and boot up safari.
Posted by Rob Winters :: March 17th, 2004 at 01:12 PM
#5
Cloud King had some problems with their dns server and domain name, so it's possible that issues still remains unsolved. If you're trying to access the site with a XP/Win2000 system and have previosly visited Cloud King, the problem could also be caused by dns caching on your local machine. I'm no expert on these issues, but I know that you can open the command prompt and type "ipconfig /displaydns" to see if an old "negative" response have been cached. If you'd like to clear all the entries in your dns cache, type "ipconfig /flushdns".
Please be aware that I'm no expert on these issues; if someone with greater knowledge would like to explain this further, please step in and correct me.
Graham, it seems we got bad news on the IE5/OS9 front already! :)
Since Andy has disussed this at great length -- see comment #5 and #7 under Stop Design -- I won't elaborate more on this topic. Despite what has been previously said, the reason we have comments enabled here is so that we all can learn more about web standards. That means that you're allowed to post both neagtive and positive remarks. I, for one, am wondering why everyone praised how good IE5 on Mac is compared to it's Windows counterpart.
Posted by Johan Edlund :: March 17th, 2004 at 02:46 PM
#6
Hi all,
Johan is right about our DNS troubles -- I apologize if you weren't able to connect to the site.
As for browser issues -- no, I'm not going to say it's your browser's fault, it's our fault for deciding not to build for the 5.0 browsers. Andy Budd already made the argument in the Stop Design thread, so I won't repeat it here. I'll just say that it's *only* the 5.0 versions we didn't build for, the site functions fine in IE5.1 & 5.2/Mac and IE5.5/PC.
FWIW: The 5.0 versions are as old now (and almost as buggy, compared to the latest releases) as NS 4.x was when we were begging clients to drop it.
Posted by Tim Murtaugh :: March 17th, 2004 at 05:36 PM
#7
IE 5.0 is a menace. Any company who is still using 5.0 IE is really in for some trouble with all of the security risks with that browser. I think you are doing us all a favor by not letting the site work with IE Win 5.0.
Posted by Alexis Gallisá :: March 17th, 2004 at 05:53 PM
#8
is there an IP address that we can use until the DNS comes back?
Posted by Danny Cohen :: March 18th, 2004 at 12:43 AM
#9
I did a bit of snooping on the DNS front, it's almost as if the nameserver records for the domain haven't propogated across the net properly. The actual zone on the nameservers looks ok.
If you are having DNS problems viewing the site add the following two lines to your hosts file (c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts on Windows, probably /etc/hosts on Mac OS X)
217.160.226.86 www.cloudking.com
217.160.226.86 cloudking.com
Posted by danbee :: March 18th, 2004 at 10:26 AM
#10
Just a suggestion.. because the site doesn't actually work on 5 browsers, why not turn the presentation layer off, just so us saps who have know choice about what browser we use at work can use the site.
This is not a dig. I really like the site. Looked great on safari last night when I took a peek.
Posted by Rob Winter :: March 18th, 2004 at 01:40 PM
#11
Works pretty well in WinIE6, WinIE5.5, WinIE5, Opera 7.11, Firefox 0.8, Netscape 7.01 and Lynx.
Posted by Cameron Adams :: March 19th, 2004 at 12:46 AM
#12
Hi
"the underlying HTML is remarkably clean and well-structured. This allows the content to be accessible to older browsers (such as Netscape 4), without choking them with modern markup."
- http://cloudking.com/about/
This is riduculous as the site isn't browesable on a number of operating systems. I notice that several people have already noticed these errors.
Also please be aware as well that your site contrevenes 2 acts of parliament The Disability Discrimination Act 1995, Special Educational Needs and Disability Act:
http://www.ecru.co.uk/articles/accessibility.html
Posted by David Williams :: March 19th, 2004 at 02:31 PM
#13
I think the DNS issues are gone -- I couldn't get to the site earlier, but I can now.
Posted by Jimmy :: March 19th, 2004 at 02:33 PM
#14
David Williams: Are you going to tell us *how* it contravenes those acts, or are you just going to self-post to a non-specific article on your site?
Posted by Tim Murtaugh :: March 19th, 2004 at 03:45 PM
#15
Heh the site now works on MAC IE 5.0 and now I can see it I can see why it was given an award. An aethetically pleasing and 'accessible' site. See what can be achieved if you try ;)
However, if I'm being a little picky (unusual for me I know) but you may like to look at the footer of the about section as there's a slight glitch:
http://cloudking.com/about/
Basically you'll see a rectangle of white after the copyright information.
(See I can be a reasonable person, I just ask that sites even if they are forward thinking in their construction at least are visible on older browsers, not much to ask now is it? )
Posted by Graham Sanders :: March 20th, 2004 at 08:49 AM
#16
I noticed that this page came up in the log files for ecru.co.uk and I see that someone called David Williams has posted on this thread referencing our website, which was kind of him, but I would like to point out that he is not associated to Ecru and we did not post the message.
Posted by Matt Williams :: March 23rd, 2004 at 10:18 PM
#17
I would like it if there was more of a bottom margin on the site. It seems sort of claustrophobic. But, I do like how they brag how they are no dumbing the site down for anyone. And feeling bad for those without some sort of smooth type rendering.
Posted by Danny Cohen :: March 31st, 2004 at 04:13 AM
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