25 replies to this topic

[Helene]

Amazon.com now has a "build your own store" feature, and we're testing it out.

We can highlight up to nine DVD's, CD's, books, etc. from the amazon.com catalog.  We can change these as more DVD's and books come up in discussion.

The purpose is convenience, so that you don't have to search the amazon.com site for DVD's that we talk about here and are available for order/pre-order.  (Which sometimes is tricky, especially when they spell the subject of the DVD incorrectly.)

The advantage is that we've done the searching for you.  

The disadvantage, or maybe the advantage to our budgets, is that only those items, and the "recommended" items that appear to the right of the store, can be added to the shopping basket.  "Continue shopping" is on the mini-store only.  

Clicking "Checkout" will prompt you to sign into your amazon.com account, and the order page will be displayed, with default shipping address, default credit card, and the cheapest paid shipping option pre-selected.  If you want to change the shipping address, payment method, or select "Free Shipping," you must change your selections on the page.

Since the selections will change over time, it's important to refer to the link at the top of the page in posts about different DVD's.  A hard link will disappoint if it's obsolete.

Please tell me what you think and if you have any problems/encounter any errors with the new mini-store.

[carbro]

How do we find BT's store, Helene?  I just clicked into Amazon, and there was a tab designated as "Carley's Store" once I'd logged in, but Iwouldn't know how to find the BalletTalk store.

Thanks!  It does sound like a great convenience!

[Mrs. Stahlbaum]

Look on the light blue bar at the top of your screen where it says Rules and Policies, Calendar, Blogs, etc.  On my screen, I could just see the tail end of BT Amazon Mini-Store peeking out from under the Search Amazon box.  By making the size of my window larger or smaller, the words moved out from under the box.  If this is a problem for a lot of people, maybe Mini-Store could be moved over next to Rules and Policies.

[Helene]

What browser do you use, Mrs. Stahlbaum?  On IE, I've never seen this, because the logo banner expands in height automatically to adjust to the amazon.com box, but on Firefox, at least on my Mac, the amazon.com box "dips" into the toolbar.  The board software is optimized for IE.

carbro:  I apologize -- I accidentally deleted the line which told people where the link was located from my original post.

I moved it over to appear to the right of "Rules and Policies", directly under the logo.  This should make it partly visible because the width of the logo should be fixed, regardless of screen size, and the amazon.com box appears to the right of the logo.  However, the end of the link may be obscured by the amazon.com box.  Thank you to Mrs. Stahlbaum for the suggestion.

[Hans]

I was able to see the mini-store, and I think it's a great idea.

[Mrs. Stahlbaum]

I use Safari on a Mac.  I know very little about computers, so I hope my explanation was clear as I had to guess at some of the terminology.

I can see BT Amazon Mini-Store now.

[richard53dog]

Helene, on Sep 3 2006, 05:38 AM, said:

Please tell me what you think and if you have any problems/encounter any errors with the new mini-store.

Helene,

Thanks for setting this up.

I took it for a test drive and it worked just fine for me

Richard

[jps]

This is a great idea--just what I've been looking for to build a ballet  DVD/book collection. I wonder if we could have our own Netflix store as well for recommended DVD rentals! (I'm enjoying a Netflix copy of "Napoli" at the moment.)   Thank you, Helene.

[Helene]

Mrs. Stahlbaum, on Sep 3 2006, 12:09 PM, said:

I use Safari on a Mac.  I know very little about computers, so I hope my explanation was clear as I had to guess at some of the terminology.

I can see BT Amazon Mini-Store now.

Since the software is optimized for Internet Explorer (IE), which no longer has a Mac version, I'm afraid we Mac users have to deal with the sub-optimal for Firefox and Safari

I'm glad you can see the link now.  Many thanks for your suggestion to move it to the left.

[bart]

Excellent!  Thank you.  

[tylerls]

Helene, on Sep 4 2006, 06:18 PM, said:

Since the software is optimized for Internet Explorer (IE), which no longer has a Mac version, I'm afraid we Mac users have to deal with the sub-optimal for Firefox and Safari

Apart from the minor annoyance with the Amazon search box, I find Firefox to be much better than Internet Explorer for browsing these forums, because of its "tabbed browsing" feature.  I usually search for new posts, and for each topic which sounds interesting, I right-click on the title, and open it in a new tab.  It's an especially useful approach for "BalletTalk for Dancers", where there's a high volume of posts.

Therefore, you can consider me "motivated" to help get this working with Firefox.  

I downloaded the HTML "source" for the front page of the website, along with a couple of the images, and did some experiments.  Obviously, I couldn't experiment with the actual website, but I was able to try things out on a copy on my computer, and see how they might look.

I don't know how much control you have over the code in the website, but the page appeared perfectly, in both Firefox and Internet Explorer, when I made the following (minor?) changes:

1.  Find where it says:

Quote

#logostrip{
background: #3860BB url(http://ballettalk.in...1/tile_back.gif);
border: 1px solid #FFF;
height: 68px;
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
}

2.  In the above code section, change the height to "90px", to match the height of the amazon logo.

3.  Resize the image file "tile_back.gif", from 68 pixels high to 90 pixels high.  I used a very crude method to do this, and it ended up looking badly aliased.  You just need to replace the image file with any other one which would make a suitable background, and is 90 pixels high.

4.  Optional - resize the BT4logo.jpg to 90 pixels high, too, so that it matches the Amazon logo in height.

I guess you have this forum hosted by Invisionzone, and you might not be able to update "tile_back.gif", or the height of "logostrip" yourselves.  But hopefully this will give you enough information to ask the invisionzone folk for help, without wasting too much of anybody's time.  (If you're interested.)

Tyler.

[carbro]

  

tylerls, on Sep 4 2006, 11:15 AM, said:

I find Firefox to be much better than Internet Explorer for browsing these forums, because of its "tabbed browsing" feature.  I usually search for new posts, and for each topic which sounds interesting, I right-click on the title, and open it in a new tab.

The latest versions of Internet Explorer are tabbed.  It's not my browser of choice.  I use AOL's new Internet Explorer (available to AOL-ers and all others), which is IE-based and also tabbed , a feature I find indispensible.

For some reason, Firefox won't install on my computer.  

[Helene]

tylerls, on Sep 4 2006, 07:15 AM, said:

1.  Find where it says:

Quote

#logostrip{
background: #3860BB url(http://ballettalk.in...1/tile_back.gif);
border: 1px solid #FFF;
height: 68px;
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
}

2.  In the above code section, change the height to "90px", to match the height of the amazon logo.

This was easy to do, once I poked around and found where it was located.

tylerls, on Sep 4 2006, 07:15 AM, said:

3.  Resize the image file "tile_back.gif", from 68 pixels high to 90 pixels high.  I used a very crude method to do this, and it ended up looking badly aliased.  You just need to replace the image file with any other one which would make a suitable background,and is 90 pixels high.

Not so easy; it requires FTP'ing into the site, which I'll have to learn.

Do you know what "tile_back.gif" is?

tylerls, on Sep 4 2006, 07:15 AM, said:

4.  Optional - resize the BT4logo.jpg to 90 pixels high, too, so that it matches the Amazon logo in height.

This I can do from work, where I've got the logo.gifs stored.

The strange thing is that sometimes the amazon box only extends into the darker bar below the logo, and other times obscures the links bar.  Not being particularly technical -- I know enough to be dangerous -- I'm not sure why this happens.

But many thanks for your help, and I'll pursue a permanent fix.

In the meantime, per carbro's suggestion, I've saved a few spaces by changing the "and" in "Rules and Polices" to an ampersand.

[tylerls]

Helene, on Sep 5 2006, 06:02 AM, said:

tylerls, on Sep 4 2006, 07:15 AM, said:

1.  Find where it says:

Quote

#logostrip{
background: #3860BB url(http://ballettalk.in...1/tile_back.gif);
border: 1px solid #FFF;
height: 68px;
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
}

2.  In the above code section, change the height to "90px", to match the height of the amazon logo.

This was easy to do, once I poked around and found where it was located.

Huh, what do you know -- I can see you've just changed "68px" to "90px", and that's been sufficient to make it work with Firefox.  Can anybody else confirm this?

I was trying to keep the number of changes required to the bare minimum, I must have missed this combination.

As for tile_back.gif, you can see what it is if you paste this URL into your browser:

http://ballettalk.in...1/tile_back.gif

but I wouldn't advise you to change it, if you don't have to!

If you're happy with the way BalletTalk now looks on IE, Firefox and Safari, maybe someone should make the same update to BalletTalk for Dancers?

[Helene]

tylerls, on Sep 4 2006, 05:48 PM, said:

If you're happy with the way BalletTalk now looks on IE, Firefox and Safari, maybe someone should make the same update to BalletTalk for Dancers?

It's done on BT4D.  

By making the change, a darker blue bar appears under the logo to fill in the vertical space.  That's a lot easier than trying to match the logo to somewhere in the graded background, and I didn't even have to do anything more to make it happen

Many thanks for your help.