Regarding the nesdev main page

[UncleSporky]

I was wondering what the chance is that things could be updated a bit. I know it's extra work for Memblers, but I wanted to discuss it at least. I hope you understand I don't want to offend anyone, it is a good resource but I feel it could be laid out better.

nesdev.com is probably one of the first things people see when they decide they want to get into NES development - I know it was for me. So when you have to scroll past 2 or 3 pages of text right off the bat, it can be briefly confusing and/or not very inviting. I'd rather be hit up with a link to something useful right away. I suppose we are, with the links to the forum and wiki, but that's not necessarily the first place a new person will look.

First we see the updates section, which I can't help but think would be better suited elsewhere. Changes occur so few and far between anyway, and new visitors don't usually care about recent changes. I propose that minor updates could be posted at the bottom of the page, with a link to them under Notices. Particularly noteworthy or awesome announcements such as competitions would still be fine for top of the page.

The Notices section is necessary and worthwhile, people shouldn't be downloading the whole site off the webserver. But is the 2004 MiniGame Compo still going on? Do we need a link to the current message boards here when there is already a link at the top of the page? Is Membler Industries still producing a nes dev cartridge?

Then there is the site index, which is useful, but at the same time most other sites would relegate this sort of thing to a sidebar or menu, rather than having it in-line with the rest of the site. It's a lot to scroll past. Are the minor divisions needed, or would it be appropriate to go with just the 6 main headings so we can get to the content faster?

And then before the general NES documentation, there is a music section which is separate from the music links section at the bottom. Not sure why it should be there.

The next thing is the most important: the text files section needs direction for new programmers. I imagine a lot of people get here and click the first link, and become utterly confused at all the technical information without practical implementation. So they scan downward for something easier, maybe a tutorial...and the first tutorial they see is GBAGuy's. Don't we always tell people not to use it? I can understand keeping it there for historical purposes, but it shouldn't be the first tutorial people have access to.

How are the text files sorted? It looks like it goes by date, with the most recent on top. Generally this will also be in order of up-to-date usefulness, but there are plenty of reiterative, incomplete and mostly un-useful docs in the list. The second one by Blue Hawk is too brief in its explanations and doesn't have the best writing. "Programming that 8-bit beast of power" sounds friendly for newcomers, but it's incomplete in how it conveys its ideas and tries too often to be flippant/humorous to cover up a lack of explanation. It also mentions getting a zip file at his site...which is now defunct.

The PDF by Patrick Diskin is pretty good but also just a prettier retread of Jeremy Chadwick's documentation. Both are among the most useful references available, so perhaps they could both be together at the top? Could we label each document with a little explanation, like for nestech, "provides good technical info, but is incomplete on the subject of audio and practical programming."

I notice there are a lot of architectural sorts of docs mixed in with the programming sorts of docs. Maybe Text Files could be split into "Programming (new users start here!)" and "Technical Reference."

Again, please don't take this personally, I love this site and the forums and the people here, I just think some better thought could go into laying out the main page. I think the biggest improvement would be removing or relabeling GBAGuy's tutorial, and putting a link to Nerdy Nights right at the top. It's something we can all relate to and explain well if people have further questions.

[GradualGames]

I look at it this way: It keeps (most of) the stupid people out.

[UncleSporky]

I look at it this way: It keeps (most of) the stupid people out.

I suppose you could argue for that, but the way I see it is that it invites more stupid people in.

Although to be honest I wouldn't call them stupid people, just people who have done the natural thing and clicked on the main page links, who then come here when they can't get anything to work. That's a smart thing to do, but they wouldn't have to waste their time relearning things that they understood wrong to begin with.

Examples of people who were led astray by clicking the first tutorial they saw:

have spent plenty of time exorcising the GBAGuy tut from my mind.

Yeah, I was using many parts of the GBAGuy's tutorial

I've been learning at first with the GBAguy tutorial and everything seemed to work OK with nesasm, but then, when I try to compile with asm6, it tells me that the program counter is out of reach. I .orged the variables at $0000 and the code at $8000, so I guess it has something to do with that (maybe I can't work with variables which are that far in the code?)

...

As I've read, it seems that the GBAguy tutorial is not very accurate, am I right? Could someone tell me why? As I've taken things from it, I am probably making a lot of things wrong.

Did you tried GBA Guy's Tutorial?
http://patater.com/gbaguy/nesasm.htm
Everything is nicely written.
Unfortunelly,there's only one mapper-NROM.
But if you don't plan a long game then it's perfect.

I actually have tried going through this (this is in fact the only tutorial I've tried to follow) and found that I am not using something that he included correctly or it just doesn't work. I've tried to compile his sample code and I keep getting outlandish errors. Turns out GBAGuy has also disappeared from the internet.

also i have another question about this. as i read, $2003 is used to write the 8-bit address in SPR-RAM to access via $2004. i.e.:

(extracted from GbaGuy demo)

lda #$00 ; these lines tell $2003
sta $2003 ; to tell
lda #$00 ; $2004 to start
sta $2003 ; at $0000.

I had mostly been using http://patater.com/gbaguy/nesasm.htm before... eh.... There are some mistakes in that, that really didn't make sense!

I've recently finished GBAguys horribly inaccurate tutorial. The sound part about bit 5 of $4000 really pissed me off.

i've done some of GBAGUY's tutorial but i've been told that there are some things there that are inaccurate(no offense) and i shouldn't use it. but no one suggests anything else(ok i'm sounding like i want to cry aren't i?) so what should i do next? i have nesasm (from magic kit) and i'm ready to rock

That's just a few of the results from the past year or two. Newcomers need guidance, and if we can make things easier for them it will result in less of the same old questions and more intelligent discussion.

[GradualGames]

Hehe, sorry I seemed flippant or dismissive. I think your suggestions are good ones. The main page has been wikified hasn't it? Perhaps you could go in and just start changing things and see if it sticks.

[tepples]

I don't think the editable copy on the wiki gets replicated to the main page.

[Memblers]

It would be great to see the Wiki version of it updated. I don't think it would be a problem to make it the main page, or just redirect to it for now.

But yeah, the main page still looks much like it did 10 years ago or whenever, including most of the content. There is tons of stuff that never got added.

And yeah, Membler Industries is still working on a dev cart, haha. 2 of them by now, heh.

[Banshaku]

It would be great to see the Wiki version of it updated. I don't think it would be a problem to make it the main page, or just redirect to it for now.

It depends which version you like. Do you prefer the "wikified" style with white background that is now more the norm or you still want to keep the original colors of nesdev?

For the original colors, I was able to make it by overriding some CSS class but the problem is that is not always play nice with older browser so it has caveat.

Once you decide which page you like, we just redirect to it and start updating it. Then me and Tepples can decide the rules for updating. For example, we can make a group for the main page update so not the latest spammer can deface the page.

[UncleSporky]

It would be great to see the Wiki version of it updated. I don't think it would be a problem to make it the main page, or just redirect to it for now.

It depends which version you like. Do you prefer the "wikified" style with white background that is now more the norm or you still want to keep the original colors of nesdev?

For the original colors, I was able to make it by overriding some CSS class but the problem is that is not always play nice with older browser so it has caveat.

Once you decide which page you like, we just redirect to it and start updating it. Then me and Tepples can decide the rules for updating. For example, we can make a group for the main page update so not the latest spammer can deface the page.

That would be pretty cool. Similar to editing the wiki, any good standing nes devver could add their own files or links.

If I have time I will look into editing the wiki.

EDIT: I hadn't even realized that the wiki page was already cleaned up with most of what I had asked about originally.

I edited your new CSS page and put in a table. What do you guys think? Too messy? Just something I wanted to try out.

http://wiki.nesdev.com/w/index.php/NesdevTest

On second look I think I hate it. I wish there was a better way to line everything up without spacing it out so far.

[Memblers]

One thing I always really wanted, was a comments system for individual files. I couldn't see a good way to do it, other than manually making a bunch of topics in a forum or something (which would suck when the forum inevitably migrates). Or putting the site on one of those 'content management' type setups, but IMHO most of the sites I've seen using that kind of stuff is pretty ugly (not that the current, old html is nice looking, but it is easily accessible at least).

[tepples]

StepMania.com, for one, uses MediaWiki as a "content management type setup".

[Banshaku]

EDIT: I hadn't even realized that the wiki page was already cleaned up with most of what I had asked about originally.

Yeah. There is 2 version of it: this one which as the same style as the wiki and the one you tried to edit.

The only problem with the one that look like nesdev is that I override some of the CSS to make it look as much as possible as the original nesdev page. The problem with that is older browser that doesn't support CSS well (cough! IE6 cough!)... It comes out not properly. I didn't have time yet to figure out a solution for this.

As for the table, I don't know. It doesn't bring much yet. What I wanted to do (long time ago) when I proposed to update the main page too is that instead of having 1 huge page is to separate it by section that you can select form a menu on the top or left.

Still, for now I think the first goal should be to make that page more accessible to edit by the community (similar to what I did when the previous wiki server was failing all the time) so the content would be more up to date. Then after we can think on how to make it look better, content wise, color wise, organization wise.

[MetalSlime]

Just don't worry about ie6 and everything will pan out nicely.

[tepples]

Or use "if lt IE 7" conditional comments to hide offending CSS from IE 6 and earlier. My employer's web site does that to keep JavaScript from loading on IE 5 through 7.

[Dwedit]

I once managed to get lucky, and make CSS that worked with modern browsers, and still worked on IE5/5.5/6. No conditionals anywhere. Didn't work so great on IE4 though.

There's a tool called MultpileIEs that gives you IE4/IE5/IE5.5 and IE6 side by side so you can test your site on each browser.

[Banshaku]

The problem is not really to make the CSS, it's because I'm overriding the original one with the help of the CSS plugin I think. IE6 doesn't seem to like it much. I just wanted to avoid to create a new theme just for those pages since I don't know if you can force a theme for a group of page or not yet.

I think I will need to do more research on the subject.