New Rarity Guide

[Elektro]

I love the new site, but I just got over to the 2600 rarity guide. It's just too download intensive for us dial up users. The design is lovely, but I (and I assume others) won't be able to view it in any reasonable amount of time. So, if it isn't too much trouble, can you include a link to the old rarity guide? Or just tell me to sod off and I'll get a DPG. Your choice.

[Albert]

Hi Elektro,

 

Funny you should mention this, as my DSL connection has been down since Thursday and I've been forced to work on the site using a 33.6K connection (which is the fastest I can get here, apparently). Yes, the rarity guide pages are a bit slow because they're pretty link-heavy (all the pretty, little icons link to other pages and the HTML behind the pages grows pretty fast).

 

So what I'll do is create a much simpler version of the rarity guide that's still generated dynamically (so it's always up to date), but doesn't contain all the clutter that the current rarity guide does. What I'll likely do is just include the Title, Company, Label, Rarity and then NTSC/PAL. It'll be a simple table with no links anywhere else, like the old rarity guide. It'll also be a single page, like the old rarity guide (so it may take a little while to download, but you'll have the whole thing when it's done).

 

When I'm done with this, I'll link it from the header text at the top of current Rarity Guide pages (for all systems, 2600, 5200, 7800). You can then bookmark the resulting page.

 

I'll post another message here when I've done this (I'll probably work on it tonight).

 

..Al

[Albert]

Okay, I just finished creating a simpler version of the rarity guide. For comparison's sake, the fancy rarity page takes 193,187 bytes (!), and the new one takes 62,898 bytes for the same number of records. So the new one is 1/3 the size.

 

You can get to the new list here (I've also linked it from the text at the top of the fancy rarity guide):

 

Atari 2600 - Simple Rarity Guide

Atari 5200 - Simple Rarity Guide

Atari 7800 - Simple Rarity Guide

 

I left the filtering and column sorting capabilities in the simpler rarity guide, since they're not really adding that much to the overall file size.

 

Let me know what you think,

 

..Al

[Elektro]

Wow! That's great! It's tons faster to load!

Thanks Albert! Gee, you guys have got a swell thing going here. I am astonished that you built that guide the day I asked. This page is easily the best Atari page I have ever seen on the web. (With the friendliest folks running it!)

[Albert]

quote

Wow! That's great! It's tons faster to load!

 

Great, I'm glad to hear it made a difference. I can probably optimize it a bit more, but anything I do at this point won't make a huge difference. The thing to do is bookmark whatever "simple" rarity lists you're interested in so you can go to them directly without having to suffer through the fancy page first.

 

If you have any other suggestions on how we can improve the site, we're all ears..

 

Thanks,

 

..Al

[CPUWIZ]

FYI, the TV image for the simple rarity guide links is broken.