Shoutbox

Messenger Plus! has always been at the forefront of Windows Live Messenger extension development but this hasn't just been alone with the application itself... This has pushed as far as this forum and also the website...

Everybody knows my thoughts about the design of the, unfortunately awful, website... Just realised that the site has been released so I thought I'd have a peep at the code.

Oh my God.

It's using a table layout, useless javascript, useless meta information and really poor CSS.

Yuna, you should have a quiet word with your front-end developers. The work they're doing is substandard and you could save bandwidth, have a faster website and something which could potentially perform better in the SERPs by reading a few blog posts here and there. A re-code of the entire site (as a CMS) should take a good front-end developer no longer than 3 - 5 days.

It's starting to make Messenger Plus! look very very bad.

Edit: I've modified the subject of this thread to (hopefully) alert the guys over at Yuna so they can do something about what's a bit of a problem.

Edit: Modified the title so it was less misleading.

I'd already noticed the table layout...

Just noticed duplicate META tags and what seems to be a bit of a weird layout on the TITLE tag.

Definitely things to be improved. The more worrying part is the styling of the site in and of it's self though.

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Originally posted by Spunky
I'd already noticed the table layout...

Just noticed duplicate META tags and what seems to be a bit of a weird layout on the TITLE tag.

Definitely things to be improved. The more worrying part is the styling of the site in and of it's self though.

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Exactly, it's very poor. It's like being back in the early '00s. I've never ever coded like that.

Edit: Removed a forward-slash.

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Originally posted by Talk2Luke
Just realised that the site has been released so I thought I'd have a peep at the code.

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The site has no been released yet.  What you see is a test version.

This said, the final release wont be that much different I think, it hopefully has a few fixes for certain stuff though, but mostly the code behind it would stay approximate the same.

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Originally posted by Talk2Luke
A re-code of the entire site (as a CMS) ...

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It is a CMS (albight not the best one I've seen).

Also, what's with the rather redundant CSS properties? Why in God's name is the file 6552 lines?

e.g. border definitions for almost every element

code:

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border-bottom: 0px solid;
border-left: 0px solid;
border-top: 0px solid;
border-right: 0px solid

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Originally posted by CookieRevised
The site has no been released yet.  What you see is a test version.

This said, the final release wont be that much different I think, it hopefully has a few fixes for certain stuff though, but mostly the code behind it would stay approximate the same.

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A test version of a website should be as near to the final code (front-end) as possible otherwise it makes the entire testing process pointless. Honestly, the entire thing could be re-coded in the matter of hours/days.

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Originally posted by CookieRevised
It is a CMS (albight not the best one I've seen).

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I was emphasising the fact that even as a CMS the site would be very easy to re-code and to a higher standard. Really surprised it's not using a good CMS, considering the number of open source options available. WordPress would be my first port of call.

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Originally posted by Felu
Also, what's with the rather redundant CSS properties? Why in God's name is the file 6552 lines?

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I've revised the title of the topic as it was rather misleading. The entire site is a complete mess.

Edit: Fixed spelling mistake. Had written "completely" rather than "complete".

I've thrown together two examples of how it should be indented and commented:

CSS Documents
HTML Documents

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Originally posted by Talk2Luke
I was emphasising the fact that even as a CMS the site would be very easy to re-code and to a higher standard. Really surprised it's not using a good CMS, considering the number of open source options available. WordPress would be my first port of call.

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I agree with you on most points, but WordPress is -- and remains -- a security trap. I'd rather go with something less.. exploitable in many cases, such as Drupal or even try TYPO3, but that's a whole different story. Just saying; WordPress isn't the most ideal CMS for a site like Messenger Plus! Live.

Except for that, I agree.

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Originally posted by Talk2Luke
I've thrown together two examples of how it should be indented and commented:

CSS Documents
HTML Documents

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Yeah... no. I've agreed with you about everything until now. That's just *your* way of doing it. That's by no means the only way of doing it, nor the "right" one. There is no one right way.

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Originally posted by segosa

quote:

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Originally posted by Talk2Luke
I've thrown together two examples of how it should be indented and commented:

CSS Documents
HTML Documents

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Yeah... no. I've agreed with you about everything until now. That's just *your* way of doing it. That's by no means the only way of doing it, nor the "right" one. There is no one right way.

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Show me a better way of commenting, indenting, naming and ordering HTML & CSS. From experience both commercial and non-commercial that's (by far) the cleanest and quickest way to code. Ignoring frameworks, obviously.

Though I agree with you... Yes, it is my way of doing things but it is something that works in a commercial environment with a team of developers. It's made us quicker and more effective at what we do and over the past 6 months the cleaner code has reduced the number of IE hacks we're having to use.

Paired with a 960 grid system, it's heaven.

Edit: Added last 2 paragraphs — what I said was a bit vague!!

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Originally posted by Thor
I agree with you on most points, but WordPress is -- and remains -- a security trap. I'd rather go with something less.. exploitable in many cases, such as Drupal or even try TYPO3, but that's a whole different story. Just saying; WordPress isn't the most ideal CMS for a site like Messenger Plus! Live.

Except for that, I agree.

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What security exploits are there? If I was worried that my developers couldn't handle a security fix, I'd opt for a license CMS such as ExpressionEngine. That thing is tight.

Edit: Added response to Thor!!