Yeah, I was looking at it at school with IE and the sidebar didn't show up.

Wow...this is probably the first time I've checked the site in months.

A lot more articles, much better organization...looks exciting! When I find time I'll need to turn up my monitor's contrast and read through the site.

Oh Yeah, DX:
Overall, it's good (not counting unfinished sites, but good so far)
You should probably embed the youtube videos that you have on your site, so that people don't get lost in the entangling web of Youtube.
EDIT:
Here are the HTML codes for the videos on your site. You can just wrap your explanation around them on seperate pages, and you will not have lost any visitors to Youtube from your site
Code for the Blow me away video:

Code for Ridgewood Water Warfare 2004-2006:

Code for Mike vs. Douchenator:

Code for Douchenator Commercial:

I'll implement those in the next update as long as YouTube remains the source of bandwidth.

You might have noticed that all work on SM has stopped since I can't figure out what the problem is with IE 5.5 and IE 6. I'm not going to add new content if the menu bar doesn't show up in those browsers.

I might have found your problem DX, I have sent it to you via PM. If that doesn't work, then you may need to find what else may be wrong. I used CSE HTML Validator Lite, so it may have missed some errors. I might download the professional version of it tonight, and double check the site

I've put in the weird script, going upstairs now to see if it works. I serve up XHTML as text/html, so validation not designed for XHTML might miss things. Heck if I know.

EDIT: Still fails. I checked against another validators, the more powerful ones caught some goofs. Hopefully it will work now.

Still fails. However, now I know that it is definitely a javascript error.

YAY - I finally figured out what is wrong! It actually wasn't the javascript. IE 5.5 and 6 don't recognize right floats! By taking float:right; out of the content div and putting float:left; into the menu div, the menu re-appeared. However, I am at school right now, testing code locally, so I can't make the change online until I get home. Considering that I have 4 frees in a row and am walking home in about an hour, that should be soon.

What a stupid little thing. No validator caught the problem since right floats are not really a "mistake".

Very interesting problem, but good to see that it works now.

I'm still curious as to how most people (Unless using something such as Win 2k or older) don't have IE 7 yet. It's beyond me.

Many schools use IE 5.5 and 6 with old computers. There are also plenty of users too lazy to update. Normally I wouldn't care about those browsers, me being a Firefox person, but cross-browser functionality is very important for a site.

Any school that has a good tech dept. should have the best, like most private schools, some, if not all of them will have or already have Windows Vista, or they all have XP professional. I too, am a Firefox person, but the majority of places use IE. Once, at school, I put Firefox on my drive, and my account got suspended for it (???). I then learned that you shouldn't put things on your hard drive, and that mr. IT at the school has to install it. The IT department at my school is very creepy...

I'm talking about mostly large public schools that are being underfunded by millions of dollars. We run the ancient 2000 version of XP pro on hundreds of ancient computers. IE 5.5 is actually more common than IE 6 here, whereas 7 doesn't exist on any school computer. Some of our Macs have Firefox, especially in the TV Studio, where we snuck it in. Main reason we can't upgrade: among the highest property taxes in the nation. Advocating more taxes for upgraded equipment is local political suicide, though we did get some initiatives to replace our TV equipment, which was quoted on the ballot as "being held together by duct tape". Sadly, that is true.

Our tech department is interesting and a bit arrogant. They think they can block certain sites, so we use proxies. They think they can block the proxies, so then we use private ones like my own.

Anyway, I intend for SM to work in IE 5.2, 5.5, 6, 7, Firefox 1, 1.5, 2, 3, Safari, and Maxthon. I don't have Opera, so I can't test that yet.

Our schools tech, while maintained up to date, is also a bit strict, but you just don't put things in your folder that aren't school related. (well everyone uses a 3gb network drive (O:\) , much better than using the hard drives) Basically, they don't care if you're running games from a flash drive, except for when one of the technicians walks by (no one else cares), and even then they just tell you to stop. Of course, people are also using a glitch that enables right clicking (I use it too, simply for convinience and for using the address bar so I don't have to wait for over 2000 folders to load), and proxies. The internet filter here is terrible, it seems to block more 'appropriate' stuff than 'inappropriate' stuff. Many sites without flash at all are blocked under "games", other common catagories with useful information are often blocked under "personal pages", while "cheating" is a common category for teachers to encounter. Of course, with this, you get heavy use of proxies around the school. (then again, even with a good filter they'd still be used to access myspace, etc)

Some are trying to get FF portable to work but there seems to be issues with the ports, etc. Otherwise most programs from flash drives run fine. (except for certain programs with some weird permission/admin functuality built into them, such as Halo Trial, even when using the glitch that enables right click and address bar)

Wow, this got a bit off topic. (sorry)


Anyways, personally, with the exception of some areas, I can't see why many who are able to don't stay up to date. Perhaps it's simply computer illiteracy (which seems to be fading away somewhat), though laziness is common I suppose. They think their IE 5.5 is working fine so they never upgrade to FF or even IE7.

<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I don't have Opera, so I can't test that yet.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I can test that for you. I just need to get on my Wii and I can check out SM3 on it. My old school (public) had XP pro on all computers in the lab. I don't know about now, but they probably have the new IE.

EDIT: Works fine on Opera

I've actually been considering something odd - changing the name of Soaker Media. The name no longer matches with the direction it is going in. The name was chosen because it was originally going to be focused on pictures and videos of various things, but that was in 2004/2005. By the time the Douchenator really started spreading, we'd shifted towards tech. By the time the Ridgewood Militia began its current undefeated streak, the focus had shifted to wars. Soaker Media no longer describes its content and future content.

However, changing the name would not be the most pleasant process. Any name change would have to be phased in for a bit [parked new domain] before a switch. I've found out that switching a primary domain can be done, but the directory names change. There would be a day or two where WWc would go down. My account makes it easy to backup a database and mount a backup, so that's at least good.

As you might imagine, I'm not sure if changing the name of Soaker Media is worth the hit in the search engines. It's not like it ranks well anyway, but it ranks far better than a fresh domain. Thing is, a better domain might recover the ranking faster and then make gains faster than SM does. We never really considered SEO when we bought it.

It's a personal decision, and I am notoriously indecisive when it comes to choices like this. I'd rather not spend a week torn between feelings. You might have noticed that SM has basically failed. It still exists and looks better than ever before, but the partnership behind it has evaporated. I paid the hosting and the such in full this year. The forums died a slow and painful death. I have basically kept the site alive by sheer will.

Contrary to rumor, I have decided not to close SM. However, I am changing its focus, to one that is more gallery and video based. SM has enough natural traffic to support some adsense, so it would be stupid to just shutter it.