The Demo (Or you can go straight to the grips guide pages.) This is a technology demo for my site, www.badmintonbible.com. It includes the first few pages from the new grips guide. Attentive readers will spot a few clues about the rest of the grips guide content, and possible future site features Most of the "table of contents" links are dead, because they point to pages I have not uploaded. It's just a demo, and fixing this was too much hassle. I would like to know your thoughts about the site. What do you like? What do you dislike? Can you spot any bugs? Known bugs Slight misalignment of background image in IE7. I think this is due to IE7's inconsistent page zoom feature. If so, probably unsolvable. Minor IE formatting errors that I can probably improve, with better hacking. I need to clean up the display when javascript or stylesheets are off. CSS fails validation. This is easy -- I just need to do a little housekeeping. I let these minor errors build up for a while. Linking to an anchor in a different page fails in Firefox and Opera, and just goes to the top of the linked page instead of the precise location. IE gets this right. I've no idea why this happens, or whether it's my fault. Browser failures I'm pretty sure these are not my fault. IE6 has all sorts of problems. I've hacked around them as best I can, but some elements had to be removed entirely. Evil, evil browser. IE7 is much better, but still suffers from minor formatting errors galore. Opera has a slight (but ugly) rendering bug around the page heading. Firefox won't allow numeric accesskeys. Opera is very slow making the style changes, and sometimes gets left behind. A refresh always cures this. Only Firefox displays everything perfectly. *pets Firefox* (Note: don't expect this to turn up on Google. Search engines should be excluded.)
Id like to take the time to tell you that your first game helped me IMMENSELY. Thanks for all your hard work and keep it up!
Great stuff Gollum, looks like a really helpful resource when it is up and running . As we all know the correct grip is the gateway to effective badminton. I particularly like the listing of which grip to use for each stroke. The badminton community should salute the effort and time you put into it. Look forward to the finished article.
Thanks for the comments, everyone Er, hold on a sec. I got cocky and tried to fix something too quickly.... Edit: ah, no problem. If anyone sees a blank screen with just a picture background, hit refresh. Not any more
This looks FANTASTIC. Kudos. Thank you for putting in the time to do this. My observed problems: I clicked 'Next Page: Principles of holding the racquet' and got a message which said '[an error occurred while processing this derivative]' at the top of the page, however, the rest of the text appeared just fine. I got this on subsequent pages. The content looks great. The only thing I think you may want to add is how the racquet feels in the hand with a relaxed grip. I know this is highly subjective and extremely difficult, but I think it would be beneficial. My coach teaches the ultra-relaxed grip in such a way that the racquet is dropping out of your hand, but that's just because he makes an error in gauging resistence in the wrist when trying to move our racquets in our hands (apparently, if there's 'tension' in trying to twist my wrist when I'm not expecting it is a sign of a huge error that will doom me/his other players to badminton incompetence). Anyway, with younger players I've found it very, very hard to teach, and I've found describing the feeling beneficial.
Useful stuff, thanks I shall have a very careful think about how best to communicate the feeling of using a relaxed grip -- like you say, this is crucial. I think I know what's going on with the "error processing directive" thing. The server is renaming my SSI files (easy fix). EDIT: fixed Thanks for catching that one! IE6 users: sorry, sorry, sorry! I made a horrible mistake and will have it fixed pronto
Hardly. Perhaps you should leave it, and encourage the the world to leave the archaic demon of IE behind.
I can only pray that MS automatic updates will do that for me The trouble with spotting IE6 bugs (and they are legion) is that I need to test on another computer. IE7 and IE6 won't coexist.
True. But I'm a firefox user/advocator, all the way. More security deficiencies, yes, but so much more beautiful in every other way, IMO
I don't think so. If you've been reading this "firefox myths" page, or one of its many spam incarnations, be aware that it's complete bollocks and has been thoroughly debunked. I think Opera is probably more secure than Firefox, but they both have an almost perfect record.
True. What I heard on cbc was that Firefox as more potential security vulnerabilities, but in reality, significantly less have been exploited and when are, are much less serious than IE. I'll have to try opera sometime. Oh open-source(ish), how I love thee.
Feedback Thanks Gollum for putting your time into this. Here's my feedback: The site looks very nice and clean - no flashing/blinking (annoying) icons. However, I find that the layout is somewhat wasting browser real estate due to the "website controls" panel being on the side, i.e. the entire space under it is unused. Maybe it should have a horizontal orientation and be placed at the top of the page instead. Although it may sound obvious, it's useful to specify what finger does what for each type of grip. Overall the new guide looks great (in Firefox anyway) and its table of contents sounds very promising. Kudos!!!
Lukisa, thanks for your ideas Layout Although there is empty space beneath the "website controls" panel, I don't see that as a problem. I don't want my main content column to be any wider, because the line length would get too long and decrease readability. Personally, I prefer a website to have lots of "white space", rather than squeeze more content into the window. If I ever did want to add more page elements, I could easily place them underneath the panel. Also, you can hide the panel entirely, which centralises the main content column (except for IE6, which doesn't get this feature). Adding the menu to the top is what I had before, but that really is valuable real estate. I'd rather have the content starting near the top of the page. Finally, note that the site will fit comfortably in an 800*600 window, and on good browsers (not IE) will continue to scale well even as the window becomes very small. On a very large window, the site will remain centred with the same readable line length (and indeed can be scaled up with the text size to fill the window). Finger roles I think specifying the role of each finger for each grip can be useful, but only if the advice is accurate. In my view, there is a risk of becoming too specific and prescriptive about the exact finger movements. This also can introduce unnecessary complication, since the same understanding can be conveyed by general principles, and I'm not sure that a case-by-case analysis can improve on those principles. That said, I would be very interested to hear what you have in mind. Please tell me your thoughts about the finger details for each grip
I do agree that long lines of text decreases readability. I guess I've got accustomed to dealing with technical documents, which usually care more about compactness than readability. About the finger details... well, you're the expert and I'm the apprentice, and I'd like to get as much knowledge from you as easily as possible . I'd appreciate some explanation as to why we should put certain fingers in a certain way. Texts such as "Your arm should be straight at contact when hitting an overhead backhand" don't tell me why do it that way. We don't need to go deep into the details, just a brief explanation would be great; something like "because you'd get a better angle, although it doesn't make a difference in power" [whatever the real reason is]. While I'm at it, a little section on common mistakes would also be nice. Thanks!
Right, I see what you mean Much of that is already covered in the general principles, but it may also be relevant in the "which grip?" section. The common mistakes are already covered, though you weren't to know that
