The Holoship Enlightenment

Yes indeed, boys and girls, in today’s “Dwarf on the Intarweb” I take time to tell Chris Barrie (or whoever else is going to read my loose-brained philippics) what I think is wrong with his website, on his birthday. His special day. On which he is supposed to feel nice and have good things happen to him, along with cake and ice cream and greeting cards.

In other news, I am a horrible person.

But that’s not going to actually stop me.

Anyway, like tons of other Red Dwarf-related websites, this one has a splash page. And, on top of that, it’s got some kind of Flash on it to make the pictures change around. Look, if any of you read my diatribe article diatribe about Norman Lovett’s site, you would know that I think splash pages are a waste of website code, money, and site visitors’ time. I also feel strongly about how injudicious use of Flash can ruin an otherwise decent website. On the other hand, this site only has a bare handful of pages and a photo gallery (of which much more anon). It arguably needs all the pages it can get, poor neglected thing. Besides that, it’s easy to get to the home page from it because the link to it takes up most of the bottom half of the page. Besides even that, Chris looks awfully good in those pictures. (…I’m weak, I know.)

Allow me to copy a little tidbit from the home page here so I can play a little game of “What’s Wrong With This Statement?” **ahem**

“This site is dedicated to the work and career of actor and presenter, Chris Barrie. You may simply want an autographed picture, you may want to find out what projects are currently in development” (which you can’t find out here, because Chris’s site hasn’t been updated in about a year. Go check his news page if you don’t believe me. The last news update was in March ‘06. Honestly, the Red Dwarf official site does a much better job of keeping fans up-to-date on Chris’s career than Chris himself does.) “or you may find it hard to endure life without knowing how long, on average, the double sided tape used to stick Arnold Rimmers [sic] “H” to his forehead remains effective.” (Is that a subtle jab at the fanbase there, Chris? Clearly you’ve been spending too much time around that naughty influence, Craig Charles, and his ill-concealed disdain for sci-fi fans. Naughty. **wags finger**)

“For anything Chris Barrie related this site is well worth a visit.” (Only it isn’t, because there’s hardly anything on it. There’s six pages, not counting the splash page and that Flash abomination of a photo gallery. Mauve Alert’s a better site for Chris Barrie-related information and pictures, and it’s all but dead.)

That leads me nicely to the Gallery. Much as I’ve bitched about all the other things — well, the one big thing and the occasional little things — I think are wrong with this site, they’re really nothing terrible, and could be fixed quite easily if Chris just updated the damn site more often. That would be a thousand and ten kinds of absolutely wonderful, if he did that. For one thing, if the lone Massive Machines article and the columns he’s written are any indicator, he’s a really fine writer, and this fine writer, who can make combine harvesters and automotive repair interesting even to me, would probably draw more people over to his site if he just updated it sometimes. But the Gallery…the Gallery is beyond the pale.

I should probably have been tipped off about the Gallery and its multiple leves of irritation the first time I visited it, when it opened a completely separate page for viewing. It’s a Flash creation, and the pictures each take their own sweet sodding time to load, no matter if you’ve cycled through them before. I’m led to understand there may be captions at the bottom of these pictures, but for reasons I fail to fathom, I can’t actually see them — it won’t let me scroll down to the bottom of the picture, ho no, because it’s Flash and all the controls that whoever programmed this monstrosity thought you might need are in a teeny-tiny portion of the bottom right-hand corner, with seven buttons that, on my nineteen-inch monitor, appear to be about the size of a pencil’s eraser. And do you know how many pictures you actually get to see on this steaming pile of Flash?

Twelve. Someone went to a gargantuan amount of trouble and caused countless users frustration for two Tomb Raider pics, five Brittas Empire photos, and five pictures from Red Dwarf. (And really, he may as well not have posted the second one, the first in the gallery from one of the Tomb Raider films — Chris’s barely even in the picture there.) I suppose if we were talking about dozens of photos, one could just about barely justify making one unable to see them except in some silly Flash program. But only twelve? It’s worse than useless.

Arlene’s verdict: As long as you avoid the photo gallery, this site isn’t too bad, if sorely lacking content. It at least seems to have a slightly more personal touch than Norman Lovett’s site showed, even if it hasn’t been updated in about a year, because there’s a very good writer in Chris if he’d just care to show it to us fans more often. There’s potential for a fine site here — it just needs some more attention. Oh, and a completely new picture gallery. But other than that, it’s fine…

Um…happy birthday, Chris? ^_^

Next on “Dwarf on the Intarweb”: Fun with Howard Goodall’s site. Better than a kick in the bread tray.