Take a break and wait to hear back from them. A day and a half invested not wasted - and well worth it in the long run when you have a responsive niche mailing list AND have the process figured out to use on future lists/sites
Rick,
I too was having problems this weekend with entering text on the Aweber webform generator, but just chalked it up to either a browser problem or them still getting the quirks out of the system.
Please don't give up on Aweber! They are worth it. It's just that with new anything, I'm sure there are "bugs" to be worked out.
I can totally relate to all your problems. I have had very much the same experience with AWeber. First of all, the form layout generator is not up to standard. It simply isn't intuitive enough; and there's too little freedom to do what one really would want to do. What's worse, even if one should somehow succeed in creating the form one really wants, and getting it to look good in ONE browser, it will, most likely, still not show up in a predictable way in all OTHER browsers.
As if that wasn't enough, the HTML text editor (the top one, not the plain text editor below) also is quirky (at least in Firefox on a PC). For example, if one copies a text writen in an ordinary text editor (Notepad, for example), one cannot ALWAYS change its font or size or anything without destroying all carriage returns; thus all paragraphs get lost and one has to manually enter new ones. (but there is a workaround to this too, if you experience that problem)
Still, despite these problems, I would like to be positive about AWeber. AWeber has a VERY well-working distribution system when it sends out your emails. You can count on it. So if you only can get everything GOING, then AWeber WILL deliver your mail. So, in the long run, I think AWeber will serve you well. (Also note that I am not an employee or even an affiliate!).
Now, let's get down to business. Let's talk about the form generator code. My personal experience with designing my own form (not including any writing of autoresponder messages, or any other aspect of setting up the autoresponder) took me about seven (7) days, full time. I spent this time doing several things, in several phases. First I REALLY tried to understand the generator software to make sure it wasn't ME who screwed it up. And I tested the form on eight different browsers for maximum cross-platform compatibility, and it did NOT work on all. Neither the HTML version nor the JavaScript performed well on all of these browsers. So, unlike Lynn's statement to "not worry too much", I would say that there is good reason to actually DO worry about this.
My list of browsers that I have tested is this: On PC: internet explorer 6 and up, safari, opera, chrome, firefox. On Mac: safari, opera, firefox. My verdict, after lots of testing, was that SOME versions of Internet Explorer exhibited the worst performance of all. And by that I don't mean just that my main layout elements (button, input text field, static text field) were displaced one or two pixels vertically (as Explorer does have another algorithm for line heights than other browsers); HALF of the button (the right half) completely disappeared out of view, since the button was displaced some 150 pixels to the right) -- a behaviour that was TOTALLY unacceptable to me. So although everything looked fine in Opera, Firefox etc., I couldn't get it to work in some versions of Explorer.
So the problem is this: Internet Explorer is still the most popular browser; and even some of the older versions are still very much in use. So I decided to develop my own code, so that I could guarantee it to work on ALL browsers. You can see the finished form in action on the home page on my website (see below for the link).
My design goal for this form was to create a robust form that would work in all of these eight browsers. What I also wanted to accomplish, in addition to just a form that would work well cross-platform-wise, was to not only be sure to invoke AWeber's "statistics" function (seemingly, older versions of AWeber form code didn't offer this), as well as having the opportunity to design my own special buttons. So I took the decision that I wanted to use Photoshop for designing the buttons, and that, when I was finished with its design, I would save it in .gif format, to be used by the HTML code in the form.
So I would recommend that you take a look at that code now. You can just go to my home page and use View > source code (or a similar command in whatever browser you are using) to see what I have done. In fact, I even will give you the possibility of just copying all that form code, if you just NOTIFY me that you would be interested in doing that. Then you can just design your own "sign up" button in your favorite paint program, and tweak some pixel widths and pixel heights to get the whole form where you want it.
Naturally, you don't want to forget to enter YOUR own form identification names, and your own "thank you" pages URLs, etc. But you can easily see in my code what to exchange, if you at the same time also generate an HTML version of the form you yourself have been struggling with, and compare the two. So, apart from the button, it's simply cut and paste.
Hoping that this will help you get going! Good luck!!
Thanks, Bo. I managed to make a form I can live with. I just hope their mail delivery is better than their form software. They could get rid of the nasty support people too. Thanks again.
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