A site check...Please be mean

[craschnburn]

Hello All!!! How's everyone doing??

I just finished a site here. This is my second flash site that I've done. If you guys could check it out.

http://tomtestingsite.20m.com/

which will soon be www.charlotteshouses.com


Peace on earth.

Craschnburn:whistle:

PS. another thing. I couldn't get my preloader to work properly. My site would pause for a while, and then loads the preloader but is inconsistent. any idea?

thanks again

[nirmal.ca]

yea i did experience a slight pause, make a scene infront of the main movie and put this.... in frame one

preloader scene:

frame1: ifFrameLoaded ("main", 200) {
gotoAndPlay("main", 1);
}

skip 10 frames

10th frame: gotoAndPlay(1);

**change that 200 with the last frame number in your main scene.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now as for the site, i am not really liking the menu with the line thru it, or the smily face animation, how about having that bubble messages coming out from her head? Also when u click the menu, the buttons move a bit, (i dunno if you did that on purpose or not) Some of the text is a bit hard to read...
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Other then that... it looks nice.....

[craschnburn]

thanks nirmal. could you explain a little more on what you advised. to me it seems like another preloader that i'm including in there. or maybe i'm not understanding you correctly.

I like your comment though.

[nirmal.ca]

here you go man.... there is a attachment.... and that should help u out....

[craschnburn]

thanks br0

[FITZ]

I looked over your site and it is going well for you. Two things I found that I see as problems, but you know, opinions are like...

1. Lines going through the menu instead of underneath the text look like a screw-up, even though it probably isn't. Lines through text are usually a bad idea I think, and I am sure most eveyone would think that.

2. The individual clips seem awfully large for the amount of content. I think you should work on optimizing your file sizes more.

Well, there's my two cents. Nice job so far. Good luck with it!

fitz

P.S.

I prefer using code like this for preloaders. It is more accurate than using frame counting. Matter of preference I would assume though.

Put this, on say, frame ten. (Flash tends to ignore code on the first few frames sometimes.)

//Initialize variables for ease of use

var loadedbytes=getBytesLoaded();
var totalbytes=getBytesTotal();

// Check to see if movie is loaded

if (loadedbytes < totalbytes){

// If not loaded

gotoAndPlay "1";
}

// if loaded go to next scene where your content is

else {
nextScene();
}

[craschnburn]

Thanks fitz

I would like to hear more comments. I really do appreciate them.

Any tips on optimizing the files.
:cowboy:

[FITZ]

Very hard to do without looking at the actual .fla and
I don't really know how advanced you are at Flash, or how advanced I am for that matter!

Here are a couple general tips:

Generally you want to keep your jpegs small. (quality 60 at most)

Use symbols whenever possible, and reuse them. Even for small things. If you have a line, make it a symbol, than scale it wherever you need a line.

Don't tween what you can do with actionscript. This is a give and take though, processor use vs. download time.

Anyway, like I said, it is hard to do without the fla.

Keep working at it though. The program isn't hard to figure out at all with some time. Get a book or two or go through a bunch of tutorials online. Best way to learn it I think.

[subquark]

yeah, I don't like the lines through the menu either

[Didiusthegreat]

I was just about to say the same subquark.

And btw what is are those banners doing beneath; that's not very nice.

[craschnburn]

man....i really like you guys. any other tips?

thank you all....especially PJ.