first draft flash site...opinions/suggestions welcomed

[Swashbuckler]

Hi all,

This is an early draft of a site I've created for a friend of mine.

Basically its an online CV for his film audio company in the UK.

Now for the time being I've uploaded it to a free asp site so please ignore the ad links at the bottom of the page.

I would appreciate any criticisms and suggestions you have.

May main concerns are:

1) The washed out background shapes on the main page.

2) Those with Mozilla FireFox will experience a slight flicker when turning the pages of the cv. (It works ok with IE)

3) Also I'm still waiting for my friend to supply with a few details so most of the text boxes are empty at the moment. So go easy when saying there's not a lot of content.

Any way enough yabbering from me here is the link:http://j.1asphost.com/teldridge/ (http://j.1asphost.com/teldridge/)

[Theros]

Its good, but In the begining I had to wait a few secs b4 the menu finished loading up, Also theres not enough color and detail? Maybe spruce it up with some palettes from ColorLovers...

[Swashbuckler]

Its good, but In the begining I had to wait a few secs b4 the menu finished loading up, Also theres not enough color and detail? Maybe spruce it up with some palettes from ColorLovers...

Thanks Theros for your comments,

I used colourlovers for the palette on the main page. An excellent site it is too. I think I've toned down the opacity a touch too much so I'll mess around with it. It certainly looks washed out on a Mac.

[Theros]

Oh noes lol, didnt check my footer size.. oh well i decrease the size of it

[G]

dam pop-ups :(

First thing I didn't get were the random shapes in the background...they just didn't go with the design whatsoever :(

The nav bar looked really poor in just black and white....you have thousands of color combinations to choose don't go for one that has been overtaken in time :)

I thought the content areas were bland and boring.....just text with an image here and there, I think if you had a better layout then it may pull off.

Now the best thing about the site was the CV book thing...but this book over the last 4 or 5 months has been used so heavily that I don't think its a "cool" thing anymore...6 months ago everyone was "thats great" but now after site after site has used it and customed it for themseleves its kind of lost its touch :(

[Swashbuckler]

dam pop-ups :(

First thing I didn't get were the random shapes in the background...they just didn't go with the design whatsoever :(

The nav bar looked really poor in just black and white....you have thousands of color combinations to choose don't go for one that has been overtaken in time :)

I thought the content areas were bland and boring.....just text with an image here and there, I think if you had a better layout then it may pull off.

Now the best thing about the site was the CV book thing...but this book over the last 4 or 5 months has been used so heavily that I don't think its a "cool" thing anymore...6 months ago everyone was "thats great" but now after site after site has used it and customed it for themseleves its kind of lost its touch :(

Well in answer to your suggestions/critique the black & white nav menu was a nod towards the Def Tone record label so that was the logic behind the colour scheme.

Also some of the buttons are just dummy buttons until such time as I get some images from my friend.

Could you elaborate on how I could spruce up the content/layout? Admitedly I am still waiting on a lot text info and will also ask for some photo's of the audio equipment that my friend dabbles in.

All in all, I agree with you that the PageFlick componant has been done to death but (and shoot me down if I have the wrong attitude) your coming from a perspective of somebody who looks at flash sites day in day out. Whereas your average user in all likelyhood will probably not be too concerned.

Thanks for your comments though I will seek to remedy them over the next few days.

[wakeup]

All in all, I agree with you that the PageFlick componant has been done to death but (and shoot me down if I have the wrong attitude) your coming from a perspective of somebody who looks at flash sites day in day out. Whereas your average user in all likelyhood will probably not be too concerned.

you do have a point there......i dont think it has beeen used to saturation.....yet!!

the txt on the menu dosnt look righ....its sliding in out etc, but is too fast to see the effect that this slider was built for!! just looks a bit mesy....

pages on cv turn V slowly! and took a while to load on dial up. blue cover page doesnt fir. pages look cool

[Swashbuckler]

All in all, I agree with you that the PageFlick componant has been done to death but (and shoot me down if I have the wrong attitude) your coming from a perspective of somebody who looks at flash sites day in day out. Whereas your average user in all likelyhood will probably not be too concerned.

you do have a point there......i dont think it has beeen used to saturation.....yet!!

the txt on the menu dosnt look righ....its sliding in out etc, but is too fast to see the effect that this slider was built for!! just looks a bit mesy....

pages on cv turn V slowly! and took a while to load on dial up. blue cover page doesnt fir. pages look cool

Thanks wakeup,

Interesting points you had on the menu and now that you mention it could do with tweaking.

The blue covers of each cv are definitely going...that's the default colour of the PageFlick componant.

I wish I could have made it faster for dial-ups. Just out interest what are you on 56k? The best I could do with dial up users in mind was to divide the site into three...the holding site and two seperate swf's for each CV.

Part of the reason is that unfortunately both cv's are quite long and detailed, so in the end you have something like 30 + pages of animation and text. I think if I could pair it down to maybe 6 pages per cv it would be a lot faster. It might just a quirk of the film industry whereby they put every single job they do!

Thanks for the comments much appreciated!

[Swashbuckler]

Guys I've noticed that the bandwidth to the site has been exceeded temporarily (thats what you get for choosing a free asp host) :} !

Bear with it it should be back up in a few hours!

Regards

Swash

[G]

All in all, I agree with you that the PageFlick componant has been done to death but (and shoot me down if I have the wrong attitude) your coming from a perspective of somebody who looks at flash sites day in day out. Whereas your average user in all likelyhood will probably not be too concerned.

yeh its probably just me :(

Well the content all looks to simple at the moment reminds me of a simple html layout....even when you get the content it would still look the same. Maybe add something up their to create a little visual focus or set the text out in a fairly rare way...format the images to look a little different...oersonalise them for your site don't make them look generic.

[BoonDock]

Graphically it's not the best, but it's a sound idea. Try and improve the graphics, pay attention to whatever everyone else has said, get a good server and get rid of the pop ups ;) And see how it goes from there.

[slinkyart]

It's okay. My biggest suggestion would be to not have the navigation at the bottom of the page. Because for me, when the page loaded up, the navigation was "below the fold" (I had to scroll to get to it). I would also enhance the graphic quality a little bit of the navigation.

[Zach-E2]

It's okay. My biggest suggestion would be to not have the navigation at the bottom of the page. Because for me, when the page loaded up, the navigation was "below the fold" (I had to scroll to get to it). I would also enhance the graphic quality a little bit of the navigation.

i agree with this.

good luck, mate.

cheers.
z

[SimplyArun]

I guess you should consider all the suggestions here. Especially the navigation and the colors
cheers