lava
April 14th, 2003, 04:01 PM
ok, I'm making a review of alex's site - he held us in suspense for a while, but he finally made one... http://www.alexsdesigns.net/
These comments are not in any particular order
1. If this is his first site, it's a very good attempt.
2. the page reads "Featured Experiement" is this intended, or a typo? (it's spelled experiment)
3. I didn't notice the gas effect until the 5th time I reloaded his page. It's a cool effect, but it's too short. He should either get rid of it or extend it..
4. I'd say simplify... there are just way too many top and bottom lines
5. I'm not too keen on the way he loads the 4 buttons at the start of the site. It's not smooth. He should try setting the easing on the tweens to 100.
6. The title on the browser reads "Contact Information" He should change this
7. About Me Section. He doesnt need a scroll bar there if he doesn't have enough information.
8. Portfolio - The folders should have descriptions
9. Contact - Seems a little overkill to have an animation just for an email address.
10. Links - the kirupa button is blurry. He should make sure to place everything at integer locations, to prevent antialiasing
11. The intro is also a little jagged... He should try to smooth things out.
12. He should try to use different loading sequences for different sections
My thoughts - This is a site that shows more flash skill than actual design skill. Personally, I don't like the use of Arial, Verdana, Times, etc in flash animations, because flash makes the fonts look like crap. He should try to find an adequate pixel font. Also, I don't understand why this swf takes so long to load... if it's because of the sound loops, he should make them into separate swfs, and use loadMovie() to stream them. Also, he should try to compress his sound effects as much as possible.
One more thought on the sound loops. It took me about 3 minutes to take a look at the entire site, and by 1.5 minutes, the soundloop had already gotten annoying. As he puts more content, visitors will spend more time at the site, but it will be easier for them to leave than to find the stop music button. He can get much better, longer, higher quality soundloops if they're imported. I'd encourage him to take a look at http://home.earthlink.net/~nathanmal/index2.html to see what kind of sound quality can be achieved.
With all that said, I'm surprised at the quality of this site. My first flash site was nothing compared to this one, and I can see that Alex has learned a lot in a relatively short amount of time. I'm looking forward to seeing the site 3 months from now.
Raf
These comments are not in any particular order
1. If this is his first site, it's a very good attempt.
2. the page reads "Featured Experiement" is this intended, or a typo? (it's spelled experiment)
3. I didn't notice the gas effect until the 5th time I reloaded his page. It's a cool effect, but it's too short. He should either get rid of it or extend it..
4. I'd say simplify... there are just way too many top and bottom lines
5. I'm not too keen on the way he loads the 4 buttons at the start of the site. It's not smooth. He should try setting the easing on the tweens to 100.
6. The title on the browser reads "Contact Information" He should change this
7. About Me Section. He doesnt need a scroll bar there if he doesn't have enough information.
8. Portfolio - The folders should have descriptions
9. Contact - Seems a little overkill to have an animation just for an email address.
10. Links - the kirupa button is blurry. He should make sure to place everything at integer locations, to prevent antialiasing
11. The intro is also a little jagged... He should try to smooth things out.
12. He should try to use different loading sequences for different sections
My thoughts - This is a site that shows more flash skill than actual design skill. Personally, I don't like the use of Arial, Verdana, Times, etc in flash animations, because flash makes the fonts look like crap. He should try to find an adequate pixel font. Also, I don't understand why this swf takes so long to load... if it's because of the sound loops, he should make them into separate swfs, and use loadMovie() to stream them. Also, he should try to compress his sound effects as much as possible.
One more thought on the sound loops. It took me about 3 minutes to take a look at the entire site, and by 1.5 minutes, the soundloop had already gotten annoying. As he puts more content, visitors will spend more time at the site, but it will be easier for them to leave than to find the stop music button. He can get much better, longer, higher quality soundloops if they're imported. I'd encourage him to take a look at http://home.earthlink.net/~nathanmal/index2.html to see what kind of sound quality can be achieved.
With all that said, I'm surprised at the quality of this site. My first flash site was nothing compared to this one, and I can see that Alex has learned a lot in a relatively short amount of time. I'm looking forward to seeing the site 3 months from now.
Raf