Site for a School Project - Love in Spain

[FlashPirateYarr]

Hey K-team! I'm studying abroad in Madrid this semester and decided to put my flash skills to use on a final project for a workshop called "Spain is Different" about different conceptions of love between Spain and the US. The site is in spanish, but I'd appreciate some suggestions on the design. It's my first full-browser flash site and my first site incorporating Fuse. That said, it's a little disappointing that I don't show off Fuse's amazing capabilities except for a few embellishments. Any suggestions on that or in general?

the link:

http://homepages.nyu.edu/~smg369/spainisdifferent.html (http://homepages.nyu.edu/%7Esmg369/spainisdifferent.html)

ps. I recognize that the information could just as easily (and perhaps even more intuitively) have been conveyed in a standard HTML page, but I'm hoping some flair in the presentation will make up for my (shameful slouch) less-than-arduous research. Hey, it's not like it's for an actual class or anything.

pps. to spanish speakers: i apologize for the grammatical errors, most of the text was written by my partner on this one.

[sWo0p]

Looks good.. but not mutch to see yet... maybe you can stream a little more of the audio :D... and some pictures .. :D

but looks good

[roz]

i like the plants in the corners very much! also the color scheme is a pleasant one.
i guess you'll add more text and some pictures? cause now it looks a bit empty.

ps. can you tell me how did you create those flowers?

[FlashPirateYarr]

i like the plants in the corners very much! also the color scheme is a pleasant one.
i guess you'll add more text and some pictures? cause now it looks a bit empty.

ps. can you tell me how did you create those flowers?

They're photoshop brushes from a graphic artist named Jason Gaylor. He provides them free (along with a few other gorgeous brush sets) on his website. I saved them as PNGs in P-shop and tacked them up in the corners.

http://designfruit.com/jasongaylor/blog/?p=37

[roz]

thank you :)

[hl]

Some transitions would be nice, else, this would be better as an HTML site.

[hybrid101]

yeah, mor transitions. very nice work there btw, i like the site:D

[built_by]

i think it would work better if your content didnt touch the gray plants and a deferent nav. with some more animation. if you dont want to do that, you might as well make this in html.

[FlashPirateYarr]

Hey everyone! Thanks for the feedback. Version 2 can be seen here:

http://homepages.nyu.edu/~smg369/spainisdifferent2.html (http://homepages.nyu.edu/%7Esmg369/spainisdifferent2.html)


In addition to animating the menu buttons, I seriously spiced up the navigation scheme by incorporating Lee Brimelow's carousel tutorial (at www.gotoandlearn.com (http://www.gotoandlearn.com) ). The placeholder images in there right now will be replaced with alpha-transparent PNGs of headshots of the interviewees. I also threw the nationality flags into the tooltips.

I thought about streaming "Let's Get it On," but it's being in English made me reconsider. Plus, since the viewer will be doing mostly reading on the site, a song with words could be distracting.

Keep the criticism/suggestions coming! I really appreciate it!

Thanks,
Steve

[roz]

Hey, Pirate, those smiling faces are neat! But they're spinning too fast for me, hehehe, i had some trouble catching them! And another thing - how should i know you meant them to be clicked twice? i mean, i found that out by myself, but it was completely by accident! i think you should either make them one-time-clickable or mention somewhere around that the user needs to click twice in order to see the corresponding text.
and another thing: why dont you think about a repeating sound background? i mean something light to the ear, not something distracting. cause that single sample just doesnt fit (for me). if i had to do it, i would either make a totally mute site, or a full-sound one.

[FlashPirateYarr]

And another thing - how should i know you meant them to be clicked twice?

Thanks for the feedback, roz. This one confused me a little. When I run the site (in Firefox 2.0) there's no need to double-click anything. I think the problem might be that the placeholder (smiley) movieclips have lots of gaps in between the eyes & mouth and head, and when you click on them (especially because they're moving so fast) they move out from under the mouse before you can release. That may be why you had to click twice.

When I put the actual photos in, they'll be 128x128 rectangles with no gaps--so the clicking problem should cease to be. Even so, I agree that the rotation is a bit fast. I'll slow it down.

Thanks for pointing out the useability concerns. I'll update soon.

[roz]

ooh, i didnt pay attention that they're just temporarily there! it's probably really because of the gaps, but since there won't be any gaps in the final thing, i guess there wont be a problem :)

good luck, and i hope you get an A+ (or whatever is the highest grade in your grade system) :thumb:

[FlashPirateYarr]

One last update. I added as many photos of interviewees as I could get (I decided to add photos after the interviews had taken place and some of the interviewees didn't have photos to send me). I submitted the project today, so what's here is the finished product:

http://homepages.nyu.edu/~smg369/spainisdifferent.html (http://homepages.nyu.edu/%7Esmg369/spainisdifferent.html)

Even so, if anyone has any final critiques of the site, I'd still like to hear them. They'll help me out for next time. And thanks to everyone who offered input on this project so far. It's a great community we've got here.

Love,
Steve

[Anogar]

There is a bug in the spinning carousel section where only one picture will appear, and it'll spin around in space by itself.

[roz]

There is a bug in the spinning carousel section where only one picture will appear, and it'll spin around in space by itself.

oO
i didn't see such a thing!

[FlashPirateYarr]

There is a bug in the spinning carousel section where only one picture will appear, and it'll spin around in space by itself.

Yes, I got that bug in an early stage when I created each of the spinning MC's dynamically from a template at runtime. I couldn't fix it with code so I just created six versions each with a different picture and the bug seemed to disappear. But you're right Anogar, it took me a few tries but I got the bug to show its nasty head again. I'll recheck the code.

Thanks.