My New Website

Nauzer · 02-27-2006

Hi guys,

I made a design for my new website and for the first time I used Flash in it!
So please i could use some comments on it to make it better

Content navigation doesn't work on clicking & there is no real content because well... i haven't got any content yet.
http://forum.leerlingenraad.college.nl/utopia
Thanks in advance,

Nauzer

GoldNetX · 02-27-2006

The style is nice, and it is highly polished, but you may want to some optimization. On a 750 kb/s the page took 1min and 30sec to load until I had something to interact with other than the splash page. From cache, (with only that page in it) the page still took 15 seconds until I was confronted with something to interact with.

While somethings do take a long time to load, it is very important to remember that the threshold of tolerance on the internet is extremely low. Rarely do most people jsut surfing around spend more than a minute on a page. So if you are taking that long to load, your user will probably never actually get to your page.

Also keep in mind that while cable connections and higher are quite common, wireless connections are just not as fast. And with the overwhelming increase in wireless usage, this needs to be kept in mind.

Overall though the site looks pretty nice. The only main suggestion on style that I have is that you may want to increase some contrast around your main content areas. You want people to notice what you want to show off, and as it is now the text boxes just seem to blend in with the background. The render though is quite nice, it has an amazingly watery feel.

Last thing is there seems to be a little glitch on your background. The stripes from the flash content don't match up with the rest of the stripes.

l3v · 02-27-2006

ooh it's damn good

like the animation.

MrProtoman · 02-28-2006

As stated, the lines don't match up, and since the flash image is centered, it may not line up at all on any resolution. I went through most of them my card/monitor would accept, and it didn't line up on any of them. You've got a few options on this one.
1) Change the diagonal lines to vertical or horizontal lines. This makes it easier to line them up, and reduces the maximum image width depending on your vertical line spacing.
2) Remove the lines totally and use the gradient all the way down the page.
3) Make the parts of the flash image that stick outside the main area, the three faded areas, static gif/png images with transparency and line them up on the outside of the flash image via tables or div tags..

A 4th option would be to make the background showing parts of the flash image transparent, if that's even possible. I haven't messed with flash much, so that may not even be a real option.

/my 2¢

bedlam123 · 02-28-2006

Wowee! Really smart! Do listen to GoldNetX about load time, try to reduce it. I also agee that increasing the contrast around the main content areas would help to pop the info. You did a great job, I would luv to see finished site.---bedlam123

Telos · 02-28-2006

I like it a lot. I've always admired people who can do such websites with flash. You've used flash well and still not overdoing it. I like the images breaking over the borders of the content. The color shades are also very good. One thing I don't like is the stripes in the background of the lighter content area. They are a bit too strong there. I would put their opacity a bit down. Otherwise great job there.

Nauzer · 02-28-2006

thanks for all the reactions, ofcourse i'm going to do something with your suggestions and i'll show the end result later ofcourse! Anyone else with c&c?

1ngay · 02-28-2006

Really cool flash and graphic, But I think you should do 1 page with flash intro, and other without flash, so if someone use high slow connection still can get fast into your website

alexcahiz · 02-28-2006

That design is awesome! Wow id love to have a website at that level! Great Work!

Thandy · 03-03-2006

Nice siggs and homepage:P the homepage was very nice keep on;P

gozvyu · 03-09-2006

Its a nice smooth design and the colors really work

ModernMother · 03-10-2006

Wow that was your first time using flash? I'm impressed! I've been wanting to learn it, was it difficult?

I was very impressed with the whole package.

Nauzer · 03-10-2006

flash is not very very difficult, just standard masking/tweening is very easy to do! Just the scripting and menu's are difficult to do.

It's just a lot of work