TheCubed website...

[thecubed]

First off, I would like to say that BioRUST is an excellently designed website!

Now, I would like to know what anyone thinks of TheCubed

Version 2: http://www.thecubed.com/main.html

Version 5: http://www.thecubed.com/v5/

The one that really needs reviewing would be v5... v2 is just there for you to see
the difference.

when you go to v5, if you are on dial-up - the static thing is about 1meg - so you might want to use this link...

http://www.thecubed.com/v5/main.html (dial up or slow connections only...)

V5 was designed in photoshop 7 and dreamweaver MX.

The server is through our home DSL line - so it can slow down - but most people say v5 is fast, though.

My messageboard is at http://board.thecubed.com .

Let me know what you think of it all --
Also - thanks beforehand just for reading this!

[Man1c M0g]

OOOooOOOF! You *REALLY* need to optimize the static animation m8 - a small tiling texture would load much quicker than a 1mb file.... which takes some time to load, even on my 1.5mbit connection!

[Joe]

That static takes to long to load.... Nice site though. (V5)

Joe.

[Fimus]

Static thing loads REALLY slow on my 5mbit connection.

[thecubed]

Yeah, I should use flash or something...
But I have no clue how to do static in flash ...
Glad you like it , and thanks for the comments!

[Fimus]

You could reduce the quality by a lot, it's just static.

OR, you could take one small part of it and tile it.

[thecubed]

ok, that sounds good - by the way, Fimus - nice website .

[Fimus]

Thanks man.

[jonbalza]

Not only does the static take WAY too long to load, - that's been discussed so I won't dwell on it - but that entire page is unnecessary.

What do we learn from it? Nothing. No Browser compatablility warning, no "Downloading now" or "be patient". It just adds one more click and a LOT of wait time to your website.

But the kicker is that one doesn't even know where to click right away. My first thought was to click on your name, but that doesn't do anything. I don't want to be bothered with trying to figure out what to do when I go to a website, I need it to be easy to understand.

Oh yeah, the horizontal scroll bar on the "Gaming" page needs to be fixed.

This isn't to say it's a bad website, so sorry if I come across as harsh, but those types of splash pages just tick me off.

[Fimus]

I thought it was pretty easy to navigate... you click the static, is that not obvious? It also redirects you if you hesitate. I think the intro is original. I like the mods section too.

[thecubed]

The static thing is there to show people that TheCubed is actually doing something - if there was no page before the main page, the java applet for the news ticker would take forever to load , hence a blank page for about 10 seconds. but since there is a page before it, Internet Explorer & netscape hold that page there while the next page is loading...

Yes, the static could be optimized, or some text that says click here to enter might work, too instead of the static...

The page should also preload the images - so they are cached before the main page came up. If there was no preload page, the HTML in the main page would show before the graphics would show...

Some optimizations are needed, though...

Thank you for your comments - they are much appreciated, by the way - check out the MODS and BOARD section!

[thecubed]

OK - the static is gone! Now try it!

http://www.thecubed.com

Thanks!

[Fimus]

I liked the static.

[thecubed]

Oh, sorry - too many people saying that it took WAY too long to load...

Thanks for the comment, though

[jonbalza]

OK, if you were going to keep the page, the static didn't have to go. You just needed a better way of optimizing it, such as the tiled suggestion, or increasing the size of each of the noise grains, or reducing the number of frames in the animation.

Here's a suggestion, though. ~200kb is STILL too big for what that page is. You should not be using .gifs for all of those images, and you should be a little tighter with your slices. Attached is a better way for you to slice up those images that will give you a smaller page size. I tested it, and it should be less than <100kb with a similar quality.