I really like it (my site beta)...
-
Nice site! Ditch the damn music! Oh how I HATE that! RageInTheMachine9532 "...a pungent, ghastly, stinky piece of cheese!" -- The Roaming Gnome
That would make 2 of us and a good point there!:laugh:
Some assembly required. Code-frog System Architects, Inc.
-
Your better at Flash than I am. E=mc2 -> BOOM
It's not me. Read the bottom half of my original post. I'm letting a friend use my traffic as a means of promoting his skills. - Rex
Some assembly required. Code-frog System Architects, Inc.
-
I really hate sites that use Flash for no reason other than flashy animations, but I'll try to put that aside for now... 1. Technical issue: Setting the sound volume to "off" on the site does turn off the music, but it does not turn off all the sounds (like the on-mouse-over sounds of the links). Consider renaming that setting to "music", or better yet, make it turn off all sounds. 2. Usability issue: The site uses flash, so I cannot use the browser's back button. Therefore, the site itself has to provide a substitute. At the moment, it is very hard to figure out how to get back to the first page once you clicked on one of the "What we do"-links, for example. Also consider making your logo a link to the start page; most sites do this. 3. Design/usability issue: More than half of my screen area is just grey background on the page at the moment, and I am "only" running at 1280x1024. I don't like sites wasting my screen area, so if possible, consider making the site resize dynamically with the browser window. 4. Readability issue: The light blue links on bright white background are a little bit difficult to read, at least on my screen. Now that I've complained enough ;P, there are of course also positive aspects: Colour: I do like the colour scheme; it looks good and is consistent. The logo fits in well. Design: The overall appearance, with the rounded corners and the grey or white areas, goes down well for me. I think it looks nice, but still very professional. I hope this comes across as constructive criticism; despite my dislike for Flash based sites :rolleyes:, I did not intend to be negative.
Chaque homme de culture a deux patries: la sienne - et la France. (Thomas Jefferson)Not only was that constructive but that was valuable. You get a 5 for being sincere and honest as well as understanding that criticism and praise go together and should always stay together. Thank you for taking the time to offer that feedback.
- Rex
Some assembly required. Code-frog System Architects, Inc.
-
What do you guys think? It's all in flash but you have to understand the reason for doing so. There's plenty of good reasons and I really mean that. So don't bash that part of it. It won't be changing. Aside from that though what's the consensus? I think this guy does a pretty good job for having a whole lot of nothing to work with. I really just gave him free reign to do this however he wanted.
Some minor background. My site gets a pile of hits every day. I forget what my stats are but they are insane for what's on my site currently (which is nothing). This guy is a good friend and someone I want to work with. He's a great designer and can do a lot of stuff. So I told him to show off through my site and he can have any work that comes that's in his skillset. That's why we chose flash. He can do HTML to but who can't. So he wanted to show off some other skills. I'm cool with it, very cool with it.
http://www.jedsplit.com/rex/index2.html[^]
What do you think about taking the blue region that the header is in and making it a rounded rectangle of the same proportions (width) as the one below it that encompasses all the content?
Some assembly required.
Code-frog System Architects, Inc.
-- modified at 21:23 Friday 13th January, 2006
-
What do you guys think? It's all in flash but you have to understand the reason for doing so. There's plenty of good reasons and I really mean that. So don't bash that part of it. It won't be changing. Aside from that though what's the consensus? I think this guy does a pretty good job for having a whole lot of nothing to work with. I really just gave him free reign to do this however he wanted.
Some minor background. My site gets a pile of hits every day. I forget what my stats are but they are insane for what's on my site currently (which is nothing). This guy is a good friend and someone I want to work with. He's a great designer and can do a lot of stuff. So I told him to show off through my site and he can have any work that comes that's in his skillset. That's why we chose flash. He can do HTML to but who can't. So he wanted to show off some other skills. I'm cool with it, very cool with it.
http://www.jedsplit.com/rex/index2.html[^]
What do you think about taking the blue region that the header is in and making it a rounded rectangle of the same proportions (width) as the one below it that encompasses all the content?
Some assembly required.
Code-frog System Architects, Inc.
-- modified at 21:23 Friday 13th January, 2006
code-frog wrote:
He can do HTML to but who can't.
Actually most people *think* they can do HTML, but usually make a piss-poor website. To make HTML sing, it takes some skill. Jeremy Falcon
-
What do you guys think? It's all in flash but you have to understand the reason for doing so. There's plenty of good reasons and I really mean that. So don't bash that part of it. It won't be changing. Aside from that though what's the consensus? I think this guy does a pretty good job for having a whole lot of nothing to work with. I really just gave him free reign to do this however he wanted.
Some minor background. My site gets a pile of hits every day. I forget what my stats are but they are insane for what's on my site currently (which is nothing). This guy is a good friend and someone I want to work with. He's a great designer and can do a lot of stuff. So I told him to show off through my site and he can have any work that comes that's in his skillset. That's why we chose flash. He can do HTML to but who can't. So he wanted to show off some other skills. I'm cool with it, very cool with it.
http://www.jedsplit.com/rex/index2.html[^]
What do you think about taking the blue region that the header is in and making it a rounded rectangle of the same proportions (width) as the one below it that encompasses all the content?
Some assembly required.
Code-frog System Architects, Inc.
-- modified at 21:23 Friday 13th January, 2006
About the website, the web is not a jukebox. Unless you're a multimedia company (and even then maybe not) there's no need for background music on a website. It's giving the wrong appearence. Also, like the other guy said, the color scheme needs to contrast more for people with bad eyes, etc. Overall the look is nice, but with flash you loose a lot of "web usability" like forward and back, and being able to bookmark pages, etc. Some people tend to dislike these sites as they are less user friendly. Although most John Q Publics don't give a rat's ass about anything but eye candy. :laugh: Overall though, it does have an easy menu structure, which is important. And the look and feel is "neat". But, my personal view is that "neat" at the cost of usability isn't worth it. Anyway, that's my 2 cents. My consulting fee should be in the mail by next week. :) Jeremy Falcon
-
What do you guys think? It's all in flash but you have to understand the reason for doing so. There's plenty of good reasons and I really mean that. So don't bash that part of it. It won't be changing. Aside from that though what's the consensus? I think this guy does a pretty good job for having a whole lot of nothing to work with. I really just gave him free reign to do this however he wanted.
Some minor background. My site gets a pile of hits every day. I forget what my stats are but they are insane for what's on my site currently (which is nothing). This guy is a good friend and someone I want to work with. He's a great designer and can do a lot of stuff. So I told him to show off through my site and he can have any work that comes that's in his skillset. That's why we chose flash. He can do HTML to but who can't. So he wanted to show off some other skills. I'm cool with it, very cool with it.
http://www.jedsplit.com/rex/index2.html[^]
What do you think about taking the blue region that the header is in and making it a rounded rectangle of the same proportions (width) as the one below it that encompasses all the content?
Some assembly required.
Code-frog System Architects, Inc.
-- modified at 21:23 Friday 13th January, 2006
I don’t know. I am still waiting for it to finish loading. Joking aside, flash has many advantages but it does take some time to load. I like the design except for the transitional effects which, in my opinion, take too long. The first time you see the effect it looks OK but after that I was saying to myself, “OK already, I want to get to the next page”. Since flash loads the whole presentation before displaying it that would have nothing to do with my slow connection. Then again I am viewing it on my “stress test” machine, an old laptop (200MHz) with not a lot of memory. After I finish testing on a 2GHz machine I always run a test on this machine to see what happens on a slow machine with low memory. Sometimes the results point out things that are not apparent on a faster, better equipped machines. Granted that you folks in first world countries do not usually have dial-up modems these days, and your site may not be targeting people with such antiquated equipment. I also have to say that I never get connected at 56KB here, but we are still thankful that we have a land line to the house, which first became available last June, and I was lucky enough to get one of 3 available for this district. Try it out on a dialup connection just to see what some folks will experience. A cousin from my wife’s family came to visit for the holidays from Korea and her husband wanted to show me his site. He also uses flash and was surprised at how long it took to load. In Korea, one of the most networked countries on the planet, he said things loaded in a “flash” - sorry I just couldn’t resist - but here in LOS (land of smiles) it was a totally different experience. I suggested to him that maybe he could present a splash screen, to give people something to look at, and read, while the presentation loaded. I would suggest something that changes each time so that they will actually read it every time they visit the site. Also if you can get your main page to render quickly and then in the background continue to load the rest of the presentation starting with what statistically is your first click through, second highest, etc., the user experience, on a slow connection, may be improved. And yes, as has been suggested by others, loose the music. I'm on-line therefore I am. JimmyRopes
-
What do you guys think? It's all in flash but you have to understand the reason for doing so. There's plenty of good reasons and I really mean that. So don't bash that part of it. It won't be changing. Aside from that though what's the consensus? I think this guy does a pretty good job for having a whole lot of nothing to work with. I really just gave him free reign to do this however he wanted.
Some minor background. My site gets a pile of hits every day. I forget what my stats are but they are insane for what's on my site currently (which is nothing). This guy is a good friend and someone I want to work with. He's a great designer and can do a lot of stuff. So I told him to show off through my site and he can have any work that comes that's in his skillset. That's why we chose flash. He can do HTML to but who can't. So he wanted to show off some other skills. I'm cool with it, very cool with it.
http://www.jedsplit.com/rex/index2.html[^]
What do you think about taking the blue region that the header is in and making it a rounded rectangle of the same proportions (width) as the one below it that encompasses all the content?
Some assembly required.
Code-frog System Architects, Inc.
-- modified at 21:23 Friday 13th January, 2006
I found the site very beautiful, and professional-looking (I *loved* the page transitions) , but some things you should consider about your website: 1. Although your company provide multimedia design services, I still don't like the background music loop: it's too short, and, after 3 minutes *I HATE IT* (I left it opened in a tab on Firefox as I write this, and I needed to close it). 2. Whe rewrote our site from the scratch sometime ago: since our site was entirely written in Flash, no one found us on Google anymore. Depending on your marketing approach, it may be something to consider (or not). I don't see dead pixels anymore... Yes, even I am blogging now!
-
What do you guys think? It's all in flash but you have to understand the reason for doing so. There's plenty of good reasons and I really mean that. So don't bash that part of it. It won't be changing. Aside from that though what's the consensus? I think this guy does a pretty good job for having a whole lot of nothing to work with. I really just gave him free reign to do this however he wanted.
Some minor background. My site gets a pile of hits every day. I forget what my stats are but they are insane for what's on my site currently (which is nothing). This guy is a good friend and someone I want to work with. He's a great designer and can do a lot of stuff. So I told him to show off through my site and he can have any work that comes that's in his skillset. That's why we chose flash. He can do HTML to but who can't. So he wanted to show off some other skills. I'm cool with it, very cool with it.
http://www.jedsplit.com/rex/index2.html[^]
What do you think about taking the blue region that the header is in and making it a rounded rectangle of the same proportions (width) as the one below it that encompasses all the content?
Some assembly required.
Code-frog System Architects, Inc.
-- modified at 21:23 Friday 13th January, 2006
Music Be Gone. There is no reason a web site (like yours) needs music, there are plenty of reasons against, and no web site should start music without asking. It's not just that the music sucks, there shouldn't be any music, period. The mouse over effects are ok I guess, and I like them.
code-frog wrote:
What do you think about taking the blue region that the header is in and making it a rounded rectangle of the same proportions (width) as the one below it that encompasses all the content?
No opinion. It looks good the way it is.
We say "get a life" to each other, disappointed or jokingly. What we forget, though, is that this is possibly the most destructive advice you can give to a geek.
boost your code || Fold With Us! || sighist -
What do you guys think? It's all in flash but you have to understand the reason for doing so. There's plenty of good reasons and I really mean that. So don't bash that part of it. It won't be changing. Aside from that though what's the consensus? I think this guy does a pretty good job for having a whole lot of nothing to work with. I really just gave him free reign to do this however he wanted.
Some minor background. My site gets a pile of hits every day. I forget what my stats are but they are insane for what's on my site currently (which is nothing). This guy is a good friend and someone I want to work with. He's a great designer and can do a lot of stuff. So I told him to show off through my site and he can have any work that comes that's in his skillset. That's why we chose flash. He can do HTML to but who can't. So he wanted to show off some other skills. I'm cool with it, very cool with it.
http://www.jedsplit.com/rex/index2.html[^]
What do you think about taking the blue region that the header is in and making it a rounded rectangle of the same proportions (width) as the one below it that encompasses all the content?
Some assembly required.
Code-frog System Architects, Inc.
-- modified at 21:23 Friday 13th January, 2006
I usually don't like Flash sites but... your one is kicking ass!! Congrats! ___________________________________ Tozzi is right: Gaia is getting rid of us. My Blog [ITA]
-
What do you guys think? It's all in flash but you have to understand the reason for doing so. There's plenty of good reasons and I really mean that. So don't bash that part of it. It won't be changing. Aside from that though what's the consensus? I think this guy does a pretty good job for having a whole lot of nothing to work with. I really just gave him free reign to do this however he wanted.
Some minor background. My site gets a pile of hits every day. I forget what my stats are but they are insane for what's on my site currently (which is nothing). This guy is a good friend and someone I want to work with. He's a great designer and can do a lot of stuff. So I told him to show off through my site and he can have any work that comes that's in his skillset. That's why we chose flash. He can do HTML to but who can't. So he wanted to show off some other skills. I'm cool with it, very cool with it.
http://www.jedsplit.com/rex/index2.html[^]
What do you think about taking the blue region that the header is in and making it a rounded rectangle of the same proportions (width) as the one below it that encompasses all the content?
Some assembly required.
Code-frog System Architects, Inc.
-- modified at 21:23 Friday 13th January, 2006
Hi Code-Frog, I wont go into the time it takes to load the page to much but I think the time it takes is unacceptable for a commercial website,so I would look into speeding it up. I think your Logo became real nice, except for the part that say's system architects, that part I would make brighter so it's more readable,the grey on grey background weakens it a little I think, and it's an to important message because it's what your business is doing! The blue Header I like as it is ,and I wouldn't change it to a rounded rectangle of the same size as the below part because than it's like two islands on a page, instead of a page with a island were the information is located and displayed. In general I think your site looks good but as a potential customer I would ask the question why you didn't use an such important technology as .Net for building your corporate website, while advertising for it as a preferred tool. One thing I wouldn't do also is redirect visitors to other sites , I would use a separate page to explain about a tool you use , for example showing a nice report pointing out that the preferred tool to generate this report is Iron Speed, and the reasons for using this tool is... , instead of redirecting to an other site, and perhaps loosing the attention of a potential customer. But most important I think you should make clear what a System Architects job is and how the process of designing a system architecture works,(let's say I’m a potential customer who is looking for a system architect that's really what I want to know), so under " What we do" I expect this information to be made clear to me as a visitor, as well as the modelling languages you use,such as UML or DSDM to name a few I know. So I would say look closely to the information you provide from the point of a visitor who is looking for a System Architect, and what information this person wants to find ,and combine this with the great skills of your flash designer to make the presentation of this information more attractive to visitors. Success with building your business! With friendly regards, Eric Goedhart Skype: eric-goedhart Deep in the fundamental heart of mind and Universe there is a reason. -Slartibartfast
-
That would make 2 of us and a good point there!:laugh:
Some assembly required. Code-frog System Architects, Inc.
Just choose an other style[^] of music! Oh yeah, and i think the letters are too small. And because its Flash (it's very cool though :)), you can't make them bigger...
"..Commit yourself to quality from day one..it's better to do nothing at all than to do something badly.." -- Mark McCormick
|| Fold With Us! || Pensieve || VG.Net || -- modified at 8:39 Saturday 14th January, 2006
-
code-frog wrote:
He can do HTML to but who can't.
Actually most people *think* they can do HTML, but usually make a piss-poor website. To make HTML sing, it takes some skill. Jeremy Falcon
You are my hero of the day :-D regards, Paul Watson Ireland Colib and ilikecameras. K(arl) wrote: oh, and BTW, CHRISTIAN ISN'T A PARADOX, HE IS A TASMANIAN!
-
What do you guys think? It's all in flash but you have to understand the reason for doing so. There's plenty of good reasons and I really mean that. So don't bash that part of it. It won't be changing. Aside from that though what's the consensus? I think this guy does a pretty good job for having a whole lot of nothing to work with. I really just gave him free reign to do this however he wanted.
Some minor background. My site gets a pile of hits every day. I forget what my stats are but they are insane for what's on my site currently (which is nothing). This guy is a good friend and someone I want to work with. He's a great designer and can do a lot of stuff. So I told him to show off through my site and he can have any work that comes that's in his skillset. That's why we chose flash. He can do HTML to but who can't. So he wanted to show off some other skills. I'm cool with it, very cool with it.
http://www.jedsplit.com/rex/index2.html[^]
What do you think about taking the blue region that the header is in and making it a rounded rectangle of the same proportions (width) as the one below it that encompasses all the content?
Some assembly required.
Code-frog System Architects, Inc.
-- modified at 21:23 Friday 13th January, 2006
I really like the design, colours, layout and structure. The logo also came out really well when as a part of the overall design. Some criticism though, hopefully you find it constructive:
- Your mate is a good designer and a whizz with Flash but his HTML skills are poor. He might have actually just done a Flash HTML export and left it at that. As Jeremy said not everyone can make HTML sing. The HTML is invalid and poorly structured. Google and other search bots like valid, well structured HTML (this is because they are code and code works best with properly structured XML documents.) There is also zero metadata for search bots to index. At the least the Flash object should have a summary element so that the bots have some text to index.
- I think you have already been told the down-sides of Flash (no bookmarking being a major one, not being able to send page links to clients another.)
- Maybe a darker cyan for the links on white?
- You will want a codefrog.com domain at some point. It helps when your domain matches the name in the title and what is displayed in the logo. More professional and helps search bots.
- There is no home page. The Company Info page pulls double duty which is a bit confusing. From the home page I clicked on Company Info and got back the same page. Not a big problem.
- The contact form needs some work. The pop-up window message is not in keeping with the rest of the site. Also get rid of the Reset button, they are more of a hindrance than a help and being so close to Submit is easily mistakenly clicked.
- On focusing on the Newsletter Sign-up Box it would be nice if the text in it disapeared or was selected so that when I started typing it was replaced. Otherwise you have to delete the text and then start typing.
All in all a well designed site. I just wish it wasn't in Flash. The only benefit Flash has brought to the site is the page transition which is a dubious benefit really. Still, your friend is a good designer. Does he have a portfolio online? regards, Paul Watson Ireland Colib and ilikecameras. K(arl) wrote: oh, and BTW, CHRISTIAN ISN'T A PARADOX, HE IS A TASMANIAN!
-
What do you guys think? It's all in flash but you have to understand the reason for doing so. There's plenty of good reasons and I really mean that. So don't bash that part of it. It won't be changing. Aside from that though what's the consensus? I think this guy does a pretty good job for having a whole lot of nothing to work with. I really just gave him free reign to do this however he wanted.
Some minor background. My site gets a pile of hits every day. I forget what my stats are but they are insane for what's on my site currently (which is nothing). This guy is a good friend and someone I want to work with. He's a great designer and can do a lot of stuff. So I told him to show off through my site and he can have any work that comes that's in his skillset. That's why we chose flash. He can do HTML to but who can't. So he wanted to show off some other skills. I'm cool with it, very cool with it.
http://www.jedsplit.com/rex/index2.html[^]
What do you think about taking the blue region that the header is in and making it a rounded rectangle of the same proportions (width) as the one below it that encompasses all the content?
Some assembly required.
Code-frog System Architects, Inc.
-- modified at 21:23 Friday 13th January, 2006
As was said by others, the overall site design and layout is very nicely done. The background (white) / text (cyan) color combination does need to have better contrast to make the text easier to read. That being said, I concur with a few of the other comments about the down side of using Flash. Three years ago the company I work for decided to have the site redesigned using Flash to give it a "Minority Report" look...unfortunately, the download time for the main page was "dial-up unfriendly" (and ours was only 100K compared to your 800K) and most importantly, search engines could not index the Flash site. Search Engines are smart enough to reject HTML wrappers around Graphic oriented sites (meaning that tags like TITLE, META DESCRIPTION & KEYWORDS, image ALT TEXT, etc need supporting page content text that is readable by the engines to be accepted). Our site hits went from 100s per day to 10s per day because no one could find our site based on product keywords. The designers tried to compensate by using hidden HTML behind the Flash, but this resulted in getting our site rejected altogether by the search engines. Two years ago, I modified the site by creating a parallel HTLM site which used the Flash layout as a starting point. The new entry point allows the user to select the HTML or Flash path. Our hits went back up to acceptable levels after a few months mainly because the Seach Engines were able to index our site again. Navigation is the other headache - as others have said, BACK and BOOKMARK do not work as desired in Flash sites. Steve
-
You are my hero of the day :-D regards, Paul Watson Ireland Colib and ilikecameras. K(arl) wrote: oh, and BTW, CHRISTIAN ISN'T A PARADOX, HE IS A TASMANIAN!
:-O Jeremy Falcon