Feedback needed

[Lizzard[MPE]]

hi i just made this first page of a website for my boss


what do you think?

comments..concerns... first thing that pops into mind? do you like it or hate it?

[Lizzard[MPE]]

current website

[Lizzard[MPE]]

and heres a bonus



picture i shot while driving at 80 mph yesterday night coming home from Jupiter

[schmosef]

-what's your target resolution? The page doesn't render nicely for 800x600 or 1024x768. The latter being the highest you should go for a brochure site.
-The mouse over effect for the contact info is too particular. One has to hover over a thin black line to see the contact info.
-The contact info appears too low on the page. It should be front and centre.
-why are you using flash? do you intend to spice it up more? if not, everything you're doing now can be done with html and a little javascript.
-if you do intend to spice things up more I'd suggest developing the building motif more with a quick animation transitioning from some sort of blueprint of 5 bulding to a dissolve of actual buildings, to a 50% fade out where the building details become obscured and the section titles are visible. then have a hover effect over each building to emphasise it's selection.

[DukeP]

Good advice there, Schmo.

I think a slight tone to the background would help as well.

The original site is butt-ugly tho...Must be old?

~~Dukep~~

[Brian Ellis]

Ask yourself, Liz, does it sell the company? It downloads and all you see are some anonymous grey blocks and a name. I would have a ghost title in each of the boxes to indicate that they serve a useful purpose, becoming fully legible on the mouseover.

Personally, I would avoid Flash like the plague. Many companies disable it and, if the connection is poor, Flash files can sometimes take an epoch to download. Depending on the server, if half-a-dozen people are already viewing it, it may slow down (or if you have DUN). You have achieved a minimalist appearance by using a maximalist technique. As Schmo says, you can do the same with HTML and/or CGI and/or JavaScript and/or FrontPage Extensions.

[Rakido]

- flash is evil
- are the links supposed to work? They do not for me (looked at with standard ie6)
- the main links being vertical is funny/interesting two or three times, after that it just annoyed me to have to turn my head to be able to read them

[Kurt]

...and like Schmosef said, it's fairly annoying to get the contacts from the firm's name. you should expand the area around it so you don't have to be precisely about the name.

[Umfriend]

He Liz, don't listen to those old whiners. Your site is just great. Say, got anything to do tonight?

[GNEP]

Looks nice and clean, and the concept is good and bold, but I do have a pet hate for "mystery meat" rollovers where you can't see what a link is until you put your mouse on it. Perhaps some ghost text as Brian suggested?

[Fluff]

The front page is shifted to the right, is there going to be a frame on the left?

[ZokesPro]

Woohoo 'Click here to get the plugin' !!

Gonna have to wait until I can find a PC that you can install (or already has) Flash.

[Lizzard[MPE]]

-what's your target resolution? The page doesn't render nicely for 800x600 or 1024x768. The latter being the highest you should go for a brochure site.

yea i realized that lastnight when i showed it to jesse, my screen on my computer is set at 1600x1200. and its perfect but then i moved it to smaller and it was just like. woah. it says its 1065x80 on flash which i never remember putting it at that but i changed it just havent uploaded it.

-
-The mouse over effect for the contact info is too particular. One has to hover over a thin black line to see the contact info.

oddly enough i noticed that when i was testing it in flash but couldnt figure it out, i put the target over a huge area so it would come up i was going to try to figure that out soon.

-why are you using flash? do you intend to spice it up more? if not, everything you're doing now can be done with html and a little javascript.

my boss wanted flash, so im trying to learn how to use it.

-if you do intend to spice things up more I'd suggest developing the building motif more with a quick animation transitioning from some sort of blueprint of 5 bulding to a dissolve of actual buildings, to a 50% fade out where the building details become obscured and the section titles are visible. then have a hover effect over each building to emphasise it's selection.

sigh.. yea lemme do that cause im just great at flash. lol

[schmosef]

I'm just learning Flash myself. I'm focusing on learning how to drive it dynamically via a database. I've got a great book on it, it's called Flash for Server Geeks. In a couple of months, I'll be able to give you better pointers in flash. For now, I'm sure that there's someone else here who can give us both some advice.

[KvHagedorn]

my boss wanted flash, so im trying to learn how to use it.

Lots of people who really don't know what they want say they want whatever the latest greatest faddiest thing at the moment is. Design a site that does its job and looks cool and present it to him. If it does not require flash, don't use it and when he likes it tell him you really didn't need to use it for that particular page, because of users like these:

Woohoo 'Click here to get the plugin' !!

Gonna have to wait until I can find a PC that you can install (or already has) Flash.

Many sites that do use flash have a non-flash version, or a "skip into" button to accommodate such users.

If you want to use flash and like that design, I would suggest what Brian suggested, but try having the ghost names fade in and out in sequence: 1st fades to full, then goes away as 2nd fades to full, etc. It's nice and minimalist now, but a bit too minimalist imho. The grey bars are a bit too blah until you mouse over them. Try leaving the black outline on all the time and see what you think, and try the ghosting. Perhaps make the white background light grey and the bars darker, or the background black and the bars as they are. A totally greyscale page is a gutsy play, though.. I kinda like it.