I’d appreciate all comments on my first flash site.
I’ve no experience in flash or page design but I thought I’d give it a go nonetheless. Hoping to make some ground up on all the youngsters doing great things with flash at the moment.
All criticisms, harsh, positive, negative or of any kind will be appreciated.
I would appreciate comment on the +s and -s of preloaders as opposed to modular loading in flash. I have opted for preloading but I am not convinced. Loading elements from within therefore could be an option.
Firstly you say you have no experience in flash yet you’ve managed to put together this site and although there are problems that stike me when I view it its not too bad…
Now I’m no flash guru…but the basic things that struck me was…
I had no idea what the site was for I waited for the preloader to load and expected something a little more…why not have an explanation of the site to open with or when the preloaders on explaning what Northland are about.
The fonts a, not very exciting…try a different font…you can find fonts at places likefonts for flash or[URL=http://www.orgdot.com/aliasfonts/]orgdot. this might be of use to you.
Also the text at the top’s too small even on 800x600 res the font was hard to read. Don’t go below size 8
The animations choppy aswell whats the fps? maybe it needs increasing? definatley needs speeding up…its a little slow.
With regards to the preloader I wouldn’t bother I’d just go for the modular loading…that’ll keep the interest rates up…
Other than that I think its a good start…I’m sure more experienced flashers will be more descriptive and more helpful but keep at it you’re nearly there!!
Postatomic hit the nail on the head with his/her post.
Your images look like they may be on the large side [File size that is].
Have you optimized them in Flash?
Have you scaled them down at all [They look as if they might have been bigger but you made them smaller from within Flash]?
I think if you tweek them a bit, you could get the overall file size down.
As for the fonts, yeah they need a facelift. Even using _sans or Verdana at size 10 should make them look nice and crisp. The worst they look is in the top right dropdown window [Site, Credits…]. The text here looks quite crammed in.
I would definitely speed the tweening up. 33 fps is a good starting point.
Nice work so far. Even better if you are so new to the game.
I would suggest making sure you are embedding the swf movie
file at the specific, fixed size that you intend it to be so it doesn’t
stretch all the way across the screen on big monitors. I have a
19" and it filled the screen, but it became all pixelated and messy.
I don’t think that someone would want to here that from anyone…whats the point of belittling someones attempt when they’ve obviously put time and effort into accomplishing something…
I think the phrase of the day should be “constructive critism”
I don’t mind criticism of any type, as long as there is maybe suggestions or at least justification. Is there a point of criticising if solutions or remedies aren’t forthcoming.
In any case I know that there are many areas in which the site can be improved, I saw this straight away. Isn’t that the point of design. You design, you learn what’s good and what’s not and you improve.
I did the site for a friend/client, wasn’t paid a bean. I did it because I wanted to learn something new and see if I could achieve something. It might not be the best ever, but starting from absolutely 0 experience, I feel it’s an achievement.
Consensus suggests areas in definate need of work are:
The preloader/modular loading solution
Images
Fonts
and many other things besides.
I guess the real issue is whether the design is suited to the product on display. I’ve a feel that it isn’t. Changes are afoot.
