Reply to this thread to submit a site (Week 4/4-4/10)

talk design
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If you wish to be considered for the SOTW for April 4-10, 2003, please read the summary of rules:

  1. Reply by the end of Thursday, April 10 to be considered for this week’s award.

  2. Include the URL and your email address.[list=a][]Only the webmaster/creator of the site can submit.
    [    ]Only one submission per person per week.
    [*]Submissions are capped at [COLOR=red]10 each week[/COLOR], so don’t wait or hesitate until the last minute.
    [/list=a]

  3. Websites submitted must be at least 90% Flash. Sites that have HTML pages with a Flash intro are ineligible.

  4. While it is understood that sites are perpetually under construction, please submit only complete sites. Do not submit a site that is less than 80% finished.

  5. Submissions must be actual websites with sections and content. Examples of ineligible include (but not limited to) flash games, movies, etc.

  6. There will be a private poll among the moderators and a winner will be announced by Tuesday, April 15, 2003.

  7. No critiques or feedback is allowed in the submission thread. If you wish a concentrated critique of your site, you may start a thread in Site Check. However, mod critiques will be posted when a winner has been selected.

For more information or questions, please refer to the Official SOTW Rules. Once you have read and understand the rules above, you may submit your site to this thread. Sites not adhering to the rules above will be disqualified and deleted. Submitting your site is an agreement and acceptance of the rules.

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SMR7.COM DESIGN STUDIO V.3

http://www.smr7.com

info@smr7.com

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[COLOR=blue]www.charlesdesign.tk [/COLOR]

or if the above isn’t working:

[COLOR=blue]Charles Design[/COLOR]

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Beega.com Interactive Studio V2

Site: www.beega.com

Email: info@beega.com

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http://getyourlefton.com

j@getyourlefton.com

thanks > j

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http://www.parabol-designs.com

make sure u explore everything;)

contact me
parabol@parabol-designs.com

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putch23@aol.com

my personal portfolio.

P :slight_smile:

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The results are in:

Smr7 11.11%
Karenai 0%
Bee88 22.22%
hijynxxx 44.44%
Parabol 0%
Putch 0%
None of the above 22.22%

The winner is hijynxxx!

Congratulations hijynxxx. You will be featured on the main page of Kirupa.com for this week. You may also post a graphical award from this page: http://www.kirupa.com/gallery/awards.asp.

Good job to all the participants. One of the valuable aspects of SOTW is to get valuable feedback about your site and get an idea of how well it stands beside some of the best on the web. Check back later as mod critiques will be posted later today.

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Smr7:

[COLOR=darkblue]Nice site. The splash page is very nice, the preloader is fun, the colors look good… You probably spent too much time watching 2advanced, but it’s very well executed.[/COLOR]

Obviously 2advanced influenced, but the site is pretty smooth. Would be nice to see the designer try something new because this isn’t SOTW material.

[COLOR=darkblue]Way too 2A influenced. Very smooth, soothing colors, nice animation, and well executed, but the 2A look is played out.[/COLOR]

Text is way too fuzzy. This made the site very unpleasant to use.

Karenai:

[COLOR=darkblue]It’s taking forever to load… I had to reload to get it to work. The intro looks good, not great, but I couldn’t find a skip button. The site is well designed, but there’s a black square at the bottom and a link to download some sources (???), some transitions worked strangely (a line appears, disappears, then comes back to turn into a square), the contact buttons sent me to the portfolio section, and wow, there’s just too much text in the Services section. Good site anyway, with a clear navigation.[/COLOR]

The design is clean, but the loading time is way too long. Also it would be nice to have an option to skip the long intro. Nice try, but not SOTW material either.

[COLOR=darkblue]Please add a skip intro button, I really hate having to watch an intro EVERY time I go to a site. Also, there wasn’t much “Flash” influence on this. Some effects on the images on the side, and a little alpha sheet tweening down over the text, but overall it just seemed too HTMLish for me. It’s Flash, it’s supposed to stand out from HTML, utilize that power more :)[/COLOR]

Took forever to load. This is a good example of “just because you can make it move, doesn’t mean you should.” Opened in separate window for no reason. Should have just kept it simple.

Bee88:

[COLOR=darkblue]Which site am I supposed to critique? Interactive Studio V.2? Couldn’t find it, sorry.[/COLOR]

Some trendy graphics, but as for performance, it was really poor. Loading took forever and the layout took forever to load. It was like watching paint dry. The content is a bit messy on some parts as well, seems a bit unorganized.

[COLOR=darkblue]Yeah, I don’t know which one you wanted entered, and being you can only enter one at a time I chose the 5 seasons one, because the few word description sounded more like a site than the other “playground” one. For only a few Kb per section they took a VERY long time to load, and the preloader didn’t function properly, I don’t think… it only filled up like a centimeter of your bar. Not a big fan of Mystery Meat navigation either. The text in your gallery was very hard to see. Also, after a while of viewing your site, I noticed that when I clicked on your links, all the areas just stopped loading for me, all it showedwas the background. The graphics are nice, and the navigation is nice as well (besides being mystery meat navigation that is), but theres a few bugs… not to mention I am not even sure if this is the one I am supposed to be viewing.[/COLOR]

Took forever to load. gave up.

hijynxxx:

[COLOR=darkblue]Took me a while to understand what this site was about and what the sections were about, but I love it. Too bad the portfolio is empty.[/COLOR]

The design is trendy, I like the earth tone color scheme. Would be nice if the navigation was labeled with words instead of numbers. Even though it was well executed, it’s nothing new. Nice site, but not SOTW material.

[COLOR=darkblue]Ack, this custom cursor drove me NUTS. Its more mystery meat navigation too I love the color scheme, and the overall layout seems fine to me, I love the simplistic look. I voted hijynxxx, although it did have a few things I didn’t like too much, I still found it to be a very nice site, smooth transitions, I love the simplistic look, and I also love the brown look.[/COLOR]

Way too tall of design. Mouse cursor is tacky. Transitions should only be 3-5 sec max.

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Parabol:

[COLOR=darkblue]Not a bad site, but I don’t the nav and the colors. And there are just too many flashy things happening at the same time.[/COLOR]

This site has a nice concept, but lacks professionalism. The reason for this is because some of the images are pixelated and weren’t cropped correctly so you can see jagged edges. Also the stroke width on the lines and objects are too thick so it doesn’t look too clean.

[COLOR=darkblue]MORE mystery meat navigation… this seems to be a trend now (or still). The overall content seemed very… large to me. It is obvious this is designed for a higher Res being that I had to scroll sideways and down just to see it. It still fit in my window, so thats good, but on a lower res, the content looks bigger too. I think you squeezed everything into too small of an area as well… that tiny window with a scrollbar for a few lines of visible area and a scrollbar was pretty much the only thing that really changed. This kind of falls in another category of too HTMLish. Flash can do more than just changed the content of a window to new content… if thats all you were going to do, you can easily do that in HTML[/COLOR]

need a degree to figure out index page, way too cluttered. Why am I waiting 1 min to go thru animations? They don’t do anything to the feel of the site. Mystery Meat navigation is bad, why make the user look for the labels. Everything took way too long to get where I wanted. Think about how the user will visit the site.

Putch:

[COLOR=darkblue]Already critiqued I think.[/COLOR]

Nice try, it doesn’t do much for me. I left after a few quick glances.

[COLOR=darkblue]I believe you submitted before, and if I am correct, nothing has changed since. I don’t really find this site to be SOTW material. Sorry.[/COLOR]

awards on main page… tacky, very tacky (unless given by a big corp like MM). OPens in a popup for no reason. made me close the music window to read site. When a new section opens, it is blank, it should have some sort of content on openning.

None of the Above:

[COLOR=darkblue]I didn’t vote for anyone this week because I felt none of these sites deserve to be SOTW. It’s a bad selection this week. :([/COLOR]

Again, I chose None of the Above. Hijynxx is a beautiful site, however due to useability issues, it is not SOTW material IMO.

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Took me a while to understand what this site was about and what the sections were about, but I love it. Too bad the portfolio is empty.

there are four sections to my site. why did it take you ‘a while to understand’ what it was about? the second section explains that the site is an interactive portfolio. also, did you not notice that there were a few examples of work in the portfolio section (11), or were you just saying that i didn’t have much work shown?

The design is trendy, I like the earth tone color scheme. Would be nice if the navigation was labeled with words instead of numbers. Even though it was well executed, it’s nothing new. Nice site, but not SOTW material.

could you please explain what is ‘trendy’ about my design? i’m not disagreeing with you, i’d simply like to hear your explaination of why. i’ve had a few people tell me the navigation would be better with words over numbers, but i’ve had many more tell me they enjoy the rollover i’ve created, so i think i’ll stick with it for now (but thanks for the suggestion).

Ack, this custom cursor drove me NUTS. Its more mystery meat navigation too I love the color scheme, and the overall layout seems fine to me, I love the simplistic look. I voted hijynxxx, although it did have a few things I didn’t like too much, I still found it to be a very nice site, smooth transitions, I love the simplistic look, and I also love the brown look.

i have received a handful of people who do not like the custom cursor . . why? it drove you NUTS . . why? i’m fine with the fact you didn’t like it . . but good critique includes the ‘why’. i don’t like custom cursors on corporate sites (don’t think i’ve ever seen one actually) but i do sometimes like them on personal sites, if they aren’t obtrusive. i think they can be fun. thanks for your comments, i appreciate them.

Way too tall of design. Mouse cursor is tacky. Transitions should only be 3-5 sec max.

i was thinking the site is too tall as well, however, less than 9% of my visitors use a resolution of 800 x 600 (or lower), so it shouldn’t be bad for the vast majority of visitors . . what resolution are you running? transitions on my machine (and others i have tested) are about 4 seconds at max . . how long were they taking for you?

i appreciate feedback and critique in all situations . . it’s one of the very best ways to grow and learn. however, i don’t understand how 2 or 3 out of the 4 of you didn’t enjoy my site, yet i won? and how come you all don’t put your names with the crits?

anyway, your time is appreciated and thanks much > j

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The critiques are done for your benefit, and rebuttals are very difficult. The names of the reviewers are kept anonymous to ensure a fair review.

These critiques are from a portion of the mods who have reviewed the sites, and have the time to write down their critiques (this takes a lot of time to do correctly, and actually go through each of the 10 sites submitted each week).

Please take them as advice, and don’t try to argue with them, they are the opinions of people, nothing more. It is not an attack on anything done, or any person.

Congrats on winning, it is really an honor.

Rev

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rev > makes sense to keep the names anonymous to provide fair review. i do recognize that it takes a good deal of time to go through all the sites, and i’m not trying to argue with them. i simply wanted to open up the forum for discussion if anyone wanted to discuss further. i didn’t feel like i was being ‘attacked’, as you put it. i am happy i won, and thanks for your congrats.

> j

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While the comments above are not my own, I could try to answer your questions from my perspective:

*Originally posted by hijynxxx *
could you please explain what is ‘trendy’ about my design? i’m not disagreeing with you, i’d simply like to hear your explaination of why. i’ve had a few people tell me the navigation would be better with words over numbers, but i’ve had many more tell me they enjoy the rollover i’ve created, so i think i’ll stick with it for now (but thanks for the suggestion).

It’s trendy because your interface design bears many elements that are very widely used - thus a “trend.” Tiny fonts, huge photograph, the intersection tweens. Not that it’s “awful” or hideous, just nothing innovative or original. As for the navigation. If you are showing your site to friends, they are probably looking at it from a different perspective and think - yes the navigation is fine. But in the long run, it just doesn’t practice good usability. The numbers are very ambiguous and give no indication of the contents they are addressing (as opposed to, for example, icons - which are still mystery meat, but not as bad in some cases). This forces your users to memorize what goes where. It might not seem like a big deal to you, as you might have “designers tunnel vision.” You’ve been working on it for a long time and you might be so used to the interface you’ve designed that you don’t recognize these flaws.

i have received a handful of people who do not like the custom cursor . . why? it drove you NUTS . . why? i’m fine with the fact you didn’t like it . . but good critique includes the ‘why’. i don’t like custom cursors on corporate sites (don’t think i’ve ever seen one actually) but i do sometimes like them on personal sites, if they aren’t obtrusive. i think they can be fun. thanks for your comments, i appreciate them.

Custom cursors are another usability faux paw. You are forcing users to use something that might not be familiar to them. Also your cursor is black and easily blends in with your layout. A user can easily feel like they totally lost the cursor… and there’s nothing fun about that.

i was thinking the site is too tall as well, however, less than 9% of my visitors use a resolution of 800 x 600 (or lower), so it shouldn’t be bad for the vast majority of visitors . . what resolution are you running? transitions on my machine (and others i have tested) are about 4 seconds at max . . how long were they taking for you?

At this very second I’m running a dual monitor, both set at 1152x864. However my browsers are NOT maximized and they’re set at about 800x600 - so it’s too big for me. Overall a good majority of users still have their computers set to 800x600. Maybe they don’t visit your site because it’s not easy to use for them.

i appreciate feedback and critique in all situations . . it’s one of the very best ways to grow and learn. however, i don’t understand how 2 or 3 out of the 4 of you didn’t enjoy my site, yet i won? and how come you all don’t put your names with the crits? anyway, your time is appreciated and thanks much > j

If you look at the results it was pretty spread out - not unanimous. Plus, not all of the mods think the same way - it so happens that those who value usability and interface design are the ones who critiqued. Anyway, I really don’t know… I’m just the messenger :stuck_out_tongue: Critiques are kept secret because some people might feel more open to post their honest opinions.

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thanks rengril > i appreicate you taking the time. all in all, it’s a 1.0 for me, and i’m looking forward to producing 2.0 :wink:

take care > j

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Good show and still - Congrats on winning! You make some good points about critiquing though - I think I will keep that in mind when I do my critiques in the future.

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dissapointed but what can u do… as for the resolution… i did put the requirement on the splash page… i just tried to be different away from the norm with this… hope some enjoyed the little things. and as for just text changing… theres alot more things in there then text… not saying mine deserved to win just think i succeeded in my goal of making something not the norm…

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Parabol: Just because you posted requirements - it doesn’t mean we’ll trouble ourselves to comply. You can make something different without making things difficult for users - that’s what good webdesign is about. As stated before - don’t get stuck in a “designers tunnel vision.” I am sorry that you are disappointed. I’m not sure if you are disappointed in the lack of positive response towards your site but this award is not really a good place to fish for compliments.

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www.geocities.com/aditi_majmundar

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My personal website: http://www.marcogaspar.com/v3

mfgaspar@clix.pt