Submit here (5/2-5/8)

[system]

CNI[list]
[]Clean site, but the fps is definitely too low, the font is blurred, and the portfolio is not very attractive (the animation “jumps”, there are problems with the transitions).
[]Pretty simple corporate style layout with a twist. What killed it for me was the blurry text…Nice try though…
[]Very basic site compared to some of the competition; It’s definately outclassed by at least one other site I have this far viewed; The overall site is nice and basic and functional; I would suggest he lose the red background with white print; Almost the first they one learns in design school is to stay away from such hard on the eyes print; (red background, or red print on any background) Some of the text was not continuous, some was bolder than what followed below, and the text itself seemed like it was broken apart, kind of hard to read.
[]Nice, basic, works… Not extremely imaginative however, and not very impressive. It hits all the nails, just none of them very hard.
[]Interesting choice of colors, though you make it work. All in all, very nice. Web sites don’t have to be enormous monsters of Flash design mastery… no, they need to serve their purpose well. I think this site does. The effects are enough to entice, but not enough to detract user interest. Still. . . not sure about that bright red section. A little extreme for me.
[]A very nice looking choice of colours - bright enough to stand out, but doesn’t overpower you. I agree with other comments on the fonts though. Some are nice and clear, but against the white the text is blurred. I like the transitions between pages though, and the backgrounds on each.
[*]That text is too blurry. I see you use a pixel font, but it is still blurry. Pixel fonts are meant to be clear, so you need to work out the positioning of your text to make it clear because right now it is blurry all over making it hard to read. The site is easy to navigate and all, but that text kills my eyes.
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<hr>m.salcido[list]
[]I think we have a winner here. Smooth navigation, great colors, and the design is interesting (I love the Links page, the rest is not as good unfortunately). I appreciate the fact that the artwork appears inside the site and not in a pop-up Great site.
[]Pretty slick use of flash, nice transitions, but as for originality, it’s not there. Two words describes the design of this site, “trend wh0re.” I’m not saying it’s nicely put together, I’m just saying this style is pretty common and I’ve seen dozons of similar ones with the same use of graphics and typography. Kirupa’s SOTW is about coming up with your own ideas and design styles, not duplicating other styles.
[]I like and can see he has good design skills which are put to naught for some of the weaknesses of the website; Scrolling text against pictures is a BAD idea. And everything there, while not hard on the eyes, causes one to squint and still not be able to read things well; I would also suggest they stick with one font in this type of site; And some print was simply not legible or readable; Thats NOT a good thing. On a positive note, if these things were fixxed it would make for a great little site; This site is a great anti-example of what I didn’t like about the above sites, that they move too slow with their tweens or scripting and the transitions are not impressive nor quick; Here is an example of nice transitions with other fatal flaws.
[]The transitions were different for each section, therefore the site lost its continuity for me. I think, judging by your art & design, that you could spice this up, make it more uniform transition-wise.
[]I like. I have no advice for you. Keep doing what you’re doing. Learn more you’re teaching me. J
[]I’ve never been a fan of pink, but I liked this funky urban look.Good photography and layout, I like it a lot. My main critcism would be that the menu bar along the top is difficult to read until you rollover a section. Cream and white isn’t that much of a contrast. And occasionally you can’t see the next level menus against the photography, they don’t stand out enough.
[*]Nice splash, and I was thinking it would be an incredible site when it was animating in, but there are a few flaws. That text is an incredible pain to read on those backgrounds. It took me a while to figure out what to do in the Portfolio section until I read the text directing to click the links that are well integrated (aka hidden) in the layout. After clicking those links I was brought to a mystery meat navigation where I had to rollover the link to find out what I was about to click. I am not a big fan of mystery meat. A lot of your text was blurry even though it looks much like a pixel font, which is supposed to be clear. Overall the transitions and layout of your site I thought were great, but there were some functionality issues that bugged me.
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<hr>jontom.net[list]
[]Same as last week, I like it a lot, except for the colours.
[]I already critiqued this site last week…
[]I didn’t like this site for several reasons; It is too dark and hard to read; I say this to everyone, listen up…Websites are to GET information, not to hide it or obscure it with hard to read backgrounds or text or combinitions of both. I read through very little stuff on this site because he made it a challenge to me; Have to squint, have to strain and move closer to the monitor; I hope Jontam doesn’t take this personal, as there are just too many sites this week with basic fatal flaws in them; Not be able to read text is one such fatal flaw that will kill the site faster than anything; Very basic, a nice overall ‘format’ but everything else is wrong; Redeeming quality was the pictures and their transitions, that was nice, quick and speedy, no time to yawn; But not sotw material.
[]Way too busy. Too much information at once.
[]Another black site. AND another one that works well. Again, Keep doing what you’re doing.
[]Initial impressions are good. Dark and moody, but good. I very much like the design of the opening page. Inside reminds me kind of 2A, with the various ‘modules’ loading, but not too much. I love the black and red colour scheme. I know it’s dark, but it works for me. A stop option on the music is good, and I really liked the little game in the bottom right corner. I spent way too long playing that.
[*]Took me a while to find the enter button. The layout is very busy and the color scheme makes it look even more busy. Everything blends in together making the viewers eyes wander around even when trying to focus. You should also work on your grammer. All lowercase text is part of what makes it look so busy. There is no break in the flow of the text so it makes it look like one long run on sentence.
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[system]

Prana Labs[list]
[]Deceiving for a media company. The site is nice, but there’s not transition between sections, some sections open Flash pop-ups, others don’t, and some do nothing.
[]Interesting concept, but poor graphics. Some of the images are either cropped with jagged edges or pixelated which is a shame. Also the award banner to the left is distraction from your manin layout. It seems odd to have it just haning there on the side.
[]Ok, this is starting to become an epidemic here; Not to chew on the same bone all night here, but I can’t read a lot of the text at this site!!! Total turnoff. Why have text on your site, if the viewer cannot view it? Quite frustrating. While the navigation was clever, quick and well done, the formatting of the text took away from it; I have to read sideways and the busy feeling of the background stuff floating and moving around is unneccessary and a distraction, a minus and not a plus. It shows ability, but not design.
[]awards gif on intro is tacky. Couldn’t get inside/enter a password. why is this offered on the homepage? Jobs section didn’t load for me. I didn’t like the way the popups didn’t fit into the same look as the rest of the site. I also didn’t like all the animation going off all the time for no reason except because you can.
[]Professional, smooth, easy navigation, white background. All the things I look for in a site. I’d like to see you do more with the colored navigation bar. It seems plain compared to the elements in the site.
[]Quite a cool idea. I liked the static for the first 5 minutes or so, then it got a bit irritating. Some of the graphics seemed choppy and broken, though I’m not sure if that was intentional. I like the layout and design of this, it’s good to look at and easy to navigate.
[*]The animation in the background distracted from the text and layout too much. I could find a music off button… there should always be a music off button (that is also easy to find) if you have music on a site. Why did some sections open up in that mini draggable window and some not? I did not see a need or reason for that.
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<hr>Connect games[list]
[]I like this site because it’s very well thought. Everything functions perfectly, with transitions. The design is a bit too classical for me to vote for this site, but I like it very much.
[]Now this site is more of what I’m hoping to see more of. This site has an interesting layout with a nice concept. The layout isn’t too drastic, but not too simple either. What I didn’t like was the long scrolling page, the plugin link at the top and the banners at the bottom.
[]I like this site; It is fresh and quick moving and easy to navigate; While the text issue still remains, it is better here; The text is a little hard to read and small, and the font could be better; But the transitions are quick and fresh; A really nice site which could be a lot better with just a few modifications. I like this site, it has great promise but, not yet.
[]Under construction on profile section. Sites should not be submitted unless they are 100% completed (or just remove the button until it is finished). It works, I’m not displeased, but it lacks depth.
[]Nice, though the text I felt was a little off, size-wise. At 800/600 I couldn’t see the whole site at once, at the next step up, (), I couldn’t read the text easily. I don’t see this as a major problem. All in all, I had fun here, which counts for something. Still, I wonder why Kirupa is on page 2 of the design links. L jk we’re just happy you remembered us. You seem to have an idea of what you’re going for, and are creative enough to learn from others. Keep up the good work.
[]I thought this was very good. All the animations were smooth and wll planned, and nothing took too long to switch. There’s some great games here too. The only thing I’m not so keen on was the actual look of the site. The banners at the bottom were a bit distracting.
[*]You should increase the _alpha of the white blocks behind your content text, that way the pattern in the background doesn’t distract too much from the content. Other than that I can’t really find too much wrong with this site, I think it is a very nice site.
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<hr>Hylan Supply[list]
[]Nice layout, but once you’re there, nothing changes, it’s just some text and some pop-ups…
[]This site lacks color, lacks transitions and lacks design. There is negative space at the top portion where the empty space is. If you step back and look at the layout, there’s a hole there.
[]Very basic site; Not a great combo of colors, the scroll bars only work if you click; While complete and functional, it is not sotw material in my opinion; Also, I do not like the pop up design in anything but an art-site; I still have some of those windows open; I prefer sites to be ‘self-contained’ and not rely on popups, with few exceptions.
[]A popup for no reason - why do people use these? (my popup blocker killed the first one)… way too big for what you get. over 600k is rediculous, figure out how to optimize - try to keep downloads down to 200k per download, if possible, fairly easy without large artwork. Especially if you are brave enough to brag about how bit it is in your preloader.
[*]I got issues with it, though it’s good work.

1. a popup without navigation bars is a pain in the butt. Take away a users control, and you instantly alienate yourself from them. If they asked you to do it that way, I fully understand. There are many times when we just have to sacrifice for a client’s wishes. If you did it on your own though, think about ways to go about not doing that. J
2. There is an error in the page, though probably pretty easy to fix. If you click on the “Locations” or “Showroom” links, a window opens that has internal navigation. If in there I click on “Home” it comes back “page not found”; if I click on “Shop Now”, nothing appears to happen; if I click on “Vendor Listing”, I get a window with html coding in it; “Directions” seems to work fine; and lastly “Contact”, doesn’t seem to be doing anything at all.
   So, you might want to contact them and see if they screwed around with something, or look into your FLA’s. All in all the design is sound. And that’s what’s important in my mind. Broken stuff happens all the time. Just try try try try try try try not to use popup/tooless windows. No one likes them.
   []Not bad to look at, but I didn’t like the green logo on the grey background, it looked like it was stuck on there. Way too many pop ups as well, not only was the main site a pop up, but several of the menus had pop ups associated with them, so I had three or four windows open.
   []This design, layout, and navigation idea has been done to death in Flash sites. And all that happens is the text in the textbox changes. This site could be done in simple HTML with an iframe. And those links that opened up in pop-ups were way larger than my monitor, if you insist on opening them in pop-ups then please open it in a new window instead of a pop-up. I don’t really like either method, but I would rather have a new window then a pop-up overtaking my whole monitor.
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[system]

David Dalton[list]
[]Nice! The site “feels” very good. The navigation is great, even though the 2 links in the first page (Interior Design and Arroyo Collection) are a bit disconcerting. Nice transitions too.
[]This site almost got my vote, I was impressed with the home page with the nice image and the masking effect. The music playing in the section also created a nice mood. Too bad the other sections wasn’t like that, they were just too plain compared to the first section that loaded.
[]I voted for this site this week; It is complete, easy to read and navigate through. The transitions, no matter what for are nice, consistent and have continuity. The colors are nice and all fit together nicley; Not only is the site complete, it is functional, serves it purpose and has a certain amount of eye catching material. I like the scroll bars, and love the way I can roam the pictures; I also like the way I can quickly find info on the company, in my area, in my State. Everything moved nice, and quick and nothing was illegible or hard to read. This site gets my vote.
[]the slider over the menu is cute, but actually slows down the experience, and serves no real purpose, either ditch it, or speed up your easing. I don’t know how large your files are (thank you for not bragging), but for the download, I saw very little reason to require a preloader. It should be small enough to either not require one, or figure out how to load balance the site (load images while the user is reading text, etc.), or dynamically load your images to reduce the file size. I commend you for using preloaders, but I think you may have gone a bit overboard, and used one on every single click. I would at least take off the percentage, it detracts from the “D” , which already has a “gas gauge” effect. Does anyone really feel better that the site is 49% downloaded, but you still get a blank screen, when I prob won’t see all the section anyway? Flash will allow you to see the part that is downloaded, so let me see that, while the rest is loading in the background. You don’t need to wait until 100% of the swf is loaded before the user sees it, and still not sacrifice anything on the user’s experience at all, maybe even enhance it, due to the lack of waiting for stuff to download. I am being harsh because you are almost there. Design-wise is excellent, useability is good, not great, fun-factor is kinda low. You got my vote this week, good job.
[]Can’t say much. This is, in some respects, the type of quality I wish I could produce. Nothing outrageously fancy mind you, but effects that work well together, and perform their desired function without confusion. The only advice I can give is to look into the speed of the swf. It seemed slow on my machine. Not sluggish. . . smooth. It could be that you were going for that slow a transition, which is ok too. It just seemed to me to be almost too drawn out in two or three of the transitions. Nice though, really nice work.
[]First thoughts - it’s brown. Very brown. But then the photograph to the left balances it out, and I actually rather like it. It’s nice and smooth with the animation as well, which works. Nice little menu, and although each page requires some loading, it’s not a great deal and it’s quick. The brown even grows on you after a while. I like the pixel font - I know they’re used a lot these days, but I still like them. Well planned and laid out.
My vote went to David Dalton.
[]Excellent intro, it had a nice original (or at least I haven’t seen it often) mask effect in it. I like the color scheme, the earthtone color palette is nice. The fade in/out transitions may be a bit too slow and the navigation effect is not really original, but overall I think it’s easy to navigate, very simple without being too simple and has a nice layout/color scheme. I voted for David Dalton because I found his site to be simple to use and elegant in design.
[]Too brown, no colors…hey, this is interior design, and the site is all monochrome and square , do something about it!
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<hr>**[COLOR=red]Other[/COLOR] **[list]
[]Tough choice between David Dalton and m.salcido.
[]Originally, I was going to vote for m.salcido, but I decided not to. I’m not saying that these sites suck, I just feel that they don’t qualify for SOTW. Lately I just feel that we’re giving the awards away too easily and people are basically submitting the same things over.

I don’t mean to be harsh, it seems like people get offended by my critiques so I guess I should tone it down.
[*]It was a hard choice as I was tempted to check none of the above as we had a lot of rather not good sites this week;
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[system]

you’re definately right guys. I’ll try to work on it… expect to see me coming back in about 1 or 2 weeks

bytheway, kinga! your site rocks man! i really liked it, especially for the colours

[system]

Hey,

Thanks for your comments. They were spot on .

When making the site the problem I have is my Actionscripting skills, even though technically I am good at what I do, I at times found it hard to do certain creative stuff because of lack of experience with AS - An example of this is the transitions from each page and how they tended to be choppy; I used load movie when I could have been using movie clips and loading them in. Like i believe m.salcido did , I also loved his transitions, but because I dont know how to script well , I wouldnt know how to do that.

I will redesign my site , but just do not have that much time right now…The intro and splash page was the best bits because I was able to be very flexible without worrying about using any Actionscripting.

I have learnt a lot from this experience, and really appreciate your comments as it will help me improve further.

thanks