ToolBlast.com secret beta

ya man, dont diss ToolBlast. It looks really great! Their layout really isnt like that other site, well the colors are similar, but when you look around their site it is actually quite different. I dont see anything with arrows on the nav thing. Looks fine to me.

You got some cool services there sirchadlington!

Thanks MrBiggins

No, I did not copy Kirupa. That would be obsurd! And yes, those smilies are quite common on many websites. Good ol’ Senocular!

Should be launching the ToolBlast resource soon. Lots of clipart, icons, source files. Great stuff for developers like yourselves!

Happy developing!

–Chad

well i dont know what to say after reading all of that lol - but let’s see when it launches, i saw some interesting categories.

Hi PrStudio!

Thanks for joining the discussion :wink:

What type of things are you going to fine most useful in a resource?

Well, somebody decided to be amusing and email Digital-Web so they could email my host and get my account suspended. Haha, very fun guys.

Anyways, I emailed digital-web. I changed the header color now and the tab style. It isnt like digital-web now so theres no problemos.

Once i get to my personal computer I can change all the rest of the headers and we’ll be back up and ready to go.

Sorry bout the delay people… but im actually happy it happened because my header looks funkier now :slight_smile:

I’ll message when its back up.

your welcome :wink:

lol. Thanks bombingpixels :rabbit:

Maybe I’ll see you in there someday… oh btw. What type of things do you guys need the most when developing? What do you usually spend the most time trying to find? Source files? Tutorials? Clipart? Icons? Background? Loops?

Btw bombingpixels, are you a graphic designer? (guessing by your pixel name)

Oh, neat site btw. I like the transitions BombingPixel.com has with the circles… but I cant read the language :wink: hehe.

it’s just filler text :wink:

and I love php, xml, as, and graphic design… pretty much everything :smiley:

Hey bombingpixels,

I added a new header that I just finished about an hour ago.

Tell me what you think:

http://www.toolblast.com/index.php

better, but still needs work (left bar)

and why does the logo have a white background, I think it should be blue like the area around it :smiley:

other than that nice job :slight_smile:

hmm, the logo shouldnt be white. Maybe you arent using IE. It should be transparent BG so the logo blends in and has the same bg as the gradient.

Whats wrong with the left side?

using ff.9.3 ;)…

the left side is still the same width and colors as the other site, needs more creativity :smiley:

lol. Well it isnt copying the other site. It is a darker tan color and it can be whatever width I want. They cant copyright sidebar widths. Its a standard universal width :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

So… any ideas then?

btw, your server is down bombingpixels. Your footer isnt showing and your url doesnt work.

yeah I know, I’m trying to get this old machine to run fc2 rather than using my own computer to host it, and I don’t feel like looking for losts of cables for this old machine atm

well its good thats its back up! :hr:

The content seems intriguing, but color me unimpressed with the design of the site…

… the embedded video is nice, but the Flash itself is far from impressive.

Design-wise, I have a few questions:

Why have folders and pages as icons (emulating the icon directives of a tree menu) when the menu isn’t collapsible/expandable?

Why not put the logo in it’s own PNG/JPG/GIF and up the color depth and resolution of it? Currently, I think you have your Flash bitmap export options set a bit low, resulting in a blurry, pixelated logo ( I understand that you’re going for a pixel-font appearance for the tagline, but the logo is a bit fuzzy).

Why not just have the intro/demo/info SWF play without user interaction? If it’s going to be loaded anyways, why not just have it start automatically?

Why have a Flash-based news/blog reader? I can’t scroll it with my wheel (something most users are quite used to doing)…you could at least amend that in Flash to make it scrollable.

I like the colors and the feel, but the mechanics seem skewed (IMO).

It might be nice to have a good Flash site other than Ultrashock (I hate their site, seriously) and Flashkit (broken PHP anyone?), and an alternative to ActionScript.org.

Thanks NewHope for your input:

The content seems intriguing, but color me unimpressed with the design of the site…

… the embedded video is nice, but the Flash itself is far from impressive.

… was it supposed to be amazingly impressive? What flash are you talking about?

Design-wise, I have a few questions:

Why have folders and pages as icons (emulating the icon directives of a tree menu) when the menu isn’t collapsible/expandable?

What is the point of them being expandable and collapsable? I dont see the point of collapsing them, and the whole point isnt to do that. The point of that navigation that lets you see your sub-options on the left. Its not really supposed to resemble a tree-menu that is collapsable/expandable… but it could be done maybe later on?

Why not put the logo in it’s own PNG/JPG/GIF and up the color depth and resolution of it? Currently, I think you have your Flash bitmap export options set a bit low, resulting in a blurry, pixelated logo ( I understand that you’re going for a pixel-font appearance for the tagline, but the logo is a bit fuzzy).

The logo looks very high quality on my screen, im using IE 6. The sub header text under the logo is supposed to be very crisp since it uses the clear font option in Flash. However, I will most likely end up making it a transparent image soon since it has no point for it to be flash at the moment.

Why not just have the intro/demo/info SWF play without user interaction? If it’s going to be loaded anyways, why not just have it start automatically?
It actually did work like that before but some people complained they didnt want to watch it again when they were just using the homepage to read news or the blog… I may switch it back if more people request it to play automatically.

Why have a Flash-based news/blog reader? I can’t scroll it with my wheel (something most users are quite used to doing)…you could at least amend that in Flash to make it scrollable.
It scrolls with your wheel some-what but also scrolls to the bottom of the page which is sort of weird. I cant find a way to fix that, and if I could have a non-flash blog reader I would, but this isnt the case.

I like the colors and the feel, but the mechanics seem skewed (IMO).

It might be nice to have a good Flash site other than Ultrashock (I hate their site, seriously) and Flashkit (broken PHP anyone?), and an alternative to ActionScript.org.

Thanks very much for your input and hopefully the discussion can continue on what you would like changed or added. Thanks newhopekenny!

And ya, definately a new site out there would be nice. I never see ultrashock being updated. Their fla library has been the same for like… 2 years lol. Flashkit used to be good, but now at least 40% of their source files are just copies of other good source files. People just download files, modify them a tiny little bit, and reupload them saying they are the authors.

They have also flooded it with so many banners and ads that its pathetic.

Need a new, clean, fresh site to join the group. Hopefully that can be ToolBlast. :cool: