website revamp... flash or no?

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isaacmacdonald

Platinum Member
Jun 7, 2002
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Here's my site, I have some free time and feel like getting this right. I have no intention of having an intro, or any superflouous animation. The primary purpose of flash usage would be to streamline imgs, reduce download time, and give crisper text without sacrificing the fonts I want to use. Also, I thought it might be interesting to have samples that allow a little zoom or else that fade from different zoom levels (< 1 second of course). Ideas?

[update]

I've fully installed the flash zoom. what do you think?
 
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rectifire

Senior member
Nov 10, 1999
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Sites with flash intros that you have to click though, sites that automatically use flash to play loud sounds, and flash sites that take 30 seconds to load up because of their complexity are an instant turn off to me.
Too much flash makes your site look cheap and unprofessional. People come to your site for information about your company (what you do, past clients, how to contact you, where you are located, etc.) It is frustrating to have to click through a bunch of flash in order to get the info you want.

The bottom line is:

If you're going to use flash, try to keep it simple, elegant, and to the point. I took a look at your site and generally like the layout. I can see how you could use a little flash to make rollover dropdown menus out of the links on the left, and to allow a little zoom on pictures/images of your past projects. One or even maybe two levels of zoom are all that should be required. Like you said, make the zoom happen fast...no delays. People hate waiting for a website. Also try to keep any fading effects to a minimum, as they are another time waster. Try to stay away from sounds, as it tends to make people irritated when they are surfing your site. The only sounds that I might recommend is for when people click on links, etc. Even then, the sound(s) should be soft and very short.

People often make the mistake of thinking that just because flash lets you do a lot of stuff, more flash = better website. However, I can understand using a lot of flash if your business deals with designing websites or the like, in order to show your prowess at building a fancy site.
Anyways, everything I've said is just my own humble little opinion. Good luck to you.! :)
 
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dmw16

Diamond Member
Nov 12, 2000
7,608
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I think it looks good. The navigation is really clean. A little flash could jazz things up a tad, but not too much. Otherwise it'll start to look cheap.

-doug
 
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isaacmacdonald

Platinum Member
Jun 7, 2002
2,820
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Also try to keep any fading effects to a minimum, as they are another time waster.
Click to expand...

Do you think the current fading effect is over the top? I was planning on mimicing the effect in the flash version-

thanks for the advice everyone.
 
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Encryptic

Diamond Member
May 21, 2003
8,885
0
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Originally posted by: rectifire
Sites with flash intros that you have to click though, sites that automatically use flash to play loud sounds, and flash sites that take 30 seconds to load up because of their complexity are an instant turn off to me.
Too much flash makes your site look cheap and unprofessional. People come to your site for information about your company (what you do, past clients, how to contact you, where you are located, etc.) It is frustrating to have to click through a bunch of flash in order to get the info you want.

The bottom line is:

If you're going to use flash, try to keep it simple, elegant, and to the point. I took a look at your site and generally like the layout. I can see how you could use a little flash to make rollover dropdown menus out of the links on the left, and to allow a little zoom on pictures/images of your past projects. One or even maybe two levels of zoom are all that should be required. Like you said, make the zoom happen fast...no delays. People hate waiting for a website. Also try to keep any fading effects to a minimum, as they are another time waster. Try to stay away from sounds, as it tends to make people irritated when they are surfing your site. The only sounds that I might recommend is for when people click on links, etc. Even then, the sound(s) should be soft and very short.

People often make the mistake of thinking that just because flash lets you do a lot of stuff, more flash = better website. However, I can understand using a lot of flash if your business deals with designing websites or the like, in order to show your prowess at building a fancy site.
Anyways, everything I've said is just my own humble little opinion. Good luck to you.! :)
Click to expand...

You said everything I would have said. Flash is a great tool, but it gets a bad rap because so many people over-use it.
 
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DamageInc

Senior member
May 26, 2001
931
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Nice site, man. I try to do graphic design stuff for my company, but it's nothing compared to yours. What programs did you use to create the various things in your portfolio?
 
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rectifire

Senior member
Nov 10, 1999
528
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Originally posted by: isaacmacdonald
Also try to keep any fading effects to a minimum, as they are another time waster.
Click to expand...

Do you think the current fading effect is over the top? I was planning on mimicing the effect in the flash version-

thanks for the advice everyone.
Click to expand...

Since you asked: :)

I took another look, and I think the fading effects actually look pretty good. Makes your site look a little classy. Just don't make the fade effect take any longer than it already is......any longer starts to get over the top.
 
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isaacmacdonald

Platinum Member
Jun 7, 2002
2,820
0
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neat. thanks for the input everyone. Here's a prototype of what I'm thinkin of doing. I've made the text slightly darker brown, and made the stripes slightly darker because on my mac they look light (though I prefer the lighter version on my pc). Thoughts?

[edited to add] FYI, original jpg + gif were 34k, the swf is 39k, but it has both levels of zoom. I'm saving a decent chunk by using vectors for the stripes and text. yay.

Nice site, man. I try to do graphic design stuff for my company, but it's nothing compared to yours. What programs did you use to create the various things in your portfolio?
Click to expand...

Thanks - in order of use: Photoshop, Quark, and Illustrator. To be honest, graphic design only makes up about 40% of my job. I'm usually doing production work (seaming giant panoramas and such). The more you do it the better you'll get-
 
rh71

rh71

No Lifer
Aug 28, 2001
52,844
1,049
126
Adding Flash will remove the need for the page-loading-flashes (since it seems to be large in size currently). Flash compression should be good for your type of site, so long as you import as PNG first.

Seeing the type of work that you do, you should also have an HTML-only version of the site anyway.
 
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isaacmacdonald

Platinum Member
Jun 7, 2002
2,820
0
0
Originally posted by: dquan97
It shouldn't be that hard to create the HTML version of your site...
Click to expand...

err, the site is html, the prototype is the one with flash component. but yeah, I'll probably keep an html version as an alternate-
 
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