humbly submitted for critique

Here's one thats STILL isn't completely finished, but the basics are done. It's a site for a rock band that I did a while ago. I'm still working out some bugs with slower machines.

I welcome any and all thoughts...

http://www.cainmadness.com

22 views and no comments yet.....uh oh.

What it is, is, the entry page isn't real clear on what you're supposed to do. I didn't even see the Enter for Flash or Enter for html. I have flash but apparently not the latest version, so I looked at the html version.

I like the navigation. It's very easy to look at and readable. I like the design of it, very sleek, but it needs to be continued and balanced all the way to the left. Cain The Online Madness is not very clear to read, esp. the last part. And I think most people wouldn't want to see a lens flare anywhere on your page. So I think extending the nav design on the right over to the left would give it more continuity for the top.

Side notes:

-use some unsharp mask on the thumbnails.
-work on the splash page
-change all phrases that use the effect on The Online Madness. It's very unreadable. Especially make the Enter buttons stand out a lot more.
-add one more color. Red & gray is nice, but I think one other color used in minor places would give it a more well-rounded look. Red tends to look wierd easily.

Other than that, I like the layout you have, and the nav is well organized.

i think it looks good, could be more clear. Text at the top is a bit hard to see

The splash page looks like the system requirements for photoshop or something. It's just a web site, not a 3D rendering program. The site should work on people's computer without having to download a bunch of software and upgrade their computer first.

It takes way too long for the flash page to build. People have already sat around and waited for the flash files to download, then you make them sit around another 20 seconds waiting for the page to finally assemble itself and put the content on the page after all the elements have flown in and flashed around a little. The same can be said for most of the sub-pages too.

like cablemotion said, some of the text is not readable and lens flares are never good.

First, I wanted to thank everything who has offered their opinion so far. I appreciate the feedback.

I understand the reservations about the loading time for the main movie and all the other "link" swf's that load into that. The biggest trick or challenge with designing Flash sites is to try to design them to fit a lot of different users computers. The problem is that everybody has different video cards, amounts of RAM, CPU, and operating systems. These all are huge factors that dictate how well Flash will play on their machine. So, when designing a Flash site, I find that there's a tightrope you have to walk. On one hand, you can skimp on the site so it will look good and perform well even on slow, crappy computers and lose out on some Flash functionality. Or, you can design it the way you want with the understanding that users with older computers are going to be inconvenienced with a bloated Flash site. Based on what the band wanted for a Flash site, I opted for the latter. I included an HTML site for those users so they weren't kept out of the fold. The hard truth about Flash, in most cases, is that the file size of the SWF's are going to be larger than other web page content. While this can be minimized, it certainly can't be avoided. The animation and functionality can be completely Actionscripted (nice challenge!), but then you run into the same problem where older CPU's will be stressed by the large amount of coding. In fact, some scripting can slow things down to a crawl or even crash the Flash player on slower machines. So, I offered the site requirements to give a user a general idea of what's meant and not meant for their particular computer, prompting them to go to the HTML site. Also, the Flash site is meant to be "drawn out" with bells and whistles (at least in my opinion) and if a user is not thrilled or is bored waiting for the site to assemble, there's always the HTML site to visit so they can get on with their lives. To me, a "skimpy" Flash site is a waste of time, save that for the HTML. Although, I have seen some subtle Flash sites that are quite nice.

For all the reasons and situations stated above and considering all possible users of the site, I think I have adequately covered all situations for visitors. Web TV? Now that's a different story!! I'm offering this as an explanation of why the site is the way it is.

Points I agree with:
1) The effect that makes "THE ONLINE MADNESS" and other text items hard to read is subject to change. Maybe this will make the entry points for both sites on the Splash more obvious than they already are.
2) Lens Flares are taboo? Didn't know this, but then again this is my first time using them in a site. Is this a view that's from the "webpages that suck" book? lol...
3) I agree that the "system requirements" on the Splash is a bit wordy, but again, I wanted visitors to know where they stood and which site version might be better suited for them.


I love designing Flash stuff. I plan to do a lot more Flash sites in the future and this one certainly has been a learning experience, being my first Flash site and all. In a perfect world, everyone would have a high end system with a broadband connection (the site does not take long to load in that situation), but alas, the crappy, slower machines running a 56K connection will still be around for a while until they crash and burn and the user will have to buy a better system. In the future, all users will eventually have a system that will be "Flash site friendly", but until then, performance problems will always be an issue with a Flash site, no matter how well it's built. I'm a big fan of Eric Jordan and 2advanced.com's stuff, but I've even seen their sites lose on slower computers. Flash is a great medium, but is has its shortcomings, most of which will be short lived.

Thanks to everyone who has and will post to this thread, I appreciate you all for taking the time to look at my site and offer advice.