Capt Quirk
Veteran
Just trying out some new ideas, and it is far from bug free or finished... but I kind of like it. Feel free to look around and comment or help with coding issues.
www.video-alchemy.com .
www.video-alchemy.com .
Anybody want to road test my new site?
- Thread starter Capt Quirk
- Start date
mikkowilson
Steadi-Guru
Ok, I'm going to be brutally honest.
The opening video (demo reel?) loaded VERY slowly .. took about 30 sec to some up, played a moment then paused. After a few seconds I tried cliking on it and it played again a few seconds and stopped .. presumably to buffer?
Faaaar too long, I hit "skip" and entered the main site. I wasted almost a minute, and I didn't see your reel.
I have a basic broadband connection (1mbps). It's not the fastest, but I'm not used to having to wait for sites either.
The main site looks better, though the text around the circle/logo in the corner is too small, it looked like it was supposed to be readable (not just artistic) but I couldn't read it. Other than that it looks ok.
But you *really* need something on the front page of course.
First thing I looked at was the photo-gallery. Up pops a new window.. with another splash page. Took a little while to load (more waiting) just so that I could click "enter" - also, the design of this page clashed with the main page.
The gallery itself was also very slow to load, and felt out of place and disconnected from the main site. I presume there will be more images up there eventually? With the slow loading and only a couple of pictures per page, I can see it beeing frustraitly slow to browse.
Back on the main site, Portfolio and Gear look good. Content is there, easily reasable and scales properly with the window. Maybe a little small if I want to get picky.
The contact link threw me off when it opened a my e-mail client - I was expecting a page with a visible e-mail address (as a link there perhaps) and then a phone number.
I was a little dissapointed I couldn't then choose to view your reel from the main site navigation.
Generally speaking, you have a good idea for a design, but polish it up just a little - make the design consistant through the whole site, and loose all those obnoxious and slow splash pages, they slow up the user and hide more content than they present.
With a bit of clean-up, this can become a good strong professional site. Keep at it.
- Mikko
The opening video (demo reel?) loaded VERY slowly .. took about 30 sec to some up, played a moment then paused. After a few seconds I tried cliking on it and it played again a few seconds and stopped .. presumably to buffer?
Faaaar too long, I hit "skip" and entered the main site. I wasted almost a minute, and I didn't see your reel.
I have a basic broadband connection (1mbps). It's not the fastest, but I'm not used to having to wait for sites either.
The main site looks better, though the text around the circle/logo in the corner is too small, it looked like it was supposed to be readable (not just artistic) but I couldn't read it. Other than that it looks ok.
But you *really* need something on the front page of course.
First thing I looked at was the photo-gallery. Up pops a new window.. with another splash page. Took a little while to load (more waiting) just so that I could click "enter" - also, the design of this page clashed with the main page.
The gallery itself was also very slow to load, and felt out of place and disconnected from the main site. I presume there will be more images up there eventually? With the slow loading and only a couple of pictures per page, I can see it beeing frustraitly slow to browse.
Back on the main site, Portfolio and Gear look good. Content is there, easily reasable and scales properly with the window. Maybe a little small if I want to get picky.
The contact link threw me off when it opened a my e-mail client - I was expecting a page with a visible e-mail address (as a link there perhaps) and then a phone number.
I was a little dissapointed I couldn't then choose to view your reel from the main site navigation.
Generally speaking, you have a good idea for a design, but polish it up just a little - make the design consistant through the whole site, and loose all those obnoxious and slow splash pages, they slow up the user and hide more content than they present.
With a bit of clean-up, this can become a good strong professional site. Keep at it.
- Mikko
Last edited:
ugafan
Looking for a woman
i agree with mikko. the gallery does clash with the rest of the site. it would be much better if the if you could navigate without the popups. i use firefox and it blocks the popups. so if i want to see your work i would have to go and change the settings on my browser. sure it only takes a couple of seconds, but not everyone is going to want to fool with that.
see if you can find a better way to integrate the gallery with the rest of the site.
Capt Quirk
Veteran
I'm experimenting with the flash intro, so that is why I threw this out in it's current unfinished state. In another thread I've asked for some help with stuff like a preloader to make that movie smoother. And this is what happens when nobody helps.
If you would be so kind as to let me know what resolutions y'all are using, it would help me size the text right. I got bad eyes, but can still read this easily at 1024x768.
As far as the gallery, that was the original gallery I designed, and designed it to pop up as opposed to opening in the current window. That is so I can better control the way it displays.
Thanks for the comments and suggestions everyone.
If you would be so kind as to let me know what resolutions y'all are using, it would help me size the text right. I got bad eyes, but can still read this easily at 1024x768.
As far as the gallery, that was the original gallery I designed, and designed it to pop up as opposed to opening in the current window. That is so I can better control the way it displays.
Thanks for the comments and suggestions everyone.
Capt Quirk
Veteran
Mikko- about the contact link, would you rather see a regular contact page over the e-mail link? I thought it might cut down on spam bots that way.
MiniMan13
Well-known member
- Name Your site, Untitled Document looks like you whipped it out of dreamweaver in 10 minutes.
- I feel like it either needs, more or less structure than what it has
- Popups = bad
- Mailto Links = Bad (Use a PHP Mailer form)
- Iframes = Bad (Why not just make a new page?)
- Gallery, I almost like your concept, but its painfull to navigate, and feels like it came right out of the 90's
- I feel like it either needs, more or less structure than what it has
- Popups = bad
- Mailto Links = Bad (Use a PHP Mailer form)
- Iframes = Bad (Why not just make a new page?)
- Gallery, I almost like your concept, but its painfull to navigate, and feels like it came right out of the 90's
Capt Quirk
Veteran
It is far from done, and I did just throw it together to see how it looks and feels. If I decide to go with it, I'll polish and tweak it, and do the little stuff like name the pages. As far as the frames, I have always liked them, and slowly starting to exploit some other methods like layers and flash, maybe CSS.
mikkowilson
Steadi-Guru
an e-mail link won't reduce the amount spam you get.
A spambot doesn't render a page, it just reads the code, and that e-mail link is what they look for. And the code of that link looks liek this:
<a href="mailto:address@domain.com">Contact</a> .. The bot just picks the address right out of the code.
So you might as well either have a whole page with contact information. Or you need to pull out the link entirly and use a different system - like a PHP coded e-mailer script that keeps the address on the webserver out of the way of prying spam-bots.
- Mikko
A spambot doesn't render a page, it just reads the code, and that e-mail link is what they look for. And the code of that link looks liek this:
<a href="mailto:address@domain.com">Contact</a> .. The bot just picks the address right out of the code.
So you might as well either have a whole page with contact information. Or you need to pull out the link entirly and use a different system - like a PHP coded e-mailer script that keeps the address on the webserver out of the way of prying spam-bots.
- Mikko
Capt Quirk
Veteran
I'll Google the php and implement it then.
Capt Quirk
Veteran
When you live 10 minutes from the Florida Beaches, you tend to get a lot of footage of it. I've been sitting on that song for 5 or 6 years now, knowing I wanted to use it with a beach theme and... you end up with a big intro video
Capt Quirk
Veteran
That's why I'm throwing it out there. If it's glitching and slow, I want to know so I can fix it. Of course, I was concerned that the menu wouldn't work for everyone, but that seems to be the biggest hit so far.
Capt Quirk
Veteran
Ok, I tweaked a little here and there, if anybody would care to take a second look. I'm still not happy with the flash, but at least I can fit it all on my server. Check it out, and let me know- www.video-alchemy.com
How do the flash clips look and work?
Should I add a player frame and controls to the flash?
Is the text large enough?
What is your browser and resolution?
Does it work?
How do the flash clips look and work?
Should I add a player frame and controls to the flash?
Is the text large enough?
What is your browser and resolution?
Does it work?
Jon Starr
Veteran
To be honest, from a design perspective... it's not very good.
It's obvious you worked very hard on it, so don't take everything I suggest to heart if you don't want to.
First of all, the intro looks nice (although it froze up once for me), until it reached the end with Florida appearing, the stars and the logo. (was out of place in the intro and amateur)
To be honest, don't do 3d work unless you're very very good at it. It looks unprofessional, the logo, the look, the gallery. Try to avoid 3d on your site unless it's impressive. (perhaps the menu and the lense is fine, but the logo just clashes, it looks so... 90's)
The gallery, like others said, is too much. Simple is always better. Seems like the focus is on the layout and not the images themselves. I don't remember anything about the images, but I remember the layout, which I didn't like very much (but that's just me).
Now onto the text:
1) Like deepfocus mentioned, try another font, like verdana or ariel. Times is for essays. Also anything seriff is meant for more traditional/old style looking sites/layouts/graphics. Yours has 3d and fancy stuff, which is more modern, so chose a sans-seriff font. Font is often very important and often over-looked by beginners in design.
2) Never underline text. Underlining is for essays and CVs, not for layouts like webpages or advertisements or magazines. Anything that is underlined, take it out. It's unnecessary lines added to the layout to make it look even more cluttered.
Also, don't use the borders around templates when making web pages. Like the border around the "welcome" for the gallery. It just looks out of place and amateur.
Try and make some buttons. Use some nice text and make buttons for the links. Also the links at the top should be in a different frame from the one you scroll, so that if you're at the bottom of the page you can still click on one of the buttons.
Don't do popups, I had to dissable the pop-up blocker to be able to see your images. You can always make a new page, or you can make it pop-up without it actually being a pop-up. Look it up online, there are generators for the java required for making pages pop-up like that. I use it in my web page.
Try and study other proffesional sites, take not on how they space everything, how they try and keep things simple in terms of colors or other aspects. It's a start, but IMO needs a lot of work. Then again, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
It's obvious you worked very hard on it, so don't take everything I suggest to heart if you don't want to.
First of all, the intro looks nice (although it froze up once for me), until it reached the end with Florida appearing, the stars and the logo. (was out of place in the intro and amateur)
To be honest, don't do 3d work unless you're very very good at it. It looks unprofessional, the logo, the look, the gallery. Try to avoid 3d on your site unless it's impressive. (perhaps the menu and the lense is fine, but the logo just clashes, it looks so... 90's)
The gallery, like others said, is too much. Simple is always better. Seems like the focus is on the layout and not the images themselves. I don't remember anything about the images, but I remember the layout, which I didn't like very much (but that's just me).
Now onto the text:
1) Like deepfocus mentioned, try another font, like verdana or ariel. Times is for essays. Also anything seriff is meant for more traditional/old style looking sites/layouts/graphics. Yours has 3d and fancy stuff, which is more modern, so chose a sans-seriff font. Font is often very important and often over-looked by beginners in design.
2) Never underline text. Underlining is for essays and CVs, not for layouts like webpages or advertisements or magazines. Anything that is underlined, take it out. It's unnecessary lines added to the layout to make it look even more cluttered.
Also, don't use the borders around templates when making web pages. Like the border around the "welcome" for the gallery. It just looks out of place and amateur.
Try and make some buttons. Use some nice text and make buttons for the links. Also the links at the top should be in a different frame from the one you scroll, so that if you're at the bottom of the page you can still click on one of the buttons.
Don't do popups, I had to dissable the pop-up blocker to be able to see your images. You can always make a new page, or you can make it pop-up without it actually being a pop-up. Look it up online, there are generators for the java required for making pages pop-up like that. I use it in my web page.
Try and study other proffesional sites, take not on how they space everything, how they try and keep things simple in terms of colors or other aspects. It's a start, but IMO needs a lot of work. Then again, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Last edited:
Flash intro still takes too long to load, so I skipped. Still 42 KB/s. You get about 5 sec. of my time to make an impression before I move on. The site has kind of a 1990's style. I agree the font is a little hard to read. The portfolio page reads like a resume. Perhaps some images and action words could replace the job descriptions.
Your website should reflect the quality of your work, creativity, attention to detail, etc. Do you think it does?
Always assume that the folks you want to spend their money on your product do not have the supporting technology for flash, clip viewing, etc. They often don't or don't have time to wait for it to load, esp. if the throughput on your server is low.
Your website should reflect the quality of your work, creativity, attention to detail, etc. Do you think it does?
Always assume that the folks you want to spend their money on your product do not have the supporting technology for flash, clip viewing, etc. They often don't or don't have time to wait for it to load, esp. if the throughput on your server is low.
mikkowilson
Steadi-Guru
Still to slow loading the front video. By the time I skipped ot the site, I was too board to read much there. Moved on back here to reply.
Yes, ad player controls, and give us something to show us that there is actually even video on the way! right now all I had was a "skip intro" link in the middle of a black screen for a looong time (tens of seconds) before I got the first little burst of frames (before it stopped playback again).
I'd loose the WHOLE splash page the way it is. Ad in player controls and integrate it into the rest of the site - maybe as the "home" page which is so bare of content right now.
A "Splash" page or graphic is intended as a fast-loading placeholder to be displayed while the rest of the site or application loads in the background. Of course it makes sence to put content on the splash page. But unless you have a special blanket statement that you MUST make to all your site visitors, there is NO NEED for a splash page, and especially for one that itself takes a long time to load.
- Mikko
Yes, ad player controls, and give us something to show us that there is actually even video on the way! right now all I had was a "skip intro" link in the middle of a black screen for a looong time (tens of seconds) before I got the first little burst of frames (before it stopped playback again).
I'd loose the WHOLE splash page the way it is. Ad in player controls and integrate it into the rest of the site - maybe as the "home" page which is so bare of content right now.
A "Splash" page or graphic is intended as a fast-loading placeholder to be displayed while the rest of the site or application loads in the background. Of course it makes sence to put content on the splash page. But unless you have a special blanket statement that you MUST make to all your site visitors, there is NO NEED for a splash page, and especially for one that itself takes a long time to load.
- Mikko