Preserved Topic: FIRST PAID PROJECT

Please review my first "professional" attempt to design and create a web site. Positive and negative comments are appreciated. The address is...
http://www.abnormz.com

Thank you.

...swept out through the cracks beneath the door...

do you ever ever see couners at yahoo.com, microsoft.com, netscape.com ....????????
I really don't recommand visible counters. The good thing was that I know I was the first visitor!
the graphics were nice, but they are way too heavy, if you wanted all those pix animated, you really should use flash instead of gif, too many gif can hurt slow computers a big time.

that's it for now, good job.

"73 items remaining.."

as my poor, poor 28.8 modem quivers in an unholy mix of fear and anticipation.

well since all that has loaded so far is the counter, i'm going to say definitely ditch that.. it's ugly.

jesus, i'm writing this up and clicking back and forth between IE windows and your bastard page is STILL loading...

18 items... still going... well if i wasn't reviewing this site, i'd have left about 30 seconds ago..

first thought is, "you made me wait for that?" even though i'm not any good with flash, if i have to wait that long for a page to load up i expect a 2 minute flash movie or something.

so the front page looks funky, especially the blurry fonts and the animated "welcome" in the bottom right corner.

i'm sorry, but as soon as it took over my browser and made it go full screen i couldn't handle anymore.

i'll leave this task up to someone with a faster net connection and more patience, sorry.

cheers.mikey.milker

Galaxal: Thanks for the counter tip. I will advise the client to reconsider the counter, at least the visibility. I'm hoping to teach myself FLash soon. Thank you.

Mikey: You always have treated me cool. I will learn Flash. Also, I'll see about optimizing the graphics. I didn't realize the loading problem because I have a cable modem. I'm sorry you went thru that. But I sincerely appreciate all you went thru. Thanks.

...swept out through the cracks beneath the door...

Uhmm...
The first page is unusal. Not bad really, but I agree that it would make more sense to do that in flash. I felt like I almost lost control over my browser, and I did not know where to click to go any further.
When I finally realized it is the little flame, the next page is much calmer. Makes me wonder what the purpose of the first page was?
Sure, it looked interesting, but after having waited for that long without any explanations I want to be swept away, or to find much content - not just a page that is there to direct me to the real welcome page.
The magnifyer looks cool. I am always impressed by things like that.
I hate full-screen! It almost make me panic to loose control over my browser <g> And pressing F11 didn't even help!
But I do think that page looks nice. I like the stones with the runes on them. The paper looks cool too. The mouseover effect with the text in the middle seems a little too much though. It is slow, and I don't like that much text when it just appears while moving the mouse over the button. I can't keep the mouse still enough to read it. (well, I am sure I could, but it is a little confusing, at least) Also, right now some of the text ends up beside the paper, making it unreadable. Seems now that you have almost spent too much time trying to make things look impressive using scrips and stuff, but you have not thought as much about the users, and the navigation. I am on a fairly fast computer, and things still feel a bit heavy to me.
I do think you have some more work to do on this, but it does have potential to be something very good <img border=0 align=absmiddle src="http://www.ozones.com/forum/smile.gif">

ZOX: THank you for so much info. You made me aware of a lot of things. I really felt glad to hear the compliments. I started going through the lessons in Flash4 tonight.

The first page was to set an ambience for the site. I am stunned by the things I see the people do here, and I wanted something enjoyable to start (but not at all that long). I hope Flash4 will solve the problem.

I wish to use full screen for the gallery pages to maximize the size of the paintings. There is a large link phrase at the botton of each full screen page to exit the gallery and return to your normal browser. Or you need to hold ALT key while you hit F11.

Unfortunately, the site is not ready for Netscape viewing. The text was, in my opinion, overdone. I didn't label the runes to have standard looking buttons, so I explain the link's contents on the parchment. I disfavor "normally" structured sites, so I tried to compensate for the "unknown" by using to many text explanations to help guide the user.

I really am trying to find ways to improve the site, so comments like yours, really help me out. Thanks again. I'll work on those things immediately.

...swept out through the cracks beneath the door...

when you have a netscape version repost it and I will give you a review! <img border=0 align=absmiddle src="http://www.ozones.com/forum/smile.gif"> ~Vp~

Rancid: first i want to say that i really enjoyed the conversations you had with yourself in this forum- so i checked out your site. i think that previous comments about what's "wrong or right" with it are accurate, so i won't be redundant... i do think that you have a good start and that this site has potential to be something really cool. good job, very creative, keep working on it. my 1 cent.

peace

-amy

Wow! A huge array of moving things! Even on my T1, it took nearly 10 seconds to load. Ouch. And that's my first problem.

Moving on from that, my eyes burn from the overuse of objects. My stomach churns at the overanimation. My better sense pops in before I say something I regret. Peice of advice #1 ; LOSE THE FIRST PAGE COMPLETELY. If the gods smile on you, you won't be damned for forcing us to look at it in the first place.

Second peice of advice ; The second page makes 0.2% sense. The front page seemed like the portal...then the second page was the portal, and I questioned why I allowed my bandwidth to be eaten by your flames of hell in the front. ANd then another flame. Okay, so lose the second page? I'm not sure. How about a happy medium between the first and the second page?

So then the intrepid explorer clicks the "[intro]" flame...and I see a useless page... Did you write that code? Nifty...useless, but nifty. Not sure what it proves.

Now I enter the full screen gallery... God, it really is a full screen. That makes me sad. Especially when your beautiful image is marred by the fact that the black text overlays on the left and is not centered on the parchment. So, I can't read anything without trying to select the layer.

Okay, lets pretend I'm a real client that wants to hire a graphic designer/internet development team. First impression? Not you. Not for all the tea in China. Not even if *I* was paid to hire *you*

Get the drift? Sloppy coding mixed with confusing interface combines with over animation to create a headache for everyone involved. Painful review? I guess it depends on whether or not you believe I'm right.

I have to agree with twitch. When someone is running a big rez (1280 X 1024 here) a full screen is a nightmare. It leaves lots of useless empty space. Ditch that.

Also, if you ditch the full screen for a more defined window size it will be easier for you to center the text over that parchment. I couldn't read it either over the black background.

vogonpoet: Thank you. I will work on it, but it will take me some time.

the ROY: I won't burn Doc's bandwidth with schizograms anymore, but thanks. And your cent about my work was worth a million. Thanks again.

twitch^: I don't know why I do like you. I LOVE the honesty. What do you do when the client wants "neat stuff"? I'll try to sell the medium. Page 2 warns people all about the site format. I can't write code yet, but I honor credits for authors. I MUST FIND OUT WHY SO MANY HERE, SEE THE SAME VISUAL FLAWS. I don't get those comments from anywhere else. I'll fix it when I find out what's wrong. Painful review? Not at all. Nifty or Sloppy? You decide. Never hire me? Someday I'll BE a pro because I learn a lot from tender-hearted folks like you. Thanks for the motivation and the help. Sincerely.

kretsminky: Thank you for the details. I understand better now.

You are ALL very kind and generous to help me like this. I don't know how to fix all these problems yet, but I will learn.

Thank you.

...swept out through the cracks beneath the door...

Rancid! I can't add anymore to what's allready been posted, except to reiterate one thing....it's got bundles of potential...nice job <img border=0 align=absmiddle src="http://www.ozones.com/forum/smile.gif">

well, i agree with all what has been said.
i've a new notebook with high resolution (1400x1050) <img border=0 align=absmiddle src="http://www.ozones.com/forum/biggrin.gif">
to show you what it looks like on my screen with your fullscreen-mode, i've taken a screenshot.
here we go (102kb): http://n.ethz.ch/student/teap/scr.jpg

i usually keep several browserwindows open at the same time and switch between them.
so i dont like fullscreen-modes.

to twItch^: at the moment, tea is not in china, tea lives in switzerland <img border=0 align=absmiddle src="http://www.ozones.com/forum/tongue.gif">

cu,tea

Phil: Thanks. Nice to know there's no hard feelings. I usually post modifications on weekends. But I'm still learning Flash 4.

tea: I was shocked to see my work displayed like that. I'm very sorry to all with high resolutions. In my part of the surfer-world, we all use 800x600. I will define a window size for "full screen". Thank you for showing me what a major flaw I did.

...swept out through the cracks beneath the door...