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Geek Culture / Site critique

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Hobgoblin Lord
19
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Joined: 29th Oct 2005
Location: Fall River, MA USA
Posted: 13th Nov 2009 07:42
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Hey all,

have just finished a new template for a client that will be rolling out soon and wanted an honest useful critique (other than the amount of content that is coming). I am going to have to be duplicating this with various branding some 250+ times and wanted to catch anything funny etc before I start that. Other eyes are always better than mine.

Thanks in advance

http://www.citplay.com/pike.htm

http://Flashsalsa.com
New Game site
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Darth Vader
20
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Joined: 10th May 2005
Location: Adelaide SA, I am the only DB user here!
Posted: 13th Nov 2009 10:06
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I love the layout design, but the colours are a little hard on my eyes! Maybe make the blue across the bottom light and the same for the red?

I'm no web designer so I can't really say much else, but I do like it.


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crispex
17
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Joined: 22nd Jun 2007
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Posted: 13th Nov 2009 12:18 Edited at: 13th Nov 2009 12:18
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Alright, some issues.

1. The sparkle animation on the one buttons has got to go. It just looks horrendous. Animations and web sites don't really go well unless your site is specifically for animations. Otherwise they look tacky and unprofessional (though I'm not sure if your aiming for professional). When making graphics you must consider to keep a general demographic so that everyone can enjoy your site. Settle for regular hover buttons. I know that you want to let users know what category they have selected, but using an animation isn't the best way of doing this. Settle on a nice border that lets users know when they have it selected.

2. The background kills your eyes. Red to purple gradients, as long as I have been web developing, never seem to work as they play tricks with sensitive eyes. The top banner gradient also needs some work.

3. Why is everything moving when you hover over it? No, I'm not talking about the icons, I'm talking about the site in general. It moves whenever you hover over it. Not good.

4. Your site is all flashed based, and I must say not optimized well. It is slow to load, and is slow to navigate.

5. The icons look pixelated. They look pixelated whenever you see them regularly, but get worse whenever you hover them

As for your general layout, it's nice and easy to navigate. Not much else about it.

I've included a video describing the hover problem. I am using Firefox 3.5, though I've tried it in Chrome and Internet Explorer and are having the same issues. Sorry if the video quality might be a bit low, but it explains what I mean.

The video.

Temporarly away from the Phoenix Sentry.
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NeX the Fairly Fast Ferret
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Location: The Fifth Plane of Oblivion
Posted: 13th Nov 2009 13:42
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Yuck.

Crashes Safari 4, too, though anything can crash Safari 4.

Athlon64 2.7gHz->OC 3.9gHz, 31C, MSi 9500GT->OC 1gHz core/2gHz memory, 48C, 4Gb DDR2 667, 500Gb Seagate + 80Gb Maxtor + 40Gb Maxtor = 620Gb, XP Home
Air cooled, total cost £160
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Hobgoblin Lord
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Joined: 29th Oct 2005
Location: Fall River, MA USA
Posted: 13th Nov 2009 14:15
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darth, thanks for the input much appreciated.

crisp I have never seen that problem, has anyone else had it?? I have checked it in IE 6 and 7, firefox, chrome and netscape and not found an issue. The page does resize to the window and that is almost what it looks likes it is doing there but I have no idea.
The top banner (and the ads) are placeholders still but yes that top banner needs some work if I were to use it.
As for the background gradient I am a little stuck client asked for them to be each stations colors (you would love the purple yellow one for one of the other stations) I think you are right on the button animation (thanks).
The site is all flash based and the pages are not going to be optimized at all that is just the set up for these.
As a question how long did the page take to load for you? The main swf is under 50k, it does load all the content via XML (did it that way so I can update all 250 pages at the same time rather than individually). It is a bit slower but it also avoids the problem I find on alot of game sites where when you switch pages it has to reload (even though cached) once this loads there should never be any wait time between pages. All that said even when loading the page for the first time on another machine it never seems to take more than 3-4 seconds to load it all up so I was curious did it take you longer or was that amount of time to much in your book?
I thank you greatly for the complete breakdown of your impression of the page and appreciate the help.

Nex- thanks for the safari info can anyone else confirm the same problem?

http://Flashsalsa.com
New Game site
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Nickydude
Retired Moderator
18
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Joined: 4th Nov 2006
Location: Look outside...
Posted: 13th Nov 2009 14:29
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I like the site, and I suggest keeping the sparkle around the buttons. It's a gaming site not a business site and little touches like that (but not too many) will draw the younger folk in. The site does seem to 'pop in and out' when moving over it, you might want to look at that.



THE ANSWER TO ALL FPSC QUESTIONS!
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xplosys
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Joined: 5th Jan 2006
Playing: FPSC Multiplayer Games
Posted: 13th Nov 2009 14:36 Edited at: 13th Nov 2009 14:39
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Hobgoblin Lord,

I think the design and layout works well - simple and easy to navigate. Loading times are very fast. I can't give you actual time, but I didn't have to wait for anything to load.

As for the colors, they seem suited to a very early age group - I would think pre-teen, but they don't "hurt my eyes" any. The buttons and game icons are nice and the larger image on mouseover is also a nice touch, though the images are a little low quality.

I would rather see a pop-up description than the status bar type description you currently have. While that works well and is expected in desktop apps, it's not really what I would expect on the web.

Window resize works as expected when using the browser buttons, however can produce some unexpected results when done manually. See attached.

Overall a nice design and well executed.

Brian.

EDIT: JUst a suggestion on the buttons. Perhaps add "New Games" and "Favorites" to the list. Whenever I go to this type of site repeatedly, I like to see the latest additions.

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Hobgoblin Lord
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Location: Fall River, MA USA
Posted: 13th Nov 2009 15:05 Edited at: 13th Nov 2009 15:19
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thanks for the input. question for those that are having the popping problem. if you dont mind what graphics card do you have and what is your screen resolution (just wondering if some particular rez might be the issue) as I have been unable to reproduce the issue myself in any browser.

EDIT: In doing a bit of research here on this popping problem with the flash on the page I guess this is a known issue that is usually caused by the dciman32.dll in directx not by the browser or the flash player itself, likely why it acted the same way in each browser you tested with.

http://Flashsalsa.com
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Fallout
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Joined: 1st Sep 2002
Location: Basingstoke, England
Posted: 13th Nov 2009 16:41
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I found the site extremely slow. My mouse pointer froze every time the flash banners on the right did something. I thought it was going to crash.

The red and blue was a bit painful to look at too. Probably too much contrast, though the images themselves are nice.

The buttons on the left felt a bit tacky. I think it's because they're just individual buttons, and don't feel integrated into some sort of button console.

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Yodaman Jer
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Posted: 13th Nov 2009 17:56
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I agree about the colors; they need to be a bit lighter, or maybe a new color scheme is in order.

Quote: "The buttons on the left felt a bit tacky. I think it's because they're just individual buttons, and don't feel integrated into some sort of button console."


I like the buttons, although they look too simplistic in the fact that they aren't integrated into a button console (like Fallout said).

Everything else was great though, I say definitely keep the design and layout. It's very easy to navigate and it runs just fine in FireFox.

"The fools may crash down upon us in thunderous waves, but we shall Jeku slap them back from whence they came"
-BiggAdd, Oct 28th 2009
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Hobgoblin Lord
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Location: Fall River, MA USA
Posted: 13th Nov 2009 20:54
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did you guys look at it a while before posting?? just wondering since I had changed the colors etc a few hours before your posts.

http://Flashsalsa.com
New Game site
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NeX the Fairly Fast Ferret
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Location: The Fifth Plane of Oblivion
Posted: 13th Nov 2009 21:01
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That's a little better. Halfway workable now. It still needs all of the red/white/blue gradients removing, there's still some about. And the chunky text looks really quite unprofessional.

Athlon64 2.7gHz->OC 3.9gHz, 31C, MSi 9500GT->OC 1gHz core/2gHz memory, 48C, 4Gb DDR2 667, 500Gb Seagate + 80Gb Maxtor + 40Gb Maxtor = 620Gb, XP Home
Air cooled, total cost £160
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crispex
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Posted: 14th Nov 2009 04:34
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Yes, mainly stick away from what I call "drastic gradients". This mainly means, stay away from gradients that go from one extreme color to another. This looks horrible and not many people find it easy for their eyes.

Temporarly away from the Phoenix Sentry.
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Darth Vader
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Location: Adelaide SA, I am the only DB user here!
Posted: 16th Nov 2009 02:54
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It looks fantastic now! Loading was a little slower then normal but not by much.

Keep up the good work!


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Quik
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Location: Equestria!
Posted: 16th Nov 2009 07:15
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i dont like being in need to open a new window to play a game though, might not be ur fault=/, i like that when u click a genre tab it changes at an instant^^


[Q]uik, Quiker than most
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