Flash Site Design - My First webpage

Author

My First webpage

northstar_86

2006-05-18, 3:41 am

Hey everyone! I just launched my first flash site, and my first website period!
Check it out and give me feedback, some things could be smoother but I am still
learning! If you have any pointers I would love to hear them. Thank you!

<a target=_blank class=ftalternatingbarlinklarge
href="http://www.elitearchery.com">Elitearchery.com</a>

Dean Utian

2006-05-18, 6:38 am

Hi Northstar,

Nice site and especially for your first effort. Well done.

I like the colour scheme and the quality of the graphics are high so that makes it
look professional.

I started writing a review of your navigation and it has turned out to be quote
long so hope it's all clear. My main problem is that your navigation system changes
a lot from through the site and there's a lot of unnecessary repetition.

Having the logo in the middle breaks up the top buttons and so doesn't create a
good order to the page. I looks a bit confusing, especially since the links in the
top level bar don't align with the ones in the bar below. It's a bit strange to
have a 'home' link and be able to click the centre logo to go back home. And the
E-force, E-500 etc. all appear under 'products' so, there doesn't seem to be a
strong need for them at the top.

In a big site (or even a small one), it's good to see all the categories at the top
and the breakdown gives you good contextual referencing - being able to see where
you are in the context of the whole site. You're not quite there in getting it
100%. Macromedia site that's now in Adobe does it well:
http://www.adobe.com/
If you go to the Flash page at: http://www.adobe.com/products/flash/flashpro/
you see:
Home / Products /
Flash Professional 8
So, a good way to show you the path structure and have a main title for your page.
In yours, you have the button names repeated in the titles, and it starts to look a
little messy as you break down into the 'products' section or even 'dealer
locator'. Why do you have a different system for the 3 sublevels of 'dealer
locator' than you have for 'products'. Consistency will make for a lot more ordered
site, will be less confusing, and so will be more effective.

Another good site to look at the breakdown of categories is the Apple site. Go to
the Qucktime Products page at:
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/player/win.html
See how the Qucktime top tab is blue along with the links under, and then
'products' is a darker blue. So, you can look at the navigation and know exactly
where you are. That type of technique may help with your breakdown. And you can see
the buttons become part of the titles for the page so avoid the need for repetition
as you have

Anyway, maybe the above 2 sites will give you ideas for making your navigation
breakdown a bit cleaner.

I have 4 principles for good graphic design:
B - balance - your pages are well balanced
C- contrast - you have background colour works will with images and text.
A - alignment - graphics and text should be aligned to create a visual order. This
does not happen with all the elements in your site. Look at where the text starts
in the Eforce page, You have the button links, title and text all starting from
different points. Try left aligning them, or at least have a main alignment point.
P - proximity - things that are related should be in close proximity - like
buttons, text. Reverse is that things that are unrelated should have a space / gap
between them. These create visual connections between your graphics and text and
make your pages 'read' better.

Hope that helps.

regards
Dean

Director Lecturer / Consultant
http://www.fbe.unsw.edu.au/learning/director
http://www.multimediacreative.com.au

northstar_86

2006-05-18, 6:46 pm

Great thank you! I am very new to design as you can see and all this is very helpful!

sunlis

2006-05-19, 3:30 am

I agree with Dean about the navigation. It's a little confusing when you click
ont he link for a page, when the link is at the bottom, then syddenly, it's at
the top. And the point about the logo as well.
Although, I personally like the direct links to the products, this can catch
the viewer's eye, and draw their attention to a product that they might not
have found had they not seen those images/links.
A very nice colour scheme overall. And I think that for some parts, the
misalignment of the text, for example, in the Products section, where it
says"The Rest Have to Follow". That has a very nice effect, imagine that all
lined up, just not the same, is it?
I rather like the use of different fonts for different things, and also within
the same sentence, also seen in the products section example (even though I'm
pretty sure that's all the same font, but you get my point).
I am also working on my first website, and I would like to commend you on this
site, it might take me a while to get mine looking as good as yours.... ;D

Again, great work,

Sean

sunlis

2006-05-19, 3:30 am

Dean Utian

2006-05-19, 3:30 am

Hi Northstar and Sean,

If you'd like to see a little presentation I created on graphic design, go to:
http://www.fbe.unsw.edu.au/learning...sign/design.htm
It illustrates the graphic design points I mentioned before throgh an example of a
business card.

All rules can be broken as long as you have a good reason and you understand the
rules in the first place. For the alignment rule, you don't have to have
everything lining up in a rigid fashion, but there should be some visual
connections between items on various parts of the page. Too many indent spacings
will just look messy.

Hope my link above is helpful. Feel free to tell me what you you think of it. It
was set up for a tutorial using Director. Tut page is:
http://www.fbe.unsw.edu.au/learning.../GraphicDesign/

Wish you both all the best with your web designing.

Hope that helps.

regards
Dean

Director Lecturer / Consultant
http://www.fbe.unsw.edu.au/learning/director
http://www.multimediacreative.com.au

northstar_86

2006-05-19, 6:39 pm

That is very helpful, thank you!

website mac

2006-05-21, 6:36 pm

i think the site is great. i thought the dealer locator would be a little
better. (i.e enter zipcode/postcode). How long did it take you? I cheated with
my site and used a template from swish. my site is www.roofs.tv <a
target=_blank class=ftalternatingbarlinklarge href="http://www.roofs.tv">click
here</a> tell me what you think.

Dean Utian

2006-05-22, 6:33 am

website mac wrote:

> my site used a template from swish. my site is www.roofs.tv <a
> target=_blank class=ftalternatingbarlinklarge href="http://www.roofs.tv">click
> here</a> tell me what you think.

Hi,

Nice site. I like the butterfly and how it appears through the various pages.

In the 'Designs' section, the 'click thumbnails below; an 'click (i) for info' is
very small size. Too hard to read. Where is the (i) you're supposed to click? Once
you click an image, Design style like 'Victorian' is also same small size. Maybe
this page text size is a mistake as in 'Technical' the text is a larger, more
readable size. Even in 'Technical', I still don't know what the (i) refers to.

In both 'Designs' and 'Technical', I like how you can press the + to zoom in on
the image. However, you don't zoom all that much so not giving much more info. I'd
suggest zooming it up much larger. That may mean you lose the slide frame but I'd
experiment on that side of things.

In each section 'About', 'Designs' etc, the title to the page is a light grey.
It's a bit hard to read. Why not keep it the same grey as on 'Home'. Also, the
white label you see when clicking a button is also hard to read. perhaps you
could make the button and frame a bit darker to have more contrast there.

In 'Designs', the main content text is darker than on other pages. I prefer the
other pages.

In 'Technical', I don't like the 'click here for technical interactive' . Seems
out of place and stand out too much. Were you involved with the technical site?
See there's shockwave 3D there which I like since I'm a Director fan:)

Overall, a good job. Well done.

regards
Dean

Director Lecturer / Consultant
http://www.fbe.unsw.edu.au/learning/director
http://www.multimediacreative.com.au