This one's wierd!

[AFemaleProdigy]

Before you look... this is made for a rock band and is not complete yet. They wanted a sort of sci-fi "outer limits" feel to it. Play around with it a little because a lot of things are links and actually do stuff when you mouse over and click. Keep in mind that not all of the links do stuff yet though so don't get frustrated. There will obviously be more pages loading on the links when I get it done.

I have some concerns about this one. First off, some people have said that they don't like not knowing where to click. I am not sure what would be the best way to make it clear what is and what isn't links. I mean, I don't want to blatantly label the links because it throws off the feel to me. What do you think?

Also, when you click a link and a page opens over the tops of the pre-existing links, they are still active and clickable even while the new page is over the top of them. So I am afraid that when I add the text to the overlying page, the user might confuse the text as links. Umm... it's kind of hard to put into words properly. Check it out and let me know if that makes any sense to you.

Ok, be gentle. LOL!

http://www.jessicabynon.com/temp/captragtest/field/


Thanks,

Jessica Bynon
http://jessicabynon.com

[Cota]

Yea, a lot of navigation issues. But you're aware of those so no sense going over them again. From a design stand point...you have a serious hatred towards borders...in a site like that, borders and such can make a more powerful impact. Right now, its just sitting there...get what I mean?

[AFemaleProdigy]

Hmm... you know... when I started out, the border seemed to be a bit of a dillema. I couldn't make up my mind if I wanted them or not. So it's nice to hear your point of view on that. Thank you!

[bigalc]

I like these sort of interfaces- very good for the target audience, I think. It's a pity the loading bar has to appear each time you click something. Personally I'd rather wait a bit longer at the start and then not have any preloaders appear while using the site. Not always possible, I know, but I'm sure you could dispense with some of them.

Also, this and your other site seem very slow to load given the nature of the content which seems to be mainly just still images with a bit of tweening. Check your file sizes and make sure none of your images are unecessarily large. Also, avoid using pngs if you can, they can be alarmingly big. If you need transparency or non-straight edges you can always use composite images to achieve the same effect, and use smaller pngs to provide jagged edges, for instance, with a jpeg for the bulk of the graphic. And don't forget about gifs, which often do the job just fine for a much smaller file.

Another thing to watch is cheap web servers - the '$25 per year' type affairs can often be an unwise economy, and you'll be sharing a limited amount of bandwidth with a lot of other people, hence your download speeds will suffer. Hopefully you aren't using one of these servers, but if you are...

hope this is some help!

[MichaelxxOA]

As a side note, I love the music!!!! Geeze, like seriously this is awesome! :D

Michael

[Cota]

Definetly watch out for hosts like that. For the borders...the issue is you have all this depth in the site itself, but it just lays there on the background..

[AFemaleProdigy]

Thank you!!! :D Again, totally appreciate the words of wisdom!

So I am learning that I am definately NOT handeling my images properly. I see now that relying on Flash to compress my images is a big NO NO. I have always compressed images for use in HTML and what not, but not Flash. Well, it's nothing that can't be fixed I suppose. I also use a LOT of png files. LOL! Never too late to change!

I knew this site would probably be one of my most complex yet so I was afraid to keep everything in one movie with one preloader. I wasn't sure how large the main movie would turn out. I kind of figured it would be faster and easier on the viewer to make new pages as seperate movies. Guess that was a bad idea then? I am sure that if I go in and compress the images, that I could try combining the smaller movies into the main movie. I am pretty suprised to hear that you all are bothered by the preloaders. I test my sites from several computers upon launch and half the time didn't even see the preloaders because it loaded so fast. Hmm...

I am a reseller for GoDaddy hosting so that is the hosting I use for most of my domains and customer's sites. What is your take on GoDaddy's speed? Bad or good?

I am going to have to rethink the borders.

MichaelxxOA: I just added you on MySpace. LMAO! You can check that band out at myspace.com/capitaltragedy Unfortunately, they broke up but they formed a new band - myspace.com/buriedbyangels So I am going to try to rebrand this site for someone else and hopefully sell it. We shall see once I get it finished!

Thanks again to everyone! ;)