http://manythespaceman.org/

[dr.swank]

Hi all,

am hacking again and wanted a preliminary response on this:

http://manythespaceman.org/

The images are dragable and resizable via the lower right corner.

Any crits and thought are welcome.

cheers, doc

[gordo663]

Looks like you can follow a tutorial really.
Draging the objects/pictures wasn't clear. It was insanely hard to fine the intro button. I don't like the placement of the nav bar. And the nav bar doesn't help at all in naving. Images when smaller look grainy and unprofessional (when they're in their small form).

Add some usability and it shows promise.
Right now it's insanely hard to use and it doesn't present the work very well. IMO the presentation should be some of the easiest to see/view/navigate of the entire site. Gizmos are nice, but they shouldn't be an impediment.

Don't mean to sound harsh, but that's honestly what I think of this at the moment.

[dr.swank]

Looks like you can follow a tutorial really.

um... this makes you look a bit less experienced than you probably are. Or is there a tute you can send me to that explains how to build a self loading aspect ratio conform self tweening component that connects to a MySQL back end via Flash Remoting and calls a random saved dataset which is presented after all images in the gallery is loaded??

I don't mean to sound harsh, but I stated:

am hacking again and wanted a preliminary response on this:

which implies that this is not done.:o

are you a follower of the Neison view on usability? If so, then I assume this site will never be to your liking. sorry.

On another note, please have a look at the use of the browsers scroll bars as opposed to making myu own inside flash. Its kind of a cool trick I grabbed from Hoss Gifford at the Spark conference in Amsterdam.

gordo663, it may be to your advantage to look a little mor carefully in the future so you don't miss something really key because something your would have put there yourself was not in place. Again, I don't mean to sound harsh. :D

[dr.swank]

as a secondary not gordo663, you may want to view a tute on button hit area's... I viewed your site and found it almost impossible to select a section inside your portfolio are. Aside from that, when I did click a button, nothing happened.. :D

[gordo663]

I'm supposed to know it's back end from "am hacking again and wanted a preliminary response on this" lol, sorry :)

But I gave the crit as how I can see it now. I don't know how it's going to look as I'm not you.

If you're wanting a WIP crit, tell us what you want us to crit on. I'm a graphic designer, I comment on useability, asthetics, presentation that sort of stuff. I didn't get that I was supposed to be trying and looking at how this works from your initial post. My bad.

lol, my site isn't done yet. Nothing works (found a job, so I've got a few years to work on it :)

[dr.swank]

its the assumption that pissed me off the most. I see where the crit is from now that I know you are a visual dept. person. May be prudent to state that in the future to avoid these kind of clashes.

About your site not being done,.. well, you may want to take it offline if its not done, or hide it. If I were checking you out as a possible freelancer, and I saw your site, I would not hire you. That is the problem with staticly designed sites. Anyhow, not hard done I guess.

cheers, doc

[gordo663]

Sorry didn't mean to imply that it was a tutorial, just meant to say that it looks like one (talking purely asthetics there).

Cool, so how do you see it being used? How are the images loaded (picks a folder or is there an array or something with the image names)? How does it randomly generate the saved data set (does it get my screen size and then generate the data?)

[dr.swank]

the images are currently being called via a php script that generates an xml document. That will change as the site develops. It is meant to be a user login site where people can save 'narratives' which are basically personal layouts of the images. The idea to to possibly have it develop into a shop type system as well, where people can then order the prints in a certain relationship to eachother as a set for a certain price.

the random narratives are all stored in a table on the server. When the page loads it just picks one of howevermany there are. There is a button at the top next to the images where, when you set up a narrative you like, you can save it, and you will see it again
later. The screen size is unimportant as the embedded flash content gets dynamically resized which causes the browser scroll bars to show up. This will also happen if you drag a picture to the far right or bottom.

Thanx for looking at it. I will post back here as it develops.

cheers, doc

[Headshotz]

Cool :D:D

Well done ;)

[dr.swank]

thanx Headshotz. :)
gordo663, is the text at the start helpful in clearing up the usage??

[gordo663]

Very much so dr.swank. Pretty darned neat now that I know what it's for.

I'm just getting a continuous clicking sound in IE when I drag or resize. Probably an IE thing, but that's all I've got on this computer.

Very cool idea though. Thumbs up!

[dr.swank]

do you allways get the clicking sound , or just when you drag an image to the far right?? I am curious as I am using a javascript call to dynamically resize the embedded swf.

[gordo663]

It's when ever I move or resize the image. When my mouse button is down pretty much.

I moved on over to the far right and when it auto moved it back it started clicking all the time. I've reloaded it again and I can't get the full time clicking to repeat itself.

It also clicks at me when the autonarrative is moving pictures around. It stops when it isn't moving/resizing.

I don't think it was doing this yesterday, unless I just didn't have my sound turned up or something.