Rate My Flash Website!

[CanofRage]

Hey, I just made an entire website in Flash for myself, and even though 2 of the buttons aren't set up yet, I'd like some constructive criticisms on it.

www.WilliamWadeProductions.com

[Generalissimus]

How about a button to go back to the home/news section? Its pretty cool though.

[Slipstreamer]

It's ok, could use a better layout and maybe less annoying sounds though.

[KaynSlamdyke]

At 4/24/09 12:06 AM, CanofRage wrote: www.WilliamWadeProductions.com

Fair to middling. Better than a lot of Flash sites by sheer dint of it loading in external movies, but it still suffers from a lot of errors, both trivial and important.

Amongst the important things to consider:
- Your menu buttons don't look like buttons, and thier rollover takes too long to animate (ditto the annoying sounds as well)
- You're using frames. Oh god you're using frames.
- You're not embedding the SWF using a web standard method, nor are you using one Internet Explorer will process with the minimum of fuss. Try Satay, Conditional Comment Embedding or SWFObject (google them)
- The back button doesn't work with your navigation, and there are no deep links. SWFAddress has been about for three years now, so there's no excuse
- There is no way to get back to the first page
- There is no alternate content to display if an obsolete version of the Flash Player (or indeed, no Flash Player at all) is detecrdd.
- Your blog isn't integrated into the site. Props for theming your myspace to match, but really you should put it on your site.

As I said, it's a much better stab at a Flash site than I've seen recently, and you seem to at least know what you're doing so the points above shouldn't be impossible for you to correct.

[Mattster]

Overall it is pretty good.

I like the design.

A few pointers.

-The "buttons" are really sloppy, I know it's creative, but it's also a bit sloppy.
-Make a custom Scroll Bar that matches the site, forget components! >: )
-Maybe Bold/Change the font of News Titles and/or dates to make it look neater.
-Make a homepage button :)

Overall it is pretty good. I can't wait to see how it turns out! Good luck!
-Matt

[doctormario]

Kayn's post pretty much covers the missing nuts and bolts.

As for the design factor, it looks pretty cool. Perhaps a little more animation would add to the presentation of it all. See right now, you could basically do that site in HTML with embedded Flash assets. You went to the trouble to make it in Flash, so don't be afraid to use it. The other thing I'd really like you to consider, is keeping the look of the site, and more importantly the navigation on screen the whole time. When I clicked on to your examples, it all went away until I hit back. Assume your visitors have ADHD, because they probably do. :D

Good work.