SITE REVIEW: marrelldrums.com & conspiracy.co.nr

well im a just gone 16year old flash website designer (before i get any accusations, i have a legal copy of Macromedia Studio MX 2004, started with trial, then student edition, then baught my own licence).

My latest works have been these, jus wondering what you guys think of them. The Conspiracy is 100% flash with external *.txt editable files for the content, automatic monitoring for the audio and images. the Marrell Drums site is flash for the main part of the site, and HTML for the Paypal Shop.

Marrell Drums
Conspiracy, The Band

All Comments are appreciated. thanks,

Can anyone explain to me why my topic is the only one with no replys. Can't quite understand. Thanks

Be patient belegdae, is the weekend

ok, sorry. I'd have thaught it would be busier on a weekend..*shrugs* oh well

I'm not a big fan of Flash sites. Actually, I hate them. I don't mind Flash elements here and there, but not more than 20% of the page.

That in mind, my reviews:

Marrell Drums: Not bad. Decent layout. Navigation is pretty straight forward. Feels a little static for a Flash site, and the pages seem baren. Other than the header all you have is one column of text, centered on most pages. I'm not an advocate of needless clutter, but some other content below the header would fit nicely. I find the text kind of difficult to read. Not hard, really, but it doesn't stand out, and the human eye is lazy. I find my vision drawn to the image in the background instead. I would add more contrast to the text and lose the center alignment. It's really annoying.

Conspiracy, The Band: Needless splash page. Seriously, why? Move the logo to the loading screen and dump the splash. Once in the site, I find the choice of colors lacking. The white text will sometimes blend with the faded white lineart in the background. Again, you need more contrast. The navigation system sucks. There is no reason to stray from traditional navigation elements, and the chosen method is seriously annoying. If the slider isn't just right (ie a quick, messy mouse movement) then the page won't show and the use has to adjust the slider again. I'd also check grammer and spelling in your text. concept is nice, but has no real- world application in this manner.

So, there you are. My opinions.

thanks placid, with the conspiracy site, the logo was on the splash page, simply because fo loading times, if it was included into the flash, it would double loading time, even with compression. The navigation was the idea of the band, not mine, so there isnt much i can do there. I could include a simple button navigation as part of it, so when you click the name tags on the nav bar, it take you to that page.

thanks all the same,

http://www.marrelldrums.com/ is too much flashy. It will be very difficult for the robots to crawl. Good work done.

I apologize if my first post was rude. My clients pissed me off that day and I regret that my frustration spilled over like that. My opinion stays, but I could have used a bit more tact.

But yes, you should make the text on the navigation slider clickable as well. That will reduce the annoyance factor.

My point on the band page with the splash page was that first the user comes to the site, clicks the logo, and then has to wait again for the Flash. Inserting the logo into the Flash shouldn't eat up any more space than the image alone does now.

As mentioned before, you're going to have a hell of a time with search engines crawling the sites. MAybe not an issue with the band site, but the other one looks like a business, right? They need to be able to be found.

I have to say that the navigation slider stinks. I simply couldn't be bothered to fiddle to get it just exactly lined up and I would leave the site. I like flash, but soon loose interest when the flash aspect seems more important than the content.

I like to see the clever things people can do with flash, but once you've seen it, what is there.

Also, the drum site just came up with a blank black screen, so can't comment except to say I'm using Firefox and it doesn't seem to like it.

Cheers

Keywords etc. dont start till second page. You should try to make it a little more search engine friendly.

the Conspiracy, The Band is a rip off of acdc web site they are the same looks nice though good work