www.flashculture.com

Hi,

At the risk of facing the wrath again of the Mod, i've posted for the 2nd time about www.flashculture.com here . Sorry about that but I've waited for some responses on the site check thread but no one got back to me, so hopefully I'll get better feedback here (as I have in the past)

ok so I've relaunched FlashCulture.com . Of interest to everyone here will be the games page www.flashculture.com/games.htm

I'm always adding in the latest and most advanced Flash games, so if you are interested in them check that out. If you know of any games I'm missing let me know (here or via the form on the site)

I'm also wanting feedback on the site. What you think of it? What you don't like? What you would like to see in it? I really want to create a useful website for all us Flash/Flex/AIR designer/developers, so any feedback is appreciated!

boombanguk

booth website and your post have a strong smel of comercialism- that´s propably my strongest crit as the website looks like I have to close it right after I saw the banner,- the colors and the menu (like the ones of commercial unimportant websites)

looks ok boom dude. not as many ads as jay is games so i guess it's ok then.
i downloaded the online games article and will read it later.
one thing i always like about other ezines is the ability to right-click and open a link in another tab.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by renderhjs

booth website and your post have a strong smel of comercialism- that´s propably my strongest crit as the website looks like I have to close it right after I saw the banner,- the colors and the menu (like the ones of commercial unimportant websites)

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Well I hope not, because theres far easier ways to make websites that make money then a website about the world of Flash :), the google adsense is on there to hopefully help pay for the cost of running the thing, but right now everything comes out of my own pocket. I just wanted a site that has all the latest cool stuff in the world of Flash and motion graphics, because I couldn't find one, so I thought i'd create one myself :)

When you say "banner" you mean the Flashforward conference banner at the top of the page?

and what do you mean by colours and menu?

Quote:

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looks ok boom dude. not as many ads as jay is games so i guess it's ok then.
i downloaded the online games article and will read it later.
one thing i always like about other ezines is the ability to right-click and open a link in another tab

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right click is something i've been wanting to do for a while, but I didn't get any chance to put it in before it went live, now you have mentioned it, i'll try and get it in tonight.

Anything else? did you navigate to any other pages? what did you think of them?

Thanks for any feedback.

"Well, neither TextField objects nor Button objects have timelines of their own, so their parent timeline is that of firstMovieClip, which resides on the root timeline, so you can say that effectively, they have been placed on the main timeline. MovieClips however do have their own timeline, and as I convey in the above example, trying to assign a custom context menu to the nested MovieClip (secondMovieClip) will not work. It's an unfortunate handycap to be honest. The current version of the Flash dictionary doesn't mention this limitation at all, so just be aware of it for the moment and thus avoid any hair-pulling scenarios. "

...nuts.

I´ll go through it one by one :)
Fist to this: "At the risk of facing the wrath again of the Mod"
Normally its no wrath and generally speaking mods normally only close a thread or send out a warning with good reason, your impression may vary of course :)
On the site itself i like the concept and think you´ve improved the functionality and look a good bit so props for that.
On the other side i don´t like the logo at all and think the google ads´ orange border makes em stick out too much.
Like the others i miss standard html functionality like selecting text, saving images and especially right click open link in new window functionality for links a lot.
While i think doing an all flash site can be a good choice in some cases, in your case where its more about delivering information than fancy presentation i think you´d do better having it only done in all flash solution if you can get those typical html functionalities implemented.

I´m not exactly sure what your problem is with setting up the custom context menu, maybe you should post a fla/.as file etc so people can try to help.

thanks for the feedback.

Evidently to use .menu the button/MC has to reside on the main timeline, you can't apply it to an mc that is inside an another mc. And my buttons are, so I can't do that. The only way around it I guess would be too have a new layer sitting on top of the current buttons on the main timeline but that seems a bit messy to me.

one other thing is to change the front page, so it displays the most popular (i.e clicked on) posts rather than as it is now, the most recent, what does everyone think about that?

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Originally Posted by Boombanguk

Evidently to use .menu the button/MC has to reside on the main timeline, you can't apply it to an mc that is inside an another mc.

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No,that´s wrong.
See:

code:

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//let´s have an outer container mc:

var containerClip:MovieClip=this.createEmptyMovieClip(  "containerClip", 1);

//set up some shape container mc:

var buttonClip:MovieClip=containerClip.createEmptyMovi  eClip("buttonClip", 1);

buttonClip.beginFill(0x333333, 100);

buttonClip.lineStyle(5, 0x333333, 70);

buttonClip.moveTo(10, 10);

buttonClip.lineTo(210, 10);

buttonClip.lineTo(210, 40);

buttonClip.lineTo(10, 40);

buttonClip.endFill();

//function which is called when context menu item is clicked:

function snHandler(obj, item) {

   getURL("http://www.stimunation.com","_blank")

}

//set up the custom context menu:

var demoMenu:ContextMenu = new ContextMenu();

demoMenu.hideBuiltInItems();

demoMenu.customItems.push(new ContextMenuItem("Visit Stimunation", snHandler));

buttonClip.menu = demoMenu;

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Btw: dunno why the auto format breaks apart some words..

thanks, but will that work with a button? because for my front page I have buttons over the post titles, I would want to change the menu of them.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Boombanguk

thanks, but will that work with a button?

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np, you´re welcome :) and sure, see:

code:

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//let´s have an outer container mc:

var containerClip:MovieClip=this.createEmptyMovieClip(  "containerClip", 1);

//set up some shape container mc:

var buttonClip:MovieClip=containerClip.attachMovie("bu  ttonClip", "buttonClip",1);

//function which is called when context menu item is clicked:

function snHandler(obj, item) {

   getURL("http://www.stimunation.com","_blank")

}

//set up the custom context menu:

var demoMenu:ContextMenu = new ContextMenu();

demoMenu.hideBuiltInItems();

demoMenu.customItems.push(new ContextMenuItem("Visit Stimunation", snHandler));

buttonClip.menu = demoMenu;

---

this assumes that you have an mc in the library with the linkage id "buttonClip" which could contain a button or something else

ok thats working thanks :), its just on the front page for now but ill put into theother pages tonight.

but regarding this...

Should I change the front page, so it displays the most popular (i.e clicked on) posts rather than as it is now, the most recent, what does everyone think about that?

Stick with recent, otherwise old news may just float around near the top, like spamy threads on here.

Squize.

I see that point and thats how I originally thought of it, but I'm bothered once the site gets people posting URL's themselves then an posting won't stay around long enough for it to get any clicks, and therefore people won't realise its a "good" post. Maybe I should make that front page longer? so more posts are visible?

IMHO It would be better if when you click on a game that it pops open another browser since it goes to another site rather than going directly there and being taken away from your site.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Boombanguk

ok thats working thanks :), its just on the front page for now but ill put into theother pages tonight.

but regarding this...

Should I change the front page, so it displays the most popular (i.e clicked on) posts rather than as it is now, the most recent, what does everyone think about that?

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I'd say use both and add a "sort by" option (and keeping "recent" as default option)

nGFX

Less games to one page, categorize add the top ten with text description then do a list below. Loads of icons like that makes a site look cheap.

Some of this has already been covered, but here are my impressions:
- The typography overall and in the logo is really 'bleh' (to use a technical term).
- Having the site in Flash is annoying considering you're not really doing anything that warrants it.
- I don't mind having ads, but design-wise they feel really cramped over there and take prominence over the main nav. Maybe if you put them horizontally at the bottom you can give everything a little more breathing room.
- The colors are a little plain.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by cadin

Some of this has already been covered, but here are my impressions:
- The typography overall and in the logo is really 'bleh' (to use a technical term).
- Having the site in Flash is annoying considering you're not really doing anything that warrants it.
- I don't mind having ads, but design-wise they feel really cramped over there and take prominence over the main nav. Maybe if you put them horizontally at the bottom you can give everything a little more breathing room.
- The colors are a little plain.

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taking your points one at a time.

1) Well the font is ariel, which is standard. As for the logo, we are thinking about having a "design us a logo" competition :)

2)You say nothing we do warrants it, but what exactly is lacking by doing it in Flash? if you right click on the titles on the front page, you can open the links in a new window the same as html, you can scroll the screen up and down when the Flash movie is in focus with the mouse wheel as html, so whats different?

3) I agree with this, things are a bit cramped, and we are currently modifying the design slightly to make things a bit more "spacey"

4) the colours are "plain" on purpose, this is so that content stands out more.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Boombanguk

Well the font is ariel, which is standard.

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Arial is pretty ugly in general. If you really need to use it, there are still ways you could finesse it.
What do you mean by standard? You are using it because it's the web and you want to make sure that your users have the font installed? But if you are using Flash you can use whatever font you want, right?

Which brings me to the next point:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Boombanguk

what exactly is lacking by doing it in Flash?

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- 'Back' button functionality.
- Page bookmarking.
- Opening link in a new tab or window. Your new window function only seems to work on the main page, and right-clicking to open a new window is cumbersome anyway when one is used to just Command-clicking to open a new tab. I don't know if I ever would have even thought to right click.

Normally I think these things are forgivable to a degree, IF the site has a compelling reason to use Flash (fancy animation, nice transitions, good typography, etc), but you're not really giving me anything in return for what you are taking away.