Pixelated Orange New web site

Hi Flashkitters.

I have designed this site and it went live this morning. Only problem is is that a few PC users are commenting that the site takes a long time to load and animate through the site.

http://www.pixelatedorange.com

I designed it in Flash MX (old I know, but I cannot get used to the newer versions) on a Mac, and once I've uploaded it, it runs nice and quick.

The people who are commenting on the speed are all on PC's - but I was always of the opinion that PCs ran flash quicker than Macs.

The main file is 2.1 ish meg, so not huge, but its the animation between sections that is concerning me the most.

Please take a look and see if it runs slow in your opinion.

Many thanks

have just removed one of the main text effects that I think was slowing the whole site down.

It should run faster now!

thanks in advance for any comments!

Flash MX! Holy crap!

Seems to run fine and I'm on a PC.

It seems a little slow but then again, I don't know how fast it is supposed to run. It was not annoyingly slow at all.

I like the site but don't love it. You have some nice effects and I know your name has orange in it, but an entire orange site is monotonous to look at and hard on the eyes.

I would strongly suggest considering going with some sort of orange logo and not having the entire site orange.

It could just be my taste. I definitely would get more feedback from others before changing it. I may be completely wrong.

I'd agree with snorris. I found the orange a bit too much caused me to leave the site after a couple of clicks.
Maybe a thick black bar or something behind the menu to break the menu from the content a bit.

Fair play to Vin for taking the time to do that. Makes a big difference.

Hi all.

Thanks for your replys - sorry I haven't answered them sooner, for some reason I am not getting the replys emailed to me anymore.

Will have to look into that.

Vin, thanks for taking the time out to have a play with the site in photoshop (or whatever you used).

I was surprised to hear that people found it hard on the eyes - they are honestly the first time I have heard those comments - but that doesn't mean I should dismiss them.

The sample you uploaded does look better proportioned - the black breaking up the amount of orange! Although personally for me, the black is a tad harsh.

I will have a play with the site again and see if there is a way to break up the colour a bit better to make it a bit easier on the eyes.

Thanks again guys.

Aaron

I like the overall color schem but it looks outdated. I think it needs a lot more work on the background too... the white isn't appealing. Possibly more "web 2.0" looking? The Studio logo should be at the top and more prominent. The link roll over looks cheesy.

-NITIN ANAND-
http://www.nanand78.com

Thanks Nitin.

Totally understand re the button rollover effect - have been working on doing something more suitable, think I was just being a bit lazy on that bit!!

Will have a play to create something more suitable and upload this weekend. Cheers for the feedback.

Sorry, one quick question for you Nitin.

Could you please elaborate on what you mean by more web 2.0 looking.

Thanks

Well, "Web 2.0" is the new design style that is pretty big nowadays. Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0 for a clear definition. It is sort of how FaceBook, Dark Hour Studios, etc. looks.

Well, "Web 2.0" is the new design style that is pretty big nowadays. Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0 for a clear definition. It is sort of how FaceBook, Dark Hour Studios, etc. looks.

-NITIN ANAND-
http://www.nanand78.com

Hi Nitin

Thanks for clarifying what you meant.

I looked on Wikipedia and found it all a bit vague personally. I think it was the way Web 2.0 focuses around applications that threw me. I couldn't see any relevance to the design a web 2.0 site has compared to the web 1.0.

I think Dark Hour Studios is probably the better example with the more exciting background.

To be honest, I still cannot see any relivence to the design that "web 2.0" offers - Facebooks design isn't revolutionary IMHO - its the backend stuff that seems to stand out to me.

However, I totally understand you suggesting to make the BG more exciting and agree!

Thanks again

I would not go with black as a border though, unless you are going for the halloween look.

I like it, nice job and ignore the out dated comment, it looks just fine.

I did see some slowness though when clicking buttons at the top, launching the text animation, the button animation, the animations of the borders appearing on the new page as well as any content did seem to slow it.

An easy fix would be to remove the alphas from as much as possible .e.g the content borders, the content text .etc replacing them with colour fills of the background orange. Have it transform from the colour fill background orange to the white, since its only meant to take a split second it won't be noticeable how you did it and shouldn’t disturb the background image too much.

You will get a speed improvement from that, not sure if it will be enough though but worth a try.

Aaron, it's your site so you can do with it what you'd like but take suggestions with a grain of salt. If you are a designer you'll need a thick skin to take critiques. I think adding a background to the site will help
Nice sites with Web 2.0: http://www.mint.com, http://www.whitehouse.gov and tutorials at http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007...ials-round-up/.

-NITIN ANAND-
http://www.nanand78.com

Thanks all for your feedback.

Nitin, thanks for your reply, sadly I think you have misunderstood my reply to you.

Basically, I agree totally that the site would/could look better with an interesting background - so thanks :-)

The bit I disagreed with is the use of "web 2.0" as a design style! But I totally understand what you was implying. The design of a site does not come from what version of web it is designed for - I am sure there are crap looking web 2.0 sites out there, just as there are amazing looking web 1.0 sites.

Hopefully that clears up the confusion.

and thanks again.

Really liked the look of it. Downloaded fine for me and I'm running DSL. Too bad you are an MX developer, as bitmapdata really helped fix speed problems with text.
It ran super fine for me, but can only comment on download time as my pc itself is pretty zippy.

thanks for all the feedback and comments guys - very helpful.

Am looking at upgrading to the latest version of Flash, so hopefully will be able to utilise that bitmapdata (thanks Mctittles) and all the other benefits of new software.

Following comments that the white background was too harsh on the eyes with the orange website - and that its wasn't exciting enough, have done an update to (hopefully) remedy this. Thanks to Nanand78 - I did appreciate your feedback, even if I didn't agree with all your comments.

The site now has a grey background, with some photoshop work to the border to lift the orange off the page a bit more - whilst reducing any eye strain :-)

Please let me know what you think of the update.

Thanks again.

Aaron

oh yeah, forgot to mention that I also removed the button rollover effects to (hopefully) speed up the site a bit :-)

Cheers

Aaron

Runs nice and quick here nicely done.