All speeds, test me! Architectural Firm Flash site.

**pheck** · 05-03-2002, 10:45 PM

hi anna, thanks for checking my thread.

it's very difficult to follow the king of feedback, but i'll try my best.

i think the design element is fabulous. and i really mean that. i think you have a lot of potential. the things i don't like are easily fixed with a little experience. that is:

too slow on a 500 MHz machine. the problem really is, as mentioned before, in the fact that you have too many moving things at the same time. fixing that in itself will make the biggest change in the speed of your site on slower machines. the next thing would be to make your MC's move with a/s instead of tweening. flash has an extra calculation to do each frame on a tween compared to one moved by a/s (it figures out where it should be b/t 2 points). if you're interested in movement w/ a/s, i'd recommend philterdesign's tut at http://www.philterdesign.com

let me be 'that guy' who helps you with your loading movies feature and comm b/t them. here's the deal, broken down in simplest terms. you have a main swf into which you load others. the best way i have found to do this nicely is this: create an empty MC and place it on your stage where you want the UPPER LEFT CORNER of your loaded in swf to be. use the screen x and y values to help you here. name this empty MC anything, but i usu like to call it the same name as the swf i'm going to load in its place. so let's say you have your loaded movie called 'blah'. so name your empty MC that (the instance of your empty MC). now create a button or do it on your main timeline, whatever. just use the loadMovie("blah.swf", blah) command, which tells blah.swf to load into the MC named blah. okay. so now blah.swf is there, in your main movie, in your empty MC's place. how do you control blah.swf's timeframe? EASY! same as how you'd control empty MC's timeline. blah.swf has effectively become 'blah' (your empty MC). so when you say blah.play(), you are telling blah.swf to play, and when you say blah.gotoAndStop(3), you are telling blah.swf to go to and stop at frame 3 in blah.swf's timeline. hope this helps!

**gilesb** · 05-04-2002, 08:08 AM

Hi there Anna banana, if indeed that is your real name!!!!

really liked the design, nice colours and i liked the way the mask effect worked as the text is written. Nice effect on the home page too.

My only criticism, apart from the fact you have no content!!!!, is that as the site was loading, the "%" sign within the loading indication was missing and a square box was in it's place - i think you are embedding a font that you have not got all the characters installed on your computer!!!!!!

like the design.

can i ask you to check my link on this site check - it is my company's site that i just finished

check the portfolio section - quite pleased with that

any comments on the site would be greatly appreciated - even if you hate it!!!!

http://board.flashkit.com/board/show...hreadid=306878

thanks in advance

gilesb

**spamjavelin** · 05-05-2002, 02:07 PM

I like it...smooth.
how did you do the backwards writing effect?
lots of keyframes...with masks?
i tried this b4...got a huge file size!
well done.
spam

**Andology** · 05-05-2002, 02:31 PM

Very nice on the eye & nothing too bright (just how I like my women

..

I couldn't help but notice that the first page you get to (Home) the Kassner Goodspeed Architects text was selectable.. have you embedded the font? or did you forget to break it apart?? it would seem like a dangerous font face to use if it is not embedded or broken apart, especially if it is key to the companies branding..

i like the moving imagery and was surprised at the reletively low load times..

On the anim front, I would try to avoid too much movement where you have text based content, it can sometimes be a distraction while you are trying to read the content..

Also, when the philosophy section scrolls side to side, you can just see the first few characters of the next item, I would make sure it is well hidden away, unless that was done on purpose to entice people to click the next button?

All in all, very pleasent, nothing to hate or dislike about it which is ofen hard to achieve..

Do the same for me??

http://board.flashkit.com/board/show...hreadid=307663

Cheers Anna

Andy

**Anna Banana** · 05-05-2002, 10:45 PM

Loading reply....1 of 6000000 Kb.....:P

Chris - Your input is great. I agree that the handwritten font wasn't working well for the mouseovers at least, and I've changed that, but I'm having so much trouble finding something I like there.
Awww, the animation?

I'm not offended, but I love that part and it HAS to stay! I tried to make it very faint, maybe if I go a bit further?
I've always enjoyed your tutorials, and they look and work great. I'm very happy to have learned how to put my wrist back together when it falls apart. (This will probably happen shortly after I finish this post.)

pheck - Thanks for that link, it's not working right now, but I'm dying to see it, so I hope it's just temporary. I really would love to learn more actionscript stuff. I'm *huge* on speed, and I understand it's a big improvement.
About the movies, hehehe, I do know how to comm. between movies that are all in one flash movie, it's using javascript to pass actions between two movies embedded, say, in different table cells on an HTML page...:/ If you can help me with that, I'll consider you my saviour.

You're review was great and extremely helpful. And look at that, the link works now!
By the way, I really like your site, and the fact that you specialize in medical type sites. did you study medicine yourself? It really impresses me (and I'm sure it impresses them too) that you have such a focused client base. It really shows that you know your stuff, not just the web-designing part of it.

gilesb - Yes! It turns out the font I was using doesn't have special characters. I changed it to "percent"...Does that ruin it?
I'll get you content darlin, you just wait.

spam(Ahhh!) - Yes! It's just a mask and takes about 2 minutes to do! I just put the text on Layer 1, and used a medium sized brush on Layer 2, tracing over little chunks of the text in each keyframe until it's all covered. The file size is pretty big, for all that it is, but I just make each title it's own external movie and load it in, it seems to pose less of a speed-sucking threat that way.

Andy - lol...Thanks for the input. Very nice comment about the speed, always happy to have surprised someone! It really should appear to load very fast, it's several (SEVERAL) relatively small movies all loading into one. Maybe you can tell me if there's a downside to doing this, other than having a ton of .swfs to upload, or is this a good way of going about things? I've pretty much been on my own learning Flash, besides this site, so I've really got nobody to consult with. There's only one well known Flash design company in this technologically-impaired city! I need a piece of that!
I did review your sites, but it was extremely difficult to find anything to say other than "They're stunning! All of them!" Anyway, go read my review!

Oh yah, I took the "KG architects" out entirely...It really had no importance, just sort of a reminder to me that my intro needs a less boring ending...I'll work on it.

I hope you guys actually come back and read this reply!
Thanks again!

Anna

P.S. Ahhh! my wrist!

[Edited by Anna Banana on 05-06-2002 at 12:14 AM]

**pheck** · 05-05-2002, 11:17 PM

pheck - Thanks for that link, it's not working right now, but I'm dying to see it, so I hope it's just temporary. I really would love to learn more actionscript stuff. I'm *huge* on speed, and I understand it's a big improvement.
About the movies, hehehe, I do know how to comm. between movies that are all in one flash movie, it's using javascript to pass actions between two movies embedded, say, in different table cells on an HTML page...:/ If you can help me with that, I'll consider you my saviour.

You're review was great and extremely helpful. And look at that, the link works now!
By the way, I really like your site, and the fact that you specialize in medical type sites. did you study medicine yourself? It really impresses me (and I'm sure it impresses them too) that you have such a focused client base. It really shows that you know your stuff, not just the web-designing part of it.

anna, you are funny! i enjoyed reading that. hope your wrist is feeling better now. i'm sorry i can't be your saviour on the js. i don't have any experience with what you're asking. about me and medicine, yeah, i'm actually a 3rd year med student on the side (lol). i've been doing some corp stuff as of late as well to help pay the bills. they tend to pay better than academia

med tuition ain't cheap. thanks again for the site check. i changed the color thing to hopefully clash less. if you get the chance, let me know if you think it's better now.

http://board.flashkit.com/board/show...postid=1649275

**Anna Banana** · 05-05-2002, 11:43 PM

Haha, I think everytime I go to check your site, you must be updating it. I WILL get it eventually! I did see that one once, then accidentally closed it in a mad clicking spree, and then you updated it again! Maybe it's just fate that I can't see it yet.

And hey THANKS! My mom says I'm funny too!

**pheck** · 05-05-2002, 11:45 PM

no, no new updating going on.

are you clicking the new link (http://66.33.110.67)?

that should be fast and sweet....no free server blues.

**Anna Banana** · 05-06-2002, 12:07 AM

Yay! Now I see.

It's late though, so I promise you a review tomorrow. I'm glad you fixed the preloader, it looks fantastic now! Check your thread tmw!

**dkdesign** · 05-06-2002, 09:45 AM

Nice Layout on your site!
Keep me posted on it's progress.
I am taking your advise on my fullscreen splash so I offend no one. Most all that have reviewed it like it but I see your point and will adjust for a choice.
Keep up the good work.
-Kev-
By the way- did you check out our Bryce Gallery?
And take a look at this-
http://home.speedfactory.net/dkdesig..._the_storm.htm
thanx

**clifgriffin** · 05-09-2002, 10:21 PM

Nice site!

Only a couple of issues.

Pages of philosophy are visible when they are not supposed to be. aboutKGA needs to be positioned better...there is more of a gap to the right then the other buttons.

Love how philosophy "writes" out like that.

You might want to add some more color and contrast. A little monotonous.

Great flash work!

**amiwai** · 05-10-2002, 02:48 AM

Hi anna,

Is look ok to me, evrything flow very smooth.

My comment, I don't like the font u use, That's only thing, overall very nice site.

Amiwai...

**xiang** · 05-10-2002, 03:24 AM

small thing for ya.

evertime i click on a new section, the menu swf is reloaded in even if i've been there before. u may wanna check to see if the section has been loaded already and if so then no need to load it in again.

its only apparent as i'm on a dial up.

enjoy

xiang

**gorlik** · 06-04-2002, 12:30 PM

Looking good. Don't change the fonts... They obviously fit in the Architecture world. Load times were minimal - but I'm on T1 with a really fast (dual 2gig processors with 2gig RAM) machine at work.

**jma77** · 06-04-2002, 12:40 PM

http://www.actionscripts.org/tutorials.shtml

you should find what you need here

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