Break my menu

[Mctittles]

Hello all! I just finished a new type of menu for my site and was wondering if anyone can break it! Or..if you have any suggestions, ideas.

Links is:

http://www.metalblend.com

-Shawn

[asimpleart]

Menu system works for me, and is a really gooood idea. Please, don't use that green though for the background! It's a good concept, don't ruin it with something easy to fix like that. If your going for a redish bloodish type of theme, green might not be the way to go. Also, to top this page of and make it seem less 'floaty' , throw a background in there to give the user something to differentiate the actual site content from the background.

6.5/10

[ojc1]

Nice. Is there a matrix infuence to this 'green rollovers' and 'agents'
Maybe the Metal Blend logo type could look a bit cleaner.

[hGraf Design]

menus are OK, but I'd speed up the transitions a wee tad...

[Mctittles]

Thanks for all the replies guys!

ojc1 - No, the matrix wasn't on my mind at all when designing this. It went kinda like this. I came up with the idea of a very simple looking site with only a logo and menu items on a white page. I wanted the menu items to open somehow with Flash but didn't want to force the user into a certain browser size. After I decided on expanding borders, I wondered, how will these borders appear? I then though that maybe an electric grid is created, then the border is filled into the grid, and finally the grid goes away. I went with that and matched the loading areas with it. I actually changed over to the lines you saw in the menu sections, to save a couple KB, but I changed back again and the changes are up:
http://www.metalblend.com

asimpleeart - Don't like the green look huh? Well, maybe it's because I've become partial to it after working on it for awhile or not. I actually started the theme around this
http://metalblend.com/public_html/Fl...s/logoTest.htm
That logo was supposed to load in from a laser built glowing grid, and that's why you see the grid showing through from time to time. I ended up ditching the logo though because the file is HUGE.

I might keep the green around for awhile because I'm working on adding a light switch type thing that will turn the page dark and the glowing green looks really cool in the dark. If more people say the green is gross, I'll look into changing it. As far as for the background you mentioned, I made this site with the idea in mind that I wanted it to be Flashy, but as clean and easy to navigate as possible. I wanted simple clean background (pure white). However, since you think it might look better without that, I've been thinking and am not sure where I would put a background in or how. The page is designed to work in all browser sizes, so whatever I used for a background would have to be able to conform to different sizes as well. Any ideas you were thinking of? Let me know if you like the green grid better than the lines. And I'll post a dark version of it when I get a chance as well...

hGraf Design - If you don't mind, I was wondering what the processor speed of the computer you viewed this on was. I've been testing this on many machines ranging from 500MHZ to 3GHZ while working on it to achieve the greatest compatibility. I've noticed the slower machines of course take longer to build the border etc, so I was wondering your speed so I can get an idea of what kind of transition speed you see. Also, if you are referring to the transition wipe big green grid thing covering the sections before they load, this is based on load time. I also actually had the grid starting to build at the same time as the border, but on slower machines this seemed to hiccup too much so their is a little wait as the border needs to be complete before the grid animation begins (but the menu is loading in the background while this is going on).

Ok, thanks again for the comments and if you have any more I'd be glad to hear them.

[drew_hytt]

PROBLEM..

you have a serious problem with the size of the swf movie.. try right clicking and going to show all, yikes.. if anything disable right clicking in the flash movie.. over all sites ok.. small yet ok.

[Mctittles]

Nice find. Yea, I'll have to disable right clicking. The size of the movie that is published is much different than what is supposed to be shown. I use javascript to dynamically change the movie size to match the size of the viewing browser (I have a pet peve about Flash sites that force you into a certain size window). Thanks for finding that. I am aware of the size of the movie. It's actually irrelevant at what size I publish in the way in which it is being used. All objects within the movie are positioned according to stage size which will change depending on how you resize your browser. But yea, thanks again for finding that bug that slipped by.

[Tracy981]

maybe its my comp but when i click on ur URL, all i get is a white screen. i tried viewing it in explorer and safari but nothing happens?? im on a mac, anyone else having this problem?

[Mctittles]

Ahh, a mac user. I've always been curious how this type of javascript would work on a mac. Although in theory the code should work in IE for mac, I haven't had a computer to test it on. If you got a chance, since you can't see the menu, can you tell me if you see hearts falling here:
http://shawn.metalblend.com/links/ma...lingHearts.htm
And a window you can drag here:
http://shawn.metalblend.com/links/ma...windowDrag.htm

If it's what I think is the problem, you should be able to see the window and not the hearts link...


Oh, and drew_hytt I updated and got rid of the 'show all' part of the menu. Hopefully that keeps it sized the way it was meant to be.

[Tracy981]

yeah i can see the window that u can drag but nothing happens with the hearts on safari and on explorer it says this:

Not Found
The requested URL /links/m...llingHearts.htm was not found on this server.


Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

if u want me to repeatedly check on mac, my IM name is Luv98ca80, im usually on

Tracy

[ZeroInspiration]

After the intro your just throwing the navigation straight at us which is kind of a turn off I think it would be much better if you added some sort of transition to it. The site seems too white, way too white and without alot of supporting lighter colors it comes off as being rather tacky. You should look into something darker with a little texure to it so your site fits into the page instead of being a blemish on the page. I have to agree with a comment made earlyer that that green in the transitions is bad but I think its not so much the color as it is the size of the grid, why not try making it a little skinnier.