New online Flash magazine!

[Boombanguk]

ok its finally here, thanks for all the support!

www.flashculture.com

If you find this site in any way useful let me know!, thanks!

boombanguk

[tomsamson]

its a good start,you should fix the typical flash usability issues though (no right click open in new window,no mouse wheel scroll,no browser back button feature etc).
I like it so far though,keep it up
would be nice if you put a link to http://www.stimunationgames.com/ where you say stimunation

[Squize]

Oops, bit late for the photo now, sorry mate

Nice work though, had a quick skim and I'll have a proper read later ( Just worried in case my interview is too negative. I've had a week off since then and I've rekindled my love of the world, as opposed to the angst ridden hatred of everything just a week or so ago ).

Squize.

PS. Weird being called "Richard", only my mum calls me that, or my gf when I've done something wrong

[Boombanguk]

its a good start,you should fix the typical flash usability issues though (no right click open in new window,no mouse wheel scroll,no browser back button feature etc).
I like it so far though,keep it up
would be nice if you put a link to http://www.stimunationgames.com/ where you say stimunation

Thanks for the comments. I'll fix the Flash issues as time goes on, for now I just wanted to get as much info in there as I could for launch. But..

What do you mean by "no right click open in new window" ?
and mouse wheel scroll, I can get that to scroll the browser window but not the scrollpane (I'm using MX)

I've changed the text as you suggest so it now says "http://www.stimunationgames.com/" but its not a clickable link yet.

Oops, bit late for the photo now, sorry mate

its cool

Nice work though, had a quick skim and I'll have a proper read later ( Just worried in case my interview is too negative. I've had a week off since then and I've rekindled my love of the world, as opposed to the angst ridden hatred of everything just a week or so ago ).

that doesn't come across though, I think it was a great interview, with interesting points.

[alillm]

Great start looking forward to seeing it develop. Nice interview too .

Ali

[pigpen32]

Took a quick look at your site. Yeah nice interview and some of your links in the news section was useful, like the link to designer/developer salaries.

[Boombanguk]

thanks.

theres actually 2 interviews there, one with Mark ferdman of freedom interactive design and one with squize, maybe I need to make that clearer, hmm.

Glad you like the articles, I'm always scouring the net looking for interesting bits.

[routine404]

I'm impressed with the amount of info you've got in there. The interview is great (nice work on Sakkara Squize!). Overall it feels too Flash MX though - the non resizable layout, over-anti-aliased text, and default grey scrollbars... I think designers (particularly) coming to it for the first time may take it less seriously because of that; because it looks old. Version 2.0 will be cool I reckon

[Boombanguk]

I'm impressed with the amount of info you've got in there. The interview is great (nice work on Sakkara Squize!). Overall it feels too Flash MX though - the non resizable layout, over-anti-aliased text, and default grey scrollbars... I think designers (particularly) coming to it for the first time may take it less seriously because of that; because it looks old. Version 2.0 will be cool I reckon

Thanks. I can see your point about it being too MX, but to be honest if you are going to do this in Flash I think MX is the best bet cos of the penetration.
The biggest thing I wanted to achieve with it, is for the information to be readily available. If you want the best websites then you go to the best sites and there they are, nice thumbs of the latest and greatest, no fuss. And the same for the rest of the info. I don't know about you but i'm fed up having to always search for things, games/sites whatever. The point of this site is that I do that for the reader, especially articles/news etc about what we are all interested in.

Content is king as they say, especially for this kinda site, the design etc i'll evolve as time goes on, but it would be nice to keep it Flash.

It's a cool website, but I have one issue with it : it's in Flash, which is actually a bad idea for a site about flash games, imho. The reason is that it will slow down any other flash content, even just a little bit. It's the same reason why I don't like Flash ads on a Flash games website.
It also means I can't press control-f and find something on the page without having to read over everything.

I agree, but it bugs me when I find websites that are all about Flash, that are in html, it just rubs me the wrong way. Of course I know the reason why people are still using Html, but this is the first version of the website, and I will improve its usability over time, but hopefully keeping it in Flash. I'll try to use what tricks I can within Flash to give the user some of the simple luxuries that html gives us!

Quote:
What do you mean by "no right click open in new window" ?

On normal html links, you can press right button and choose "open in new window". Can't do that with flash by default.

Other than that, it's very cool. Nice domain name, too.

thanks

[Fall_X]

It's a cool website, but I have one issue with it : it's in Flash, which is actually a bad idea for a site about flash games, imho. The reason is that it will slow down any other flash content, even just a little bit. It's the same reason why I don't like Flash ads on a Flash games website.
It also means I can't press control-f and find something on the page without having to read over everything.

What do you mean by "no right click open in new window" ?

On normal html links, you can press right button and choose "open in new window". Can't do that with flash by default.

Other than that, it's very cool. Nice domain name, too.

[token 3]

It's a cool website, but I have one issue with it : it's in Flash

i completely agree, but for a diffetent reason.
flash is always a bad platform to develop sites in, especially sites that orrer information.

what if i want / i can't':

print out the articles
resize the text to see the articles...
to see my article full screen flash takes a fair bit of extra work to get everything to scale and still look good
view it on my PDA
i'm partially blind, i rely upon a screen-reader

having all the content in flash is not good for search engines... only a few people will find your site on a search engine.

sorry i'm all about the accessability.
hope it helps

[Fall_X]

[QUOTE=token 3]

It's a cool website, but I have one issue with it : it's in Flash/QUOTE]

i completely agree, but for a diffetent reason.
flash is always a bad platform to develop sites in, especially sites that orrer information.

what if i want / i can't':

print out the articles
resize the text to see the articles...
to see my article full screen flash takes a fair bit of extra work to get everything to scale and still look good
view it on my PDA
i'm partially blind, i rely upon a screen-reader

having all the content in flash is not good for search engines... only a few people will find your site on a search engine.

sorry i'm all about the accessability.
hope it helps

Yeah, I agree on most points, except : "having all the content in flash is not good for search engines... only a few people will find your site on a search engine."

Some clever tricks can solve this (invisible divs or something).

However, just thought of another issue : suppose I want to send the interview with Squize out to someone. How do I get the link to it?

What I would consider doing is keeping parts of it in Flash (navigation), but the content in html. Off course it's your site, so it's your call.

[token 3]

[QUOTE=Fall_X]

Yeah, I agree on most points, except : "having all the content in flash is not good for search engines... only a few people will find your site on a search engine."

Some clever tricks can solve this (invisible divs or something).

invisible divs with content are so incredibly pointless... diplication of content will increase page sizes. bandwidth...

the only valid reason(s) for a flash site are:

*image enhancements (animations etc)
*quirky sites

informative should, in my opinion, and in the opinion of all most web developers should never be flash only.

all navigation and internal links will need to be duplicated to allow search engines to spider the site...

sites like this (the site in question) could get high google rankings, if the site was to be developed in html, as it looks like there could be a lot of content that changes (search engine spiders love fresh content).

[routine404]

btw - I found this line "As for offline, funnily enough just yesterday I was looking at the Torque engine as a vehicle for offline work as opposed to doing it in Flash / Zinc." - in both interviews

[routine404]

it's a good effort man - both of those interviews are really good, and I agree the domain is really well positioned to bring a huge amount of traffic. Keeping content king is the right attitude too, and I appreciate it's the first version of the design - but if you're going to keep it in Flash, I think it's really got to be taking advantage of what the newer versions of flash give you in terms of usability and presentation. doing a full site in Flash rubs the majority of people up the wrong way - especially those who hear about how flash is used badly on a daily basis (all of us probably). So I just think it would be nice to have a Flash Community site at least doing it the way it should be done... Keep it up, it's a good start!

[Boombanguk]

it's a good effort man - both of those interviews are really good, and I agree the domain is really well positioned to bring a huge amount of traffic. Keeping content king is the right attitude too, and I appreciate it's the first version of the design - but if you're going to keep it in Flash, I think it's really got to be taking advantage of what the newer versions of flash give you in terms of usability and presentation. doing a full site in Flash rubs the majority of people up the wrong way - especially those who hear about how flash is used badly on a daily basis (all of us probably). So I just think it would be nice to have a Flash Community site at least doing it the way it should be done... Keep it up, it's a good start!

once the F8 player penetration rates hit the same as MX i'll probably do a re design with F8, but for now i'll just improve it in steps as suggested.

As a side issue, anybody got suggestions for the monthly poll?

[tomsamson]

regarding the monthly poll you could ask which flash version people use right now,mx,7,8 or 9
I thought a while if i should post on the same topic,i´m not into pushing you all into the corner where you have to defend youself,but yeah,after all i think you´d profit more by changing it,so here i goes:
I totally agree with the others on whether to use flash to do a whole website or not.
Flash has its strengths and its weaker sides,because of those it´d be ok with having an entire flash driven website if the site was utilizing flash´s strengths (heavy media/video or organic layout driven for example).
Your site is a typical data driven blog like site though,i cant see a point at all in having it done in flash other than just for havin it done in flash in this case.

The more your site is only made up of text and links,the more downsides of flash sites for such type of site get into focus of the user (things already noticed here, next to stuff like no good google search site indexing which is not that important in terms of games as they spread anyway but really bad in terms of websites).
I also badly miss ctrl+F.

If you do this type of site in flash imho (which i´d only suggest in case you intend to change the site towards using the strenghts of flash more) you HAVE to do it for the newest flash player version possible imho,too.
Some reasons:
-f7 allows custom right click menu content (-->open links in new window ability)
-f7 allows mousewheel support for components etc
-f8 allows cacheASBitmap-->Vector driven stuff like components can consume way less performance.
-f8 allows crisper text rendering.

Those are not the features of the flash versions i´d decide upon whether to do my game for this and that flash version or not,but yeah,in case of a website those are really crucial.
Especially in case of data driven websites who normally act and look as no flash sites,people will expect that most basic html functionality and behaviour.

On a sidenote your site is aimed at flash users and more flash (game) developers,so there´s really no sense aiming for a lower player version,your target audience should surely have the latest player installed within less than 3 months after release

Again,i don´t post this to some kind push you into deffensive corner,i like the concept of your site and if its usability and look raise it would be good for you just as it would be nice to the user.
oh,btw i noticed something weird about the interviews teaser on top: once you click on an interview you can´t use the prev and next buttons on the teaser anymore unless you go back to the main menu

[Boombanguk]

first of all thanks for all the feedback, I take everything that anyone says as constructive criticism, even though I might dissagree with some of it! . One important point I would like to make is this. Even though people might have issues with it not being html, what I would really like to know is, has the fact that its flash stopped you from reading any of the articles? or looking at any of the websites/games/development links? if the answer is "no", then I'm happy, because at the most (and most important) basic level the site has worked. Regardless of the various htmlVsFlash issues, its getting the content across to people which I'm really trying to do. Maybe the next poll question should be "have this site been useful to you?"!

Right now onto replies!

regarding the monthly poll you could ask which flash version people use right now,mx,7,8 or 9

But don't the adobe penentration rates show that?

I thought a while if i should post on the same topic,i´m I thought a while if i should post on the same topic,i´m not into pushing you all into the corner where you have to defend youself,but yeah,after all i think you´d profit more by changing it,so here i goes: I totally agree with the others on whether to use flash to do a whole website or not. Flash has its strengths and its weaker sides,because of those it´d be ok with having an entire flash driven website if the site was utilizing flash´s strengths (heavy media/video or organic layout driven for example). Your site is a typical data driven blog like site though,i cant see a point at all in having it done in flash other than just for havin it done in flash in this case.

I guess when I think of design, I think of motion graphics, I think of design through images rather then through text, which is why FC has a lot of large thumbnails. I'm not a huge fan of lots and lots and lots of text, of varying sizes/colours/fonts etc all over the screen. To me the simpler you make it, and more you use images rather then text the better. Having said that, obviously there are sections of the site that are all text (the interviews) and for these sections I will think of making the text a lot clearer. This is just the first version of the site, and everyones comments will certainly help me improve it, so I appreciate the comments, but my instinct's are to keep it as visual as possible.

Its not a Blog site though. I might have an editorial every now and again, but the site is not my "thoughts" on the day. I'll leave those kinds of opinions to other people!. FC is more of a showcase of the world of Flash, as well as trying to provide the community with usefull titbits of info that I've found scattered around. As for indexing, for now I'm not fussed if its doing well on search engines or not (those words are gonna come back and bite me in the ass I just know it). Hopefully it will spread within the community itself, and then maybe on the back of all of that I can increase its availability via search engines.

I also badly miss ctrl+F.

Searching is something I would like to incorporate into the site, the only issue is how! , Keeping it visual, and seeing that most of the information (best sites/games/motion graphics) is thumbnail based, it might be nice to dynamically create the grid of thumbs based upon the search criteria but I'll have to see.

If you do this type of site in flash imho (which i´d only suggest in case you intend to change the site towards using the strenghts of flash more) you HAVE to do it for the newest flash player version possible imho,too.
Some reasons:
-f7 allows custom right click menu content (-->open links in new window ability)
-f7 allows mousewheel support for components etc
-f8 allows cacheASBitmap-->Vector driven stuff like components can consume way less performance.
-f8 allows crisper text rendering.

I agree with all of that. By xmas I will do a F8 version of the website, but for now i'll just try to address some of the issues raised within MX.

oh,btw i noticed something weird about the interviews teaser on top: once you click on an interview you can´t use the prev and next buttons on the teaser anymore unless you go back to the main menu

fixing that tonight!

Nice interviews, nice site apart from the stated design/feel issues, my only gripe, no HA3 in the games list!

thanks for the comments. Each weekend i'll be updating the best sites/games/motion graphics, HA3 will go in next weekend

I'm pretty much with the other guys in terms of presentation and useability. I personally hate seeing an AntiA font in a text box like that.
But like everyone else has said, it's got a load of potential, and it's a great start, good work mate ( btw, gone through my 100+ mails this morning, I've only been away a week! Wasn't ignoring you mate, was in Sunny Wales eating and drinking like a king ).

Text seems to be a major gripe with a lot of ppl, so thats something i'll be sorting soon. As for not being able to contact you, its cool, weathers been great, sounds like you had fun!

- the grey color don't works good with white fonts (at least the grey tint you used) - and finally website leaves me with a strong feeling of incomplete job :/ But nice try....

I'll probably change the grey colour, make take it away totally, and just leave the text on the dark background.
Well it is the first version , like I said, if you find something of use on the site, then thats what make me happy, everything else I can address over time.

BOOKMARKED!!!!!!!!!!!This is great

thanks , glad you liked it.

i completely agree, but for a diffetent reason.
flash is always a bad platform to develop sites in, especially sites that orrer information.what if i want / i can't':
print out the articles
resize the text to see the articles...
to see my article full screen flash takes a fair bit of extra work to get everything to scale and still look good
view it on my PDA
i'm partially blind, i rely upon a screen-reader

having all the content in flash is not good for search engines... only a few people will find your site on a search engine. sorry i'm all about the accessability. hope it helps

It does help . I find it interesting though that on a "Flash" forum, everyone seems to be so pro html, at least for information websites. Ok firstly, honestly how often have you printed an article out from the net? I'm not saying its not good to have that function, but I've never done it, and I'm not sure its something that a lot of people do, but maybe i'm wrong about that. I guess though I could also offer the interviews as downloadable word docs? But Accessability is important I agree, so I'll look into those issues.

Yeah I'll throw my 2 cents in too and say the same as all else. There's nothing in this site design that could not be done in HTML+PHP. So I don't see why you would go and use Flash and totally close your site off to:

1. Search engines
2. Other people linking to specific content.
3. Searching the site for key words
4. Ability to hit BACK, or right-click links
5. Etc, etc, etc...

You're really handicapping your potential success, especially if you hope to someday have the site be self-sufficient through ad revenues. You'll never get the traffic you deserve if you don't address the points above.

I agree but, the audience for this site is the Flash community, and even though they all seem to love html, if anyone is going to be "ok" with Flash quirks its going to be them. I'm not saying that I won't be working on the issues raised but hopefully people appreciate that i've gone for a non-html look! (and to be honest, even though ppl have griped about issues, everyone who has contacted me about it, seems to love the general design).

OVERALL!

thanks again for everyone's feedback, Keep it coming! It does make me think "oh hell I re do it in html!" haha, but I won't, Flash is where my heart is and I'm a firm believer that you CAN do information websites in Flash. I just don't agree that flash is just a media player. One of the things I really wanted to avoid with this website is it looking html. Actually my first design was a very html looking site, but then I thought whats the point of that, I want it to have a distinct style, which from what i've read/heard i've achieved. I'm going to try to keep it as image based as possible, and use Flash's strengths as much as possible, but with also solving some of the accessability issues as well. At the end of the day though its about the content.

But i'll look to solve some of these issues over the next few days.

[Ray Beez]

I agree but, the audience for this site is the Flash community, and even though they all seem to love html, if anyone is going to be "ok" with Flash quirks its going to be them. I'm not saying that I won't be working on the issues raised but hopefully people appreciate that i've gone for a non-html look! (and to be honest, even though ppl have griped about issues, everyone who has contacted me about it, seems to love the general design).

Well, I disagree and think you're shooting yourself in the foot. Your initial responses are from people to whom you are directly "advertising" the site. I visited it because of your post here. But to truly make your efforts worthwhile, you'll have to get traffic from somewhere, and Google is one avenue. I may be a Flash developer, but I still Google for information. If your site doesn't come up, you're limiting your audience.

Even the interview was a pain to get through because I kept hitting my scrollwheel. Then using the scroll widget, scrolling was a bit choppy (if you used Flash 8 and set the bitmap cache, that sucker would become so much smoother!). So I dunno. I think people here like you and will tolerate as much as they can because you have some great relevant news, but you don't want a site audience of just 12 people, do you?
;-)
(On the other hand, maybe I'm being "chicken little" about this... It's a great site. I wish you the best of luck)

[Boombanguk]

Well, I disagree and think you're shooting yourself in the foot. Your initial responses are from people to whom you are directly "advertising" the site. I visited it because of your post here. But to truly make your efforts worthwhile, you'll have to get traffic from somewhere, and Google is one avenue. I may be a Flash developer, but I still Google for information. If your site doesn't come up, you're limiting your audience.

Even the interview was a pain to get through because I kept hitting my scrollwheel. Then using the scroll widget, scrolling was a bit choppy (if you used Flash 8 and set the bitmap cache, that sucker would become so much smoother!). So I dunno. I think people here like you and will tolerate as much as they can because you have some great relevant news, but you don't want a site audience of just 12 people, do you?
;-)
(On the other hand, maybe I'm being "chicken little" about this... It's a great site. I wish you the best of luck)

I think if the content is relevant like you said, and I feature the best in Flash then I think it will be ok, and will spread. I WILL address the issues people raised , But Im resisting using html for now. The most I will do in that direction is possibly use it for google adsense but i'm still debating that.