in need of criticism 3

[pbb]

Hello,
I would love to have some opinion/feedback/criticism (negative feedback is ok!!) on a flash site we have just finished so that we can perhaps improve it. Thanks!!

http://www.artemysia.com/pbb/

Patricia

 

[davdesign]

hi patricia !

Very nice work, loved the graphics and will definitely keep an eye out for your work in the publications you mentioned in your bio.

I can't really speak for the masses at the moment because I'm using a pretty slow connection at the moment, but I can offer a few niggles from a 'slowbie' point of view.
Your Gallery had a preloader (nice and different too!), but when it came through it was still jerky and very slow at points. Also at times the images didn't 'unfurl', they just sat behind your motif.

Have you thought of using a form for your 'contact' section, it would give you a chance to show off more of your artistic skills.

I look forward to having a look on a faster connection.

All the best to you
dave

ps: J'ai cherche le champignon!!! ;-)

(sorry, only french I know!) dave@davdesign.co.uk

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

 

[oldnewbie]

Bonjour Patricia!
Moi aussi j'ai bien apprécié! Je n'ai pas eu de problème de vitesse comme Dave, bien que je n'aie qu'une connexion de 56K. J'ai toutefois cru apercevoir des faux plis dans la découverte de certaines des photos de la galerie et même dans les portes au début. Bizarre!
Comment as-tu créé le masque flou dans la bio? Partagerais-tu ton secret?
En terminant, penses-tu ajouter une version française de la bio? Et peut-être un p'tit chargement à Loading?

Beau travail!

;-)

PS: I looked for the mushroom!!!

(sorry, only english I know!) "If nothing else, I can always serve as a bad example!”

 

[pbb]

Hello Dave

Thanks for taking the time to look at the site and thanks a lot for your input. I really appreciate it.
What you said about the images not "unfurling" really bothers me. I wonder it it appears like that on a lot of slower connections... Have you tried reloading or refreshing the page?
Yes, I've thought about making a custom "contact" form. But now I need to convince Thane, my Flash artist; to browse the manuel for "how to make forms" parts. And that wont be an easy task!
Thanks again for every thing Dave, including the compliments ;-)
PS j'espère que tu finiras par trouver tes champignons!

Patricia

 

[oldnewbie]

Tout pour Dave et rien pour moi?

Lui il n'est qu'en Écosse! Moi je suis du Québec, après tout!

>:-< &quot;If nothing else, I can always serve as a bad example!”

 

[pbb]

Bonsoir Oldnewbie (c'est un nom ca? Oldnewbie? ,-) )
Je te remercie aussi mille fois pour ton feedback et tes remarques. Cette histoire de &quot;plis&quot; dans les images me pose de gros problèmes. Ca ne se passe que sur les PC, et pas sur tous les PC (je travaille sur MAC). Il n'y a pas de slice dans ces images, alors je ne comprends pas... mais alors pas du tout comment cela se fait que sur certains PC il y ait ces plis!! Any suggestion?? please O please? Et pourquoi cela se passe t il? Et pourquoi cela se passe t il sur certaines des photos mais pas toutes?
May be I should write this in English in case someone else has an idea ok Oldnewbie?
I do not understand why on some PC the images in the Gallery section of the site appear to have a &quot;&quot;crease&quot;&quot; in the middle, when the image is not even moving (and is not sliced either) And that peculiar flaw does not appear on MACs (in my experience) If anyone else has an idea, it will be most welcome. This is driving me crazy.
To answer your question on the masks and &quot;flou&quot; effect in my Bio, yes, I'm going to give you my secret ;-)
It's pretty simple actually. You need two versions of the photo. One clear and one blurry (I blurred it with photoshop) and once the clear image reaches the border of the &quot;&quot;veil &quot;&quot; like screens the blurry one comes into its mask. One moving out of it mask while the other one is moving into its mask. You have to line them up perfectly so that they both move at the same time, same rythm. C'est un jeu de cache cache tu vois?

Encore merci!!

Patricia

 

[pbb]

LOL!!! Mon cher Oldnewbie, mon petit poussin du Quebec,
Faut pas t'enerver comme ca mon lapin.... LOL
Pardonne moi, mais je ne peux m'empecher de rire...
J'étais en train de t'ecrire une longue, tres longue, infiniment longue lettre...comme tu peux le voir, la au dessus, mais tu ne m'as pas laissé le temps de terminer! et pof! tu piques une crise! Tsst! tsst!

Bisous! Ne boude plus ok? et fais de beaux reves!!
Et merci, beaucoup, beaucoup, beaucoup ;-)

Patricia

 

[oldnewbie]

Hello again Patricia!
Just checked your site with NS (I usually use IE 5.5), and the same thing happened. Creases on some pictures and not on others. So it's doesn't seem to be a browser issue. I'm on PC of course! Was the whole thing done on MAC?
How do you embed it? You don't seem to be using the <embed> tag (which I believe works better on PC), maybe that's got something to do with it!

;-)

PS: Merci pour le truc du flou. Si simple mais si efficace!
Pas de plis dans cette section là! Re-bizarre! &quot;If nothing else, I can always serve as a bad example!”

 

[pbb]

Oldnewbie re bonsoir,

I'm not sure what you mean with &quot; how do you embed it?&quot; It was a flash default html template which uses the embed tags for NS and the object tags for IE .... So both tags were used, in this sequence <object info blah blah> <parameter info> <embed parameter info blah blah> </embed> </object>
Voila.
Oh and to answer your question, oui, I do all my work on Macs.
Bonsoir au Quebec

Patricia

 

[davdesign]

Hi patricia LOL....WAIT FOR IT....

Si vous m'envoyez un courrier électronique qui esquisse si vous pouvez utiliser ASP ou PHP que je pourrais froisser en haut une forme simple pour vous, avec les instructions sur comment à le personnalise pour vous!

It probably didn't make too much sense but I reckon it made enough for you to understand (either that or I just offered to perform my impression of a juggling mongoose live on tek-tips!!)

dave dave@davdesign.co.uk

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[pbb]

Hello Dave,
Desolee pour le retard dans ma reponse. J'ai essayé de t'ecrire via email mais j'ai en ce moment de gros problemes avec Pacbell et 90% de mes courriers me sont retournés. (ca va? tu as tout compris?) We'll ask our server what cgi script they have that can take information that we post from a Flash doc to the server and turn it into a regular garden variety email. But unfortunately, we dont think we have ASP or PHP.
But thank you so much for your offer I really appreciate it (merci beaucoup pour ton offre, c'etait super gentil a toi )
PS When do I get to see the juggling mangoose live show?

Patricia

 

[davdesign]

So you want the performance anyway? ;-)

There might be kids watching!!

If you have any joy with the server get in touch, I'd be glad to help.

dave dave@davdesign.co.uk

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

 

[Lizzie]

Oooh, I can't cope with all this French speaking!
I loved the site though. Great graphics, more impressive artwork though!

My only niggles are the same as the others have said, slow to download. Also the images lok so nice you want to have a closer look which you can't as they are quite small. But, is that the idea? Generate interest?
Also, I would have prefered the bio to have more time to read (probably me! I'm too slow!)and it is written quite formally. Why didn't you write it Patricia? Who did?

 

[kjonnnnn]

Great Site.
Every Page Loaded quickly.
Im on a T1 using IE5.01

 

[pbb]

Hello Lizzie and Kjonnnnn
Thanks a lot for your feedback (and the compliments) and taking the time to check the site out. I really appreciate it.
As far as the size of the graphics is concerned, you are right Lizzie, they are probably too small now. We hesitated a lot between going for 640X480 or 800X 600 rez and then decided for the lower rez... But we were probably wrong and should redo the whole thing, bigger. The problem is, all the images are bitmaps, and the bigger the bitmap the bigger the file... the bigger the file, the longer the download time...
For the bio, no, I did not write it, my agent did. (the reason why I did not write it myself is that it's very difficult for me to talk/write about myself/my work. Voila!
Now, you know (almost ;-) ) everything!
Thanks again to both of you
Patricia

 

[Lizzie]

Hi Patricia!

What about saving the images as Jpeg's? That might help on the file size. I have experimented quite a bit with Flash movies with pictures in (i.e. file size) and find that jpegs can be a good answer to bitmaps. If you want have a look at

http://www.qutec.co.uk

(my first Flash site). The first background type image is a jpeg. I tried lots of different ways to recreate this graphic that I made without loosing quality and having a large download time. The graphic takes about .3 of a second! (I know it will bw more than that when you look at it, but that is due to preloadng other stuff and animation.)

Hope this helps...

 

[pbb]

Hello Lizzie,
Thanks for your input. But I'm not sure I understand. Our images are jpeg...and bitmaps. All jpeg graphics are bitmaps (raster images instead of vector)
So, I don&quot;t quite understand the distingo you make...
But thanks anyway
And congratulations on your site, it's pretty nice.

Patricia

 

[davdesign]

hi patricia,

I can't agree more with Lizzie, and I take your point too patricia. Have you actually imported bmp's or jpg's into your movie. If bmp, then you should go into your art software and resave your images, or use a batch processor to do the job. You will notice a serious difference (ie: a 50K bmp turns into a 3K jpg, reducing your swf by 47K).

Also gave you a star because I haven't seen anyone in here so tirelessly respond to everyone who commented, if only everyone acted in the same way this place would be more productive and attractive to people visiting on the fly.

dave dave@davdesign.co.uk

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

 

[pbb]

Hello Dave

I'm blushing...my, my! A star for me? ;-) Merci beaucoup monsieur Dave
I'm sorry I have not answered sooner (in spite of my tiredlessness ;-) ) but I still have trouble with Pacbell and I only got the notification of your post today.
To answer your question, No I did not import artwork saved as .bmp. I always import as jpeg of course. What I was saying was that when you import photographs (even as .jpeg&quot;s) they take a lot more K (because they are bitmaps) than any vector animation/element. And since the gallery of my portfolio is mainly constituted of jpeg&quot;s, the bigger the images, the bigger the file size. Oui?
Dave, I still cant get over my star! (although I'm not sure I really deserve it. I really think that when people bother to answer our questions to help us and take the time to check out our problems/web sites etc, the least we can do is thank them and answer them )
I wish you all a very nice, starry evening

Patricia

 

[davdesign]

I understand what you were saying now.

And you did deserve it, too many people just ask-grab-go. You providing feedback to our feedback also helps us to understand your reasoning for choosing one option over another (if that makes sense).

dave dave@davdesign.co.uk

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