Site Review 4

[AtomicChip]

Looking for comments about unfinished site... Couple notes: the logo isn't completed yet and it's hosted on my home machine - REALLY slow upstream so pls bare with it.

http://www.baselinespub.com/

http://tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=1168934&page=1

was my post regarding the layout...

Thanks in advance,
AtomicChip

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"The night sky over the planet Krikkit is the least interesting sight in the entire universe."
-Hitch Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy

 

[AtomicChip]

Anybody?

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"The night sky over the planet Krikkit is the least interesting sight in the entire universe."
-Hitch Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy

 

[feherke]

Hi

I have Flash plug-in 6 and I see only a big black nothing with four gray horizontal lines on margines. Maybe you should put a footnote that no chance too view it with plug-in older then 7.

Feherke.

http://rootshell.be/~feherke/

 

[glenmac]

After quite a wait the flash thing loaded (could be server speed). I don't like flash sites so I'm predjuduced from the start. Any how my main comment on this site is "Boring".
The sounds on the links are irritating. The different pages are again "boring" boring color and boring content.
Sorry but there is nothing of note other than the panoramic thing and again it's "Boring" maybe some people in the pub would make it more interesting. I'd lose the flash and concentrate on load time, content, and presentation.

Glen

http://lantzvillecomputers.com

 

[ca8msm]

Will you be offering an alternative HTML version of the site to those of us who either don't have flash or don't like it?


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[TamedTech]

I think you guys are being a little tough... I quite like the design concept, its compact and tidy.

I'll agree the button noise is a little irritating and not really in keep with the style of the product.

One addition i would make is the linkable area on the buttons is a little small, at the moment you can only link by clicking on the text, would be better if the whole button was linked.

An HTML alternative is a nice idea, however when working to the clients budget that may not be achievable.

Rob

 

[dbeezzz]

I hope you don't have to wait that long for a pint ;-)

 

[TheConeHead]

Looks good - btw I liked your old logo perect for a pub - simple, clean, well organized... I am a fan of Flash but hate to see it used when there is no need, but you do use it enough here to justify it... the speed issue is clearly due to how you are hosting it which I am sure will change...

hey, Glen, not all of our sites can look as good as

http://lantzvillecomputers.com

settle down, I am just bustin' your chops! You have helped me a lot in the past...

 

[ca8msm]

An HTML alternative is a nice idea

As well as being a nice idea, I think it's a necessity. There are lots of users who won't be able to access the site if you don't provide this.


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[TheConeHead]

We'll given the fact that 90% have player V7 an 96%+ have lesser versions I am not so sure an HTML alernative is that vital... at worst you put in a player detector and send them to the free download if they do not have it - no need to maintain two sites...

 

[AtomicChip]

feherke - Thanks for pointing that out. I'll stick a splash page up with site requirements to solve that issue.

glenmac and TamedTech - Thanks for pointing out the "annoying sound" issue. I'll have to clean that up.. Custom SFX are such a pain in the arse to do well...

I will not be doing an HTML alternative for two reasons: 1) (already pointed out) - pretty much everybody has a flash player and will be able to see it and 2) for what i'm charging for this site, there's not a chance in hell i'll be dealing with writing another front end for this site - Again, the splash page should solve this issue well enough.

TheConeHead - Thanks for the comment on the logo... Almost makes me want to put it back in (I just might if I can't dream anything else up)...

And ROFL - Love your comment about

http://lantzvillecomputers.com.

glenmac - About the "boring" content, sorry - not much I can do there until the gallery's up (there's not much people really want to know about a bar besides where it is, how it looks and what they server ). As for the boring color, not sure what you mean there... Too dull? Would you expect perhaps red writing on a blue background? j/k. Maybe I'll try playing with hue/saturation layers over the whole site...

dbeezzz - No, thank gawd, you don't have to wait that long for a pint

...And just for the record, I'm generally against full flash sites (sometimes sprinkling flash content throughout a page is nice though) - This is client-requested

Thanks again all for yer posts...

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"The night sky over the planet Krikkit is the least interesting sight in the entire universe."
-Hitch Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy

 

[AtomicChip]

...And I gave you a star glenmac, not because I agree with you (I don't really agree with any of your points), but because it definitely wasn't a "oh, that's nice" kinda post

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"The night sky over the planet Krikkit is the least interesting sight in the entire universe."
-Hitch Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy

 

[Foamcow]

[ul]
[li] It's slow to load. Might be the hosting environment I guess, but the initial loading bar finished about 30 seconds before anything happened. Then there is another long wait for the panoramic image to load. That's got to be quicker when it's on the real server right?[/li]

[li]"Find us on a map" - that tripped Firefox's pop up blocker. I've not tested in in IE.[/li]

[li]You might want to consider some kind of HTML alternative for the following reasons:
[ul]
[li]I have flash installed, but I also have a flash blocker so I get to see the flash content I choose to see. Not a common or massive issue, but worth considering.[/li]

[li]You want people to find the bar via the website? How are they going to find the website? If I'm new in town and in the mood for a good night out, will that site show up when I do a bit of Googling. It's occured to me that it would be pretty sad to look up a good bar on the net, but you never know eh?![/li]
[/ul]
[/li]
[li]I know it's frightfully hip, but the text is a little small. Since you are preventing any text resize by putting it all in Flash you might consider bumping the size up just a little. Not a huge amount, maybe a couple of pixels?[/li]
[li]There is absolutely no identifying branding or logo once the site has loaded. Surely it would be a good idea to get a logo in the corner?[/li]
[li]Does the panoramic image take an age to load because of the current server? How big is the image? Can it be optimised a bit?[/li]
[li]I've got my speakers off so I can't comment on the sound[/li]
[li]Sorry, but it is quite boring regardless of what you say about what people want to know about a bar. Can you give them that info in a more exciting way? That's not a criticism as I know it's hard sometimes but I don't get a sense as to what the bar is like, what sort of people go there, what music get's played. It's just a picture of a nice looking bar that looks like a million other bars all over the world (albeit virtually empty) and I've spent enough time in bars to know that the really good one's have what's called "atmosphere". What's the atmosphere at Baselines? Can you convey that somehow in the website? How about a "Whats hot on the Jukebox" list, or customer reviews/comments, special offers, change the pic to day/night, webcam, meet the staff (barmaids are a good customer pull). There are a ton of things that may liven it up a bit. Bars are meant to be fun![/li]
[/ul]

Foamcow Heavy Industries - Web design and ranting
Buy Languedoc wines in the UK

 

[AtomicChip]

As always, thanks for the post foamcow - I'll give that stuff some thought..

As for the slow loading, it's hosted on my home box right now (upstream's REALLY slow). I'll be moving over to godaddy once the site's complete, so it'll be a lot faster from there (the 360 swf is only 2meg's, so load time should be pretty quick)...

As for the logo, not done yet

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"The night sky over the planet Krikkit is the least interesting sight in the entire universe."
-Hitch Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy

 

[johnwm]

For dial-up users, a 2meg file will probably take around 6 minutes, according to websiteoptimization.com

Even on a 512K ADSL, it's likely to be around 30secs. Research seems to suggest around 10-14 secs patience before browsing elsewhere

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[Foamcow]

I'd say 2Mb is still pretty large too.
You need to get something "to do" in front of the visitor within, in an ideal world) 8 seconds.

To be honest I see no real reason why you couldn't do that same site with HTML and a few flash "widgets". It would be more accessible, more crawlable and probably a lot faster to load.

Foamcow Heavy Industries - Web design and ranting
Buy Languedoc wines in the UK

 

[TheConeHead]

I experienced the same issue with the preloader - it did show it as finished before the actual site loaded - hey if it is a client request for an all Flash site the issue is done - the client rules...

Foamcow - what is the justification that HTML sites "google-able" than Flash?

 

[rye8261]

The site is very nice looking but I definitly agree with everyone that the load time needs to be improved 1000%... I'm on a T1 and had to wait over 30 seconds for it to load.

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http://www.thefloptalk.com

http://www.ogdb.org

 

[Foamcow]

Foamcow - what is the justification that HTML sites "google-able" than Flash?

A well constructed HTML page should present no problem at all for a SE crawler to index it's content. It just scoots along and sucks up all the info.
Each page is treated as a seperate document too, so it means that a search for specific information takes the user directly to the information.

Some SE's (Google is one of them) can index content contained in a Flash movie. However, it's not as easy and tends to be out of context. I'm not sure if SE's can assign weighting based on the texts position and it's relevance to the document. They have no way, for example, to tell what is a heading, what's a paragraph, what's a link etc.

Also, an SE cannot provide a search result that links directly to the relevant content. They can only link to the flash movie. If the content you are looking for is buried within the movie then you've got to find it manually. Not always difficult, but speaking personally, if I'd used an SE result to find something I want to go straight to it.

Type a search into Google. Are any of the top results pure Flash sites? If they are (and it does happen), and it's a half way competitive search term, then it is possible they have HTML equivalents or are using intensive SE marketing methods to get that position.

Foamcow Heavy Industries - Web design and ranting
Buy Languedoc wines in the UK

 

[TheConeHead]

Also, an SE cannot provide a search result that links directly to the relevant content. They can only link to the flash movie. If the content you are looking for is buried within the movie then you've got to find it manually. Not always difficult, but speaking personally, if I'd used an SE result to find something I want to go straight to it.

This is IMO about the only legitimate point as to why not use Flash as far as SE goes... Macromedia has done a lot of work to improve crawling the content, it's fairly comprehensive at this point... and as you pointed out, if this is important for you, then of course you are going to include HTML equivalents in the head - that is pretty much a basic....