Critique if Design, Feel and Innovation (if any)...

In article
<b12676e9-f17c-445c-be12-96b57da9112f (AT) m7g2000prd (DOT) googlegroups.com>,
justaddice <daniel.downes (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:

On Nov 4, 3:22Â*pm, "rf" <r...@z.invalid> wrote:
justaddice wrote:
Yes I'm sorry, I posted this quite late last night (not a very good
idea).

The URL should be: Â*http://www.legacyartistes.com

Totally blank, black page, with several browsers.

Really? Do you have HTML & JS & Flash enabled?

I have and it was so slow that my experience was very similar to rf's. I
got fed up of seeing basically nothing but arty logo-ish gold lettering
and lines. In a movie, there are some creative credit introductions,
sure. But the ones that give me the most confidence in what they are an
entre for are the plainest ones - so we get down to business without
messing about.

You want a critique? Don't do this, don't go there at all.

--
dorayme

On Nov 4, 4:47*pm, dorayme <doraymeRidT... (AT) optusnet (DOT) com.au> wrote:

In article
b12676e9-f17c-445c-be12-96b57da91... (AT) m7g2000prd (DOT) googlegroups.com>,

*justaddice <daniel.dow... (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:
On Nov 4, 3:22*pm, "rf" <r...@z.invalid> wrote:
justaddice wrote:
Yes I'm sorry, I posted this quite late last night (not a very good
idea).

The URL should be: *http://www.legacyartistes.com

Totally blank, black page, with several browsers.

Really? Do you have HTML & JS & Flash enabled?

I have and it was so slow that my experience was very similar to rf's. I
got fed up of seeing basically nothing but arty logo-ish gold lettering
and lines. In a movie, there are some creative credit introductions,
sure. But the ones that give me the most confidence in what they are an
entre for are the plainest ones - so we get down to business without
messing about.

You want a critique? Don't do this, don't go there at all.

--
dorayme

The intro is only about 20 seconds, and this allows time for the
'large' photos to load. If it was HTML you'd still need to wait. At
least there's something to watch while is loading in Flash.

But thanks for your comments all the same, they are very welcomed.

When you say its 'slow', are you getting poor performance (obvious
frame skips/freezes), or is it just the actual animation that you feel
is too slow?


Cheers,
Daniel.

In article
<6726db5a-1e03-49ef-be22-eaa4352d3772 (AT) f1g2000prf (DOT) googlegroups.com>,
justaddice <daniel.downes (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:

On Nov 4, 4:47Â*pm, dorayme <doraymeRidT... (AT) optusnet (DOT) com.au> wrote:
In article
b12676e9-f17c-445c-be12-96b57da91... (AT) m7g2000prd (DOT) googlegroups.com>,

Â*justaddice <daniel.dow... (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:
On Nov 4, 3:22Â*pm, "rf" <r...@z.invalid> wrote:
justaddice wrote:
Yes I'm sorry, I posted this quite late last night (not a very good
idea).

The URL should be: Â*http://www.legacyartistes.com

Totally blank, black page, with several browsers.

Really? Do you have HTML & JS & Flash enabled?

I have and it was so slow that my experience was very similar to rf's. I
got fed up of seeing basically nothing but arty logo-ish gold lettering
and lines. In a movie, there are some creative credit introductions,
sure. But the ones that give me the most confidence in what they are an
entre for are the plainest ones - so we get down to business without
messing about.

You want a critique? Don't do this, don't go there at all.

--
dorayme

The intro is only about 20 seconds, and this allows time for the
'large' photos to load. If it was HTML you'd still need to wait. At
least there's something to watch while is loading in Flash.

This is exactly my experience with film, the credits can betray poor

practices in the film itself, you should not be loading some great big
picture, it is not a good thing to be doing. You ar e using up people's
bandwidth without telling them and slowing things down. The way to
handle images on the internet is to do it transparently. If the image is
going to be more than 100k or thereabouts (maybe a bit more if you don't
care about dial ups) then let the user choose knowingly, supply smaller
without asking and design accordingly.

But thanks for your comments all the same, they are very welcomed.

When you say its 'slow', are you getting poor performance (obvious
frame skips/freezes), or is it just the actual animation that you feel
is too slow?

How can I tell? It is not jerky and feels like when I spent a few days
watching paint dry. I am still amazed that I waited for so long! You are
very very very lucky that I have no life at all.

--
dorayme

justaddice wrote:

On Nov 4, 3:22 pm, "rf" <r...@z.invalid> wrote:
justaddice wrote:
Yes I'm sorry, I posted this quite late last night (not a very good
idea).

The URL should be: http://www.legacyartistes.com

Totally blank, black page, with several browsers.

Really? Do you have HTML & JS & Flash enabled?

I don't bloody know. But if I don't have them enabled then it is *your* job
to tell me, not simply present me with a blank black screen. Do not expect
*me* to debug your page and find out what *I* need to install/enable to make
it work. This my friend is called gracefull degredation.

However to answer your question:

How can I have a browser that does not have HTML enabled?

Javascript is enabled.

Flash is enabled. Well, as far as it goes in Firefox, it's enabled enough
for flashblock to nab it before it gets downloaded. I presume I would be
lucky here as I see others replying with dismay as to how long your flash
flash takes to download.

Now, as to your black page. And yes, it is your black page, not mine. If
somebody asked me from here on in what I think abour legacyartistes I would
have to say: their web site is a black page, stay far away from them.

And even if it did download remember you have exactly 7 seconds to grab your
viewers attention. If your flash takes longer than that to download them you
might as well take the site down.

On Nov 4, 5:29*pm, "rf" <r...@z.invalid> wrote:

justaddice wrote:
On Nov 4, 3:22 pm, "rf" <r...@z.invalid> wrote:
justaddice wrote:
Yes I'm sorry, I posted this quite late last night (not a very good
idea).

The URL should be:http://www.legacyartistes.com

Totally blank, black page, with several browsers.

Really? Do you have HTML & JS & Flash enabled?

I don't bloody know. But if I don't have them enabled then it is *your* job
to tell me, not simply present me with a blank black screen. Do not expect
*me* to debug your page and find out what *I* need to install/enable to make
it work. This my friend is called gracefull degredation.

However to answer your question:

How can I have a browser that does not have HTML enabled?

Javascript is enabled.

Flash is enabled. Well, as far as it goes in Firefox, it's enabled enough
for flashblock to nab it before it gets downloaded. I presume I would be
lucky here as I see others replying with dismay as to how long your flash
flash takes to download.

Now, as to your black page. And yes, it is your black page, not mine. If
somebody asked me from here on in what I think abour legacyartistes I would
have to say: their web site is a black page, stay far away from them.

And even if it did download remember you have exactly 7 seconds to grab your
viewers attention. If your flash takes longer than that to download them you
might as well take the site down.

Ok, thanks for that.. Interesting, and agreed if JS or Flash isn't
enabled then indeed it should display the relievent message. Don't get
me started about browsers that don't have HTML enabled/supported
(that's a different discussion, for a different time and place)..

About the 7 second "grab" moment.. Flash would actually load within 7
seconds and start showing a little 20 second intro animation, which is
designed perfectly for the intended audience of the site. I think
other critiques here are either impatient, loading from a GPRS
connection, or simply not the intended audience.

Anyway, thanks again, and I'm still baffled as to why Flash isn't
loading for you.

justaddice wrote:

On Nov 4, 5:29 pm, "rf" <r...@z.invalid> wrote:
justaddice wrote:
On Nov 4, 3:22 pm, "rf" <r...@z.invalid> wrote:
justaddice wrote:
Yes I'm sorry, I posted this quite late last night (not a very
good idea).

The URL should be:http://www.legacyartistes.com

Totally blank, black page, with several browsers.

Really? Do you have HTML & JS & Flash enabled?

[yes]

Ok, thanks for that.. Interesting, and agreed if JS or Flash isn't
enabled then indeed it should display the relievent message. Don't get
me started about browsers that don't have HTML enabled/supported

Let me see, a browser is a program that displays web pages marked up with
HTML. So saying a browser does not have HTML enabled is just like saying a
text editor cannot load a text file.

(that's a different discussion, for a different time and place)..

I'd like to know where :-)

About the 7 second "grab" moment.. Flash would actually load within 7
seconds

Would? From what I see in this thread it doesn't.

and start showing a little 20 second intro animation, which is
designed perfectly for the intended audience of the site.

Does this 20 second intro display Every Single Time I Visit Your Site?

If so then rethink. Once might be pretty. Twice is annoying. More than twice
is "I go elsewhere".

I hope you have a "skip intro" button, or better yet remember that I have
been here before (assuming I allow you to store a cookie on my system, that
is).

I think
other critiques here are either impatient, loading from a GPRS
connection, or simply not the intended audience.

Nope, quite the contrary. You will find that the critiquers here are very
very patient. We will wait a very long time just to see what it is you have
to present. Of course the wait *will* be commented upon.

Your average "surfer" on the other hand will stumble on your site, wait for
maybe seven seconds and, seeing nothing interesting move on to the next site
in their google search results.

Anyway, thanks again, and I'm still baffled as to why Flash isn't
loading for you.

Perhaps I don't have the latest and greatest flash player installed. Hint: I
don't, as I don't look at flash. At all. Ever. For any reason.

<tinkers> Ah, here is a browser I have (Seamonkey) that I know I have not
disabled flash in. Visits site... Black page.

<moves to a different computer, an "out of the box" one> Ah, now I see. Some
totally gratutious flash that simply cannot be bypassed. You make me look at
this every time I visit your site? See above.

The "movie" is so totally jerky as to be unviewable. In fact the whole site
is so jerky (each frame is 100 pixels and 500 milliseconds away from the
previous one) that is cannot be called a movie. It is a sequential
presentation of stills.

And the page transitions. Bloody hell. Seconds and seconds pass. And what is
that "help" thingy that starts out blurred and takes eight seconds to
unblurr enough to be readable. Wait. the whole navigation is like that.
Click a link, cross eyes painfully trying to see totally unreadable text and
wait for it to so slowly become readable, well as readable as it can be
given the colours and the background.

And the drop down menus that take a whole five seconds to paint and then
simply plaster text with a transparent background all over the other text on
the page.

And how dare you resize my font when I change the size of my brower window.
Oh, I forgot, Flash. You can so you do.

Now, please take this as simply my opinion and don't get terribly cranky at
me but, IMHO, this site is uglier than a hatfull of arseholes and is a
perfect example of why I simply do not look at flash sites. At all. Ever.
For any reason. Sorry but that is how I feel. You did ask for a critique and
after a bit of hard work finding what I needed to look at to give you one I
have given you one :-)

BTW what do the artistes say about it?

Now, back to my usual HTML sites...

On Nov 4, 6:42*pm, "rf" <r...@z.invalid> wrote:

justaddice wrote:
On Nov 4, 5:29 pm, "rf" <r...@z.invalid> wrote:
justaddice wrote:
On Nov 4, 3:22 pm, "rf" <r...@z.invalid> wrote:
justaddice wrote:
Yes I'm sorry, I posted this quite late last night (not a very
good idea).

The URL should be:http://www.legacyartistes.com

Totally blank, black page, with several browsers.

Really? Do you have HTML & JS & Flash enabled?

[yes]

Ok, thanks for that.. Interesting, and agreed if JS or Flash isn't
enabled then indeed it should display the relievent message. Don't get
me started about browsers that don't have HTML enabled/supported

Let me see, a browser is a program that displays web pages marked up with
HTML. So saying a browser does not have HTML enabled is just like saying a
text editor cannot load a text file.

(that's a different discussion, for a different time and place)..

I'd like to know where :-)

About the 7 second "grab" moment.. Flash would actually load within 7
seconds

Would? From what I see in this thread it doesn't.

and start showing a little 20 second intro animation, which is
designed perfectly for the intended audience of the site.

Does this 20 second intro display Every Single Time I Visit Your Site?

If so then rethink. Once might be pretty. Twice is annoying. More than twice
is "I go elsewhere".

I hope you have a "skip intro" button, or better yet remember that I have
been here before (assuming I allow you to store a cookie on my system, that
is).

*I think
other critiques here are either impatient, loading from a GPRS
connection, or simply not the intended audience.

Nope, quite the contrary. You will find that the critiquers here are very
very patient. We will wait a very long time just to see what it is you have
to present. Of course the wait *will* be commented upon.

Your average "surfer" on the other hand will stumble on your site, wait for
maybe seven seconds and, seeing nothing interesting move on to the next site
in their google search results.

Anyway, thanks again, and I'm still baffled as to why Flash isn't
loading for you.

Perhaps I don't have the latest and greatest flash player installed. Hint: I
don't, as I don't look at flash. At all. Ever. For any reason.

tinkers> Ah, here is a browser I have (Seamonkey) that I know I have not
disabled flash in. Visits site... Black page.

moves to a different computer, an "out of the box" one> Ah, now I see. Some
totally gratutious flash that simply cannot be bypassed. You make me lookat
this every time I visit your site? See above.

The "movie" is so totally jerky as to be unviewable. In fact the whole site
is so jerky (each frame is 100 pixels and 500 milliseconds away from the
previous one) that is cannot be called a movie. It is a sequential
presentation of stills.

And the page transitions. Bloody hell. Seconds and seconds pass. And whatis
that "help" thingy that starts out blurred and takes eight seconds to
unblurr enough to be readable. Wait. the whole navigation is like that.
Click a link, cross eyes painfully trying to see totally unreadable text and
wait for it to so slowly become readable, well as readable as it can be
given the colours and the background.

And the drop down menus that take a whole five seconds to paint and then
simply plaster text with a transparent background all over the other texton
the page.

And how dare you resize my font when I change the size of my brower window.
Oh, I forgot, Flash. You can so you do.

Now, please take this as simply my opinion and don't get terribly cranky at
me but, IMHO, this site is uglier than a hatfull of arseholes and is a
perfect example of why I simply do not look at flash sites. At all. Ever.
For any reason. Sorry but that is how I feel. You did ask for a critique and
after a bit of hard work finding what I needed to look at to give you oneI
have given you one :-)

BTW what do the artistes say about it?

Now, back to my usual HTML sites...

Yes, I think back to HTML sites would be better for you. All I can say
is Flash is far better supported than HTML ever will be (within our
life times anyway). And HTML is only just starting to support video
naively? Crazy in these modern video hungry times.

I don't know what type of system you are running to be getting 2
frames per second. ZX Spectrum? Even my Nokia mobile shows the site
smoothly and beautifully.

If you don't believe me about HTML not being supported try:
http://acid3.acidtests.org/ (I'd be surprised if you don't know
about this site)
....even for browsers that do support HTML there, I've never seen the
animation there to be "smooth". I think the full story about how
unsupported HTML really is, is also on that domain.


Anyway... my initial critique request was about the design, and the
only person to even mention this was basilisk so far.. but he didn't
really go into any detail.

Regarding the intro, yes it would be nice to have a skip button, but
this website is all about the atmosphere it generates, not solely the
hard text content. Of course, if it was something like a dictionary
the site is terribly designed for that. But its not, its a portfolio
of Artistes that fit into a certain category of style.

The intro is forced with good reason.

If they aren't interested in watching the intro, then they may as well
close the window and not bother looking through the website.


And about loading times; yes I'm aware of this problem if you are
visiting the site from outside of South Africa.


About resizing fonts. You could do this in JS + CSS too if you wanted.
Flash just has better support for it. As the site isn't designed to be
scrolled down, resizing of fonts is necessary so to keep all the
content on the screen.

Saying all that, there is in fact some HTML on the site, try the News
section, a nice iframe pops-up over the Flash (not an easy thing to
get working in all major browsers), and uses the lovely Wordpress
system. Backend of the site is all HTML generated too.


Regarding your opinion, of course I can respect it (even if a little
harsh). However you dug yourself a hole by saying "I simply do not
look at flash sites. At all. Ever.", because you just did see one!
Also note, its funny that one of the worlds most popular website is
dependent on Flash (mostly because the HTML for doing the same thing
simply isn't supported enough yet) .. youtube.com..


Regards,
Daniel.

justaddice wrote:

youtube.com..

I don't look at youtube.

Gazing into my crystal ball I observed justaddice
<daniel.downes (AT) gmail (DOT) com> writing in news:c80325a4-5e3c-405b-9b26-
2eb2a5f9805a (AT) u16g2000pru (DOT) googlegroups.com:

If you don't believe me about HTML not being supported try:
http://acid3.acidtests.org/ (I'd be surprised if you don't know
about this site)
...even for browsers that do support HTML there, I've never seen the
animation there to be "smooth". I think the full story about how
unsupported HTML really is, is also on that domain.

Acid test is not about support for HTML, it's about support for CSS and
DOM.

If you visit with javascript disabled, you will be notified that
JavaScript must be enabled to take the test.

Further, with CSS disabled, it's plain to see what's going on (although
I was surprised to see that they are using HTML5).

So, HTML is supported, gee, as far back as 1994.

--
Adrienne Boswell at Home
Arbpen Web Site Design Services
http://www.cavalcade-of-coding.info
Please respond to the group so others can share

On 2009-11-04, justaddice wrote:

On Nov 4, 4:47?pm, dorayme <doraymeRidT... (AT) optusnet (DOT) com.au> wrote:
In article
b12676e9-f17c-445c-be12-96b57da91... (AT) m7g2000prd (DOT) googlegroups.com>,

?justaddice <daniel.dow... (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:
On Nov 4, 3:22?pm, "rf" <r...@z.invalid> wrote:
justaddice wrote:
Yes I'm sorry, I posted this quite late last night (not a very good
idea).

The URL should be: ?http://www.legacyartistes.com

Totally blank, black page, with several browsers.

Really? Do you have HTML & JS & Flash enabled?

I have and it was so slow that my experience was very similar to rf's. I
got fed up of seeing basically nothing but arty logo-ish gold lettering
and lines. In a movie, there are some creative credit introductions,
sure. But the ones that give me the most confidence in what they are an
entre for are the plainest ones - so we get down to business without
messing about.

You want a critique? Don't do this, don't go there at all.

The intro is only about 20 seconds, and this allows time for the
'large' photos to load. If it was HTML you'd still need to wait. At
least there's something to watch while is loading in Flash.

If the HTML page is well designed, there will be something to read
even before the images are loaded.

Forcing the viewer to wait 20 seconds for something that can be
read in less than one second is frustrating.

But thanks for your comments all the same, they are very welcomed.

When you say its 'slow', are you getting poor performance (obvious
frame skips/freezes), or is it just the actual animation that you feel
is too slow?

"Molasses in January."

--
Chris F.A. Johnson <http://cfajohnson.com>
Author: =======================
Pro Bash Programming: Scripting the GNU/Linux Shell (2009, Apress)
Shell Scripting Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach (2005, Apress)