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Finished this site recently and am looking for constructive criticism as hopefully prospective employers will be looking at it..
At the moment - YOU HAVE TO HAVE THE LATEST FLASH PLAYER, or nothing will work. I am aware that I should create a non-flash version which I will do probably next week, but for now, those with the latest flash player please tell me what you think, big or small.
Well it certainly is an interesting concept. One terribly annoying thing about it though is one of the most crucial areas of your site... your portfolio. The flipping between pages is very awkward because there is no visual que as to how far you have to click and drag to show a certain page. For instance, if I grab a page on the right and drag it a little too far, it skips right past the page. Took me a second to figure out how long I needed to drag it (drag it a little towards the center) but the mechanics of that movement need to be better because if I was looking to hire you that would be a glaring example of lack of detail and usability.
However the flip down menu and rolling pages is kinda nice and very creative. Gives the user a look at other pages before actually viewing them. Giving the user the sense of "ooh what was on that other page".
Of course it is very much a novelty and once that novelty wears off hopefully you have made your impression. Make some of the graphics a little more shiny in the rolling pages section and you may have something really nice there.
Thanks a lot for such a quick reply - with regards to you comment on the porfolio page; I have had others say this as well and I understand that it could be a problem. Was it obvious to you that a single click would have moved the desired image to the centre? It says once all images have been loaded "Click to view an image, drag to scroll" - did you see it? Others had not realised that but not really sure how to make it more obvious without changing the layout.
The idea is: - Single click takes you to the clicked image (unless it is already in the centre in which case, if there is a link, it takes you there) - Mouse down and drag moves the images by a percentage of the difference of x coordinate
I figured if you have the single click there was no need for the drag to land precisely on the mouse under image on the mouse down. What do you / anyone think? Because it can be changed very easily...
I don't want to break the whole concept, but I'm not a huge fan of all Flash sites...
Like Martyr, I had trouble with the sliding images thingy in the portfolio section too. Also a more detailed view of your works, complete with a description and all would be a much interesting for potential employers, giving them just an image just isn't enough according to me.
I would also suggest to integrate the navigation area to the banner somhow. Having it the way you have it now leaves lots of space to the left and right of the navigation section. You could also fix this by setting the blue background to a fixed width to wrap your content and place another color to it's sides.
Thanks a lot for such a quick reply - with regards to you comment on the porfolio page; I have had others say this as well and I understand that it could be a problem. Was it obvious to you that a single click would have moved the desired image to the centre? It says once all images have been loaded "Click to view an image, drag to scroll" - did you see it? Others had not realised that but not really sure how to make it more obvious without changing the layout.
The idea is: - Single click takes you to the clicked image (unless it is already in the centre in which case, if there is a link, it takes you there) - Mouse down and drag moves the images by a percentage of the difference of x coordinate
I figured if you have the single click there was no need for the drag to land precisely on the mouse under image on the mouse down. What do you / anyone think? Because it can be changed very easily...
Thanks again for the reply, Ed
No I didn't immediately see that a single click would select the right page, but there is a bug in that system as well when viewed with FF2. I can single click through the images one at a time, but at some point in the list, it stops recognizing the single click. I then have to double click and either it takes me to the page or skips two screens. So perhaps you should take another look at that part.
As for the click and drag to scroll, you might just want to put in smoother scrolling or provide some way to let the user know they actually have a hold of one of the pages and how far they are dragging.
As martyr said, the drag to more images thing on your portfolio was annoying, maybe add a horizontal scrollbar at the bottom to allow people to see how far they have on either side to scroll. Also, if theportfolio thumbnails updated as you are dragging I think it would be more intuitive. At this point you have to release the mouse before the thumbnails update, that gets annoying. Additionally, I did not understand until I read your post above that if you clicked on an image it would scroll to that one. I thought the "Click to view an image" meant that it would allow you to view the image at its fullsize or popup in a new window, not center.
One other thing that I think you could to to improve upon the site is to add some sound effects. One thing that people love about flash sites is that it is interactive not only through the mouse, but they can hear it as well. (just remember to give them the option to mute the sounds if they don't want to listen to them).
Over all I love the concept that you have implemented on your site, just think that it could still be polished up a bit for the end user.
As martyr said, the drag to more images thing on your portfolio was annoying, maybe add a horizontal scrollbar at the bottom to allow people to see how far they have on either side to scroll. Also, if theportfolio thumbnails updated as you are dragging I think it would be more intuitive. At this point you have to release the mouse before the thumbnails update, that gets annoying. Additionally, I did not understand until I read your post above that if you clicked on an image it would scroll to that one. I thought the "Click to view an image" meant that it would allow you to view the image at its fullsize or popup in a new window, not center.
One other thing that I think you could to to improve upon the site is to add some sound effects. One thing that people love about flash sites is that it is interactive not only through the mouse, but they can hear it as well. (just remember to give them the option to mute the sounds if they don't want to listen to them).
Over all I love the concept that you have implemented on your site, just think that it could still be polished up a bit for the end user.
that click through for me was also a downfall, some of those images overlapped each other(like, one image would lay flat against the screen and appear to intersect another). I also checked on your skills page. A few key pointers. Don't say that your web pages failed validation. If you cant validate to 1.0 Strict or 1.1 then potential employers might overlook you for someone who can. Also i would avoid noting your grade percentages on the site. Keep the marks about going to the IBM thing, but remove your grades. Potential employers might look at those and ding you a few points.
other then that, just remember the whole flash issue and you'll do fine
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