New WebSite ... Please comment

[shafiq]

Dear Members,

It's been a while since I last posted on this forum. Been busy trying to get my website up and running. I am sure you folks too have had similar experiences :-)

Finally gave up trying to do it in FrontPage and hired someone to do it for me. Fortunately I got a good deal out of it, as the company is fairly new and they wanted to make a name for themselves. My personal opinion is they did a great job and they have my vote.

Here is a link to my new site --> http://www.maxshafiq.com

What do you folks think?

Shafiq

[IanWeatherburn]

Terrible. Never let anyone do your site in Flash alone. A little bit of Flash on a site can perhaps be gotten away with to do something cool But the whole site in flash, blegh. Of course this is a personal opinion, but I do run a software development company for the record and this would never wash with any of our customers.

Anyway, hope it works for you.

Oh yes, why do I hate Flash. Clunky, slow, most of the time similar things can be done with HTML or DHTML, slow, requires a plug-in, slow, slow and did I mention slow.

[IanWeatherburn]

Oh yes, and browsing to your site caused my IE to crash (maybe I should be using FireFox I know!)
Anyways, it said a Macromedia Flash Script is causing my computer to lock up...blah blah blah and I had to End Task it. Blegh!

[Speedie]

Many people are moving away from Internet Explorer and using other browsers. There's a slight problem with the homepage as it appears in Firefox - your name is partially covered by the image. I've attached a cropped screenshot showing how it looks. Aside from that it looks very professional.

[shafiq]

Terrible. Never let anyone do your site in Flash alone. A little bit of Flash on a site can perhaps be gotten away with to do something cool But the whole site in flash, blegh. Of course this is a personal opinion, but I do run a software development company for the record and this would never wash with any of our customers.

Anyway, hope it works for you.

Oh yes, why do I hate Flash. Clunky, slow, most of the time similar things can be done with HTML or DHTML, slow, requires a plug-in, slow, slow and did I mention slow.


Thanks for your comments. BTW what kind of software company do you run?

Regards

[shafiq]

Oh yes, and browsing to your site caused my IE to crash (maybe I should be using FireFox I know!)
Anyways, it said a Macromedia Flash Script is causing my computer to lock up...blah blah blah and I had to End Task it. Blegh!

hmmm...never had any of my customers said that there IE crashed. Aren't 90% or is it 95% of computers these day already have Flash Plug-In installed? Downloading the Flash Plug-in is usually an automatic thing from what I understand, and once you have done so its like opening a door to a whole new world.

Yes I agree with your comments that Flash websites are slow, only if we were in 1998 and you are using a 14.4K modem. In 2005 I think most people have fast enough connections that speed is not an issue. BTW Flash is vector based and vector graphics are faster than regular graphics. Also Flash sites are more aesthetically pleasing to the eye.

Just my 2 cents.

[IanWeatherburn]

Yup, I see all your comments and certainly if you are happy with the site then great.
This is just my personal experience with Flash sites.

I do believe that most things can be done without Flash (especially for a site like yours). It sounds rich considering I don't have my own site - so well done for at least having yours up. For the record my photography is at http://mrstickman.deviantart.com

I run a company that develops a web based solution for Image and Workflow software. It's all done in ASP/ASP.NET and VB/VB.NET using Oracle/SQL Server on the back-end. The customers seem happy with this solution anyway.

As for bandwidth, I running on a 512Kb DSL connection and I still found your site to be very slow. I hate seeing progress bars when I go to a site, almost enough to make me instantly close them.

Anyway...again...just my opinion on this critque article in this forum.

[shafiq]

Yup, I see all your comments and certainly if you are happy with the site then great.
This is just my personal experience with Flash sites.

I do believe that most things can be done without Flash (especially for a site like yours). It sounds rich considering I don't have my own site - so well done for at least having yours up. For the record my photography is at http://mrstickman.deviantart.com

I run a company that develops a web based solution for Image and Workflow software. It's all done in ASP/ASP.NET and VB/VB.NET using Oracle/SQL Server on the back-end. The customers seem happy with this solution anyway.

As for bandwidth, I running on a 512Kb DSL connection and I still found your site to be very slow. I hate seeing progress bars when I go to a site, almost enough to make me instantly close them.

Anyway...again...just my opinion on this critque article in this forum.


Appreciate your comments. That is why I put up this post right :-)

[IanWeatherburn]

Good luck! ;)

[Speedie]

The debate between flash vs. non-flash will last as long as the Internet. My view is that flash works well on a website that's intended to display something artistic. Seeing a progress bar is acceptable to me because I anticipate it might be worth the wait, and the flash aspect will enhance my experience of the art. It works less well on a website that's intended to sell something like insurance, where it becomes an annoyance. Why should I wait just to see a price or some policy details?

[Bob_A]

Unless you only have a small flash animation that takes no time at all to load I would personally avoid it. I use DSL, yet your site took forever to load. If were simply browsing for a photographer I would have exited your site and gone elsewhere, cause I'm just not that patient.

You do have some very nice photos to view once I did get the page loaded. It hink you also have a very nice selection of your work. The only other comment that I would make is to avoid the effect where several images are scrolled through when the user selects one ... made me dizzy :)

Bob

[shafiq]

The debate between flash vs. non-flash will last as long as the Internet. My view is that flash works well on a website that's intended to display something artistic. Seeing a progress bar is acceptable to me because I anticipate it might be worth the wait, and the flash aspect will enhance my experience of the art. It works less well on a website that's intended to sell something like insurance, where it becomes an annoyance. Why should I wait just to see a price or some policy details?

I take it you liked my pics then? was it worth the wait...LOL

[Speedie]

Yes I liked the pics! And the flash presented them nicely too. You might like to look at the site in my sig. which I created myself to show off my pics. No flash but I'm no web designer either.

[Titus213]

I use Firefox and also noticed the opening page. The site was a bit slow to open and I'm using cable at 4 meg. But it was worth the wait for me. Nice stuff. I understand the comments about all flash but it seemed to come off quite well. Good music and great photos. (The children's photos don't seem to be of the same high quality as the others). And remember, opinions are like thumbs - most people have at least two. I would also like to see some pricing, etc.

[Kerbouchard]

I'm relatively new to Flash development, but have done HTML for a number of years. Seems the Flash/HTML debate might be similar to the .NET/PHP debate. Flash does provide a known "platform," since plugins for all browsers are (ideally) the same, while developing a DHTML site that is truly cross-browser friendly may be nothing short of a nightmare.

Flash sites can be slow, and yours seems to be a little slow. I would see if you could reduce the image size or quality a bit more, perhaps. Here's an example of a "faster" site done in Flash that was truly an "experience" for me when I visited: http://www.robertcharlesphoto.com/

Doing that in DHTML, cross-browser, would be nigh unto impossible. Of course, presenting pics in straight HTML would be a great alternative, but there is no doubt that the entire experience would be much different.

Here's another: http://www.sorenhald.com/. You've got to admit that the feeling at this site is much different than it would be viewing a static, dreary list of pics.

Flash surely is not the "end all" for photo sites, but if done properly I think it can certainly add a quality not otherwise available. Some like it, some don't. For me it has everything to do with the execution, and it's tough to "execute" properly.

Shafiq, your site looks good in my opinion. I'm not overly impressed with the title page's big "enter" link on it, but once inside it's not too bad. Seems a little long before the navigation starts, and the "loading" graphic is a bit simplistic, but reasonable. The music is okay, but I don't know that it really adds to the experience -- it seems like it was done because it was possible, not because it fit. It's a pretty short loop, too. Perhaps just on the intro, then fade it out?

[andygrif]

Hi Shafiq...here's my comments on your site...please don't take any negatives personally...it's only my opinion remember and contrary to popular belief I'm not ALWAYS right ;)

It's a reasonable looking site, nice and simple to navigate. I'm not too sure about the colours, but that's a personal thing.

As many have suggested, a whole site built in Flash is not the way forward...also do you have a back-up html site for those without Flash installed? You can get a script that will detect if the viewer has it installed and if not automatically directs them to the html version.

IMHO Flash is a bit dated now...I know you can get stunning results with it, but simple is often best and many designers are going back to html with 'splashes of Flash' for effects etc.

The music loop is nice, but I've got it open in the background whilst I'm typing this and it's starting to annoy me!

I'm not sure why you have the links at the bottom of every page...especially the Pictage.com one which will help your viewers find another photographer!!!!

But the main problem for me is the speed of the gallaries. I doubt people will wait for the whole thing to load....I'm on a 2mb connection and it took about 30 seconds for me to load the glamour one...people aree not that patient and will move on before they see what a great photographer you are!

I didn't set out to rip your site to shreds (honest)...I hope you find my critique constructive and helpful to you!

[Bob_A]

Kerbouchard,

While both of these sites are much faster than Shafiq's, I still find them to be annoying because of all of the flash animation. The use of flash on the sorenhald site is much better IMO when I view both sites as a potential customer (although the sorenhald site didn't give me the impression that they really needed any customers).

To me, the robertcharlesphoto site should have two buttons on the main page ... one that skips the intro completely and gets right to where the customer wants. I completely missed the "skip intro" text at the bottom of the intro flash because it was way too small. The only reason I found it was I entered the site a second time looking for it ... because I knew it had to be somewhere :)

As a customer I'm not looking for how a web page developer can show of his/her talents, I want to see the talent of the photographer. And I'm impatient, so if I don't see what I want right away, I leave.

Bob

[ChP]

Flash can be used very successfully for artistic websites. I think the effects you were interested in using, however, could have been done without flash.

I do not like the music.

[cmM]

here are my .02
For all the flash "haters", Flash is here to stay! it has many capabilities that HTML doesn't even dream of without some serious coding.
shafiq, your website is pretty nice. The galleries do take forever to load. I like the layout. Pretty easy to navigate.
Good luck with the site.

[shafiq]

For all those people experiencing slowness would you so kind enough to quantify how slow was slow, so that I can try and have a work-around.

I am assuming you are all referring to the loading of the galleries? I do know the first time when the galleries load they may take a little time, but once loaded it is very fast.

Were the thumbs loading OK?

Reducing the quality of the images is always an option.
Removing the scrolling is another option.

But the question is this. For those of you who thought it was worth the wait would you prefer to see the scrolling images when a thumb is clicked? or just an image popping up would suffice?

I am going to modify the initial page that loads up which has the BIG <ENTER>. Would adding the comment "This site contains high quality photographs and therefore you may experience a slight delay in loading" be a good thing?

I appreciate everyones comments.

Your thoughts please.

[johneric8]

the site if fine. Have a site designed that doesnt use flash as well.. I use firefox and the name was messed up for me as well..

[shafiq]

the site if fine. Have a site designed that doesnt use flash as well.. I use firefox and the name was messed up for me as well..

Well I will be getting the name thing fixed for sure. In fact I am thinking of maybe removing the initial page...or maybe just have a simple <enter>

Thx for ur comment

[andygrif]

For all those people experiencing slowness would you so kind enough to quantify how slow was slow, so that I can try and have a work-around.

I am assuming you are all referring to the loading of the galleries? I do know the first time when the galleries load they may take a little time, but once loaded it is very fast.



Yes it was for first-load only....but then potential customers will only wait once, so you should see how it looks with reduced quality to speed things up...maybe offer a click to view individual hi-res versions if you like.