New site up using WordPress and Flash

Nice design but there is no scrollbar, although you can scroll the page regardless.

I’d bring the left column closer and have it as a three column that fitted on 800 pixels

It’s a disaster. Whenever you click on a menu item you have to wait ages until the flash(?) whatever gizmo downloads.
Did anybody ever tell you that the average websurfer decides in 10 seconds whether to stay on the site or leave it…?
just my $0.02

Actually, moshu, it sounds like you’re being affected by one of the recent Microsoft updates that makes sites using active content a pain to navigate. Before you can use any Flash object (for example), you have to click on it to “activate” it. Using Firefox, the site loads and displays fine.

Anyway, I think the site design is pretty slick, and would love to find out more info on how it was designed and implemented. I’m trying to get more into Flash myself, and sites like this fascinate me. I also realize that this level of design is well beyond my comprehension level, so I don’t really expect a detailed explanation, which would most likely be over my head. ??

I didn’t know FF was made by Microsoft…

I’m personally not interested in flash based sites, but I wouldn’t call it a disaster (that’s a bit harsh IMO). But I don’t like waiting. Even for the initial loading. If I was surfing there for the content, I wouldn’t have gotten as far as I did. If you think your intended audience will like what you’ve done, then good job. The site has a very nice look to it. I won’t tell you not to be so heavy with the flash, since, well, I’m not the boss of you.

I have to agree with moshu here – at 1024 resolution on Firefox in Win XP pro on a Dell PC… it looks terrible and takes too long to load. “Pretty” is nice, but functionality should ALWAYS take precedence IMHO.

It’s true, take too long and a user’s going to bail…

I think it looks wonderful. Very professional. Excellent use of flash with WP.

It loads and works fine for me in FF, but I think maybe you SHOULD put more work into the above mentioned ie issues. Not everyone uses FF….yet.

Anything that makes me wait long just to go from one page to another – is a disaster for me as a user, as a visitor. I don’t care about the look if I have to watch that “loading bar”!
Did you try to click on the menu items? And see that every time you have to wait for loading…?

Hello everyone,

I appreciate all the constructive feedback. I expected the criticisims to be harsh, knowing that WordPress was not meant to be used this way.

LiverpoolLad, I understand what you say about the scrollbars with an 800X600 resolution. Unfortunately, specifications for the resolution requirement was at least 1024 X 768 and above. I know, there are many 800 X 600 users out there, but our audience consists of 1024+. If we designed it for at least 800 X 600, the interface would have been too small for our intended audience who uses maximum resolutions.

As for loading times, the site is meant to be a marketable, multimedia website with an emphasis on bells and whistles. I think for a Flash site, it has very decent load times. Loading of content when navigating only happens the first time you visit a section. If I actually preloaded all the sections beforehand, the loading times would have been 5X longer. By limiting loading only per section, the pain is somehow neutralized.

I’ve been doing research on countering the IE bug to enable automatic focus on the Flash object. I will be working on this and updating the site very soon.

Thanks for the feedback, keep em coming!

– Mike

moshu is correct.The wait time on that is diplorable…. and I have a highspeed connection.

It is an interesting concept, using flash to display a blog, but I have to agree with most other folks here. I was kind of dissappointed in the speed of page loading. If you could find a way to maybe use flash as a portal, without using it to construct and display a whole page, you’d be able to use a smaller .swf object that would load faster and get people to content faster.

Here’s some feedback for the downloadable wallpapers. She’s a hot chick; her male fans are not going to be satisfied with the tiny little pics on each wallpaper. Put up some screen filling shots of her and you’ll get more of her male fans coming to the site. ??

Bhoney, how many seconds does it take for you to load a section? I have a DSL connection, and it takes about 3 seconds. Is that so painful?

EternalSkyChaz, we will try to get permission on letting fans download high resolution photo shoots.

Thanks for the feedback!

– Mike

Hi Mike,

I like the design and the loadtime is OK!

Rado Vleugel

Recently, I’ve heard a lot of harsh criticism relative to flash-based sites, and what would be feasible alternatives. Especially in light of MS’s “cya” security releases, which were released 2 months ahead of schedule.

There are workarounds for the flash – someone provided me the coding, but don’t have ready access to it at this moment. I believe it’s done through wrapping the flash script with js.

Re: your site – I guess it’s how you anticipate the end user will utilize the site – functionality, or entertainment. If it’s functionality – they’ll walk away disappointed. If it’s entertainment, hope they have a high-speed connection and time to kill.

2 megabyte/second high speed connection. navigation takes 10 seconds a click. not so good, as moshu pointed out