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Post by Matt on Oct 26, 2005 8:53:18 GMT
Why use flash when HTML will do the job... hmm. well, in this instance HTML won't do the job. there's gonna be a hell of alot on interactive bits and trying to use HTML to get them to work will be overkill and not nearly as smooth-looking. i might consider making a HTML equivalent though it wouldn't be nearly as good or effective. 1) 2) Fuzzy text... that's a flash problem i think. there's not alot that can be done about it, unless you change the quality of the site to medium (by right-clicking) 3) ...what if i changed the font to something more ledgable (sp?) ? or boldifyed the text? 4) I may well do. I'll get the flash site up first and if i receive a load of emails saying "your site takes ages! use HTML for f's sake" then i'll get right on it 5) once i've totally finished the whole thing, i'm gonna recolour the site using high-contrast colours (black, yellow, lime green and purple i think) as well as making the text larger. screen reader... is this that program that reads what's on screen? well, for most pages, they'll be a spoken explaination anyway. braille... i have no idea how these things work so it's very difficult to cater for them. these probs would be solved anyway if i redesigned the site in HTML. Maybe some time in the future i'll redo the site for small screens (mobiles, PDAs etc.) but for now the web is more improtant. 6) ... gives you a nice button saying "get flash". I quote from the website though: "Macromedia Flash content reaches 97.6% of Internet viewers", so 2.4% don't have it. yes i know that's probably hundreds of thousands of people but frankly if people don't have flash by now then... whoa. catch up. obviously once i've made the HTML site this won't be an issue. 7) so far only in IE and firefox, both of which were OK. anyone here have opera or safari? could we check if the flash will play ok? 8) I'm explaining the NavBar because there are some real idiots on the web who will email me saying "how the f*** do you navigate your site?". once people know it's there it doesn't need explaining, just if they don't find it... we lose people. hope those have solved your questions...
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Post by musicfan on Oct 26, 2005 21:16:23 GMT
2) Use HTML? 3) I think the font on the buttons needs to be a bit bigger and bolder. It's plain enough, but barely 1 pixel wide. I know making the font bigger will screw the entire layout, but hey, who said it was gonna be easy? 5) High contrast is good, but go easy on those loud colours! A screen reader reads your screen out loud to you. I don't know how they handle text that's really graphics (ie Flash content). I don't know what a Braille terminal is either, but I know the HTML spec goes on about them. I guess they convert text into Braille symbols for blind people to read through their fingers. Again, I wonder how they handle Flash. 7) That's a good start 8) My point exactly! I don't have a problem with expanding sub-menus, but I think the top-level menu should always be there. If HTML won't do the fancy interactive stuff you have planned, then you need to use something else FOR THOSE PARTS. The general pages, home page, navigation etc can all be done very effectively in HTML and you can embed Flash content as necessary.
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Post by Matt on Oct 27, 2005 11:34:15 GMT
...hmm. what i'll probably do is build the flash site first (i'm being stubborn on this i'm afraid), then reproduce it as near as possible in html. that'll solve 2 & 5. And I've just momentarialy changed the resolution on my monitor to 800x600 - whoa! I see your point. I'll figure something out, though I think having a 'foldaway' NavBar is still a good idea as it makes the site look tidier... I've got some ideas to make the NavBar bigger whilst still retaining the design. <edit> how about something similar to this: www.webwasp.co.uk/tutorials/b07-tsunami/index.phpthe one of the left, without the transparency changing... would this be better for lower resolution clarity? <another edit> i'm gonna add a page to the wiki called 'website'. any issues you want to raise can be put on there... practicalmusicproject.wikispaces.com/website
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Post by musicfan on Oct 27, 2005 19:46:58 GMT
Yes I quite like the "growing" buttons/icons. But the point is they are still always there. Remember, people possibly (probably?) won't read all your interesting instructions about how to use the navbar. They won't even bother sending you an email saying "how the f* do I navigate your site". They will simply think "Oh, another incomplete site, how I hate those ******s!" and leave. Another thought occurs, for most of the world English is not their first language. Will they understand the subtleties of your directions, or would it be better to just present them with a menu straight off? Assuming they can read at least some English they can probably make out enough of the words to follow the menu. The same may not be true of long paragraphs of prose! A couple of other minor things I just noticed: The date/time line wobbles around! Because it uses a proportional font and is centred, as the seconds change (especially from 00 to 01) the line length changes and the whole line shifts a bit! Just caught my eye and was a bit distracting. The easy solution would be to put the time (and maybe the date for style) in a fixed-width font. The rest of the text can be proportional as it doesn't change. Also, the text on the right-hand side links is a bit close to the edge of the frame. It looks a bit as if they have fallen outside the frame and the end of the word is missing. A bit of extra padding should do the trick. Nit-picking, I know (But only trying to help...)
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Post by Matt on Oct 28, 2005 8:41:39 GMT
hey, rather now than when I've finsihed!
I guess if I had that sort of menu it would need to be present all the time, but I might add a button to click on if you want to show/hide it. That way if people got annoyed by the NavBar bulging every time they moved their mice they could get rid of it...
date/time: i might put the date in a font like you get on digital alarm clocks - they'll almost certainly be fixed width and still look like I haven't used it as a workaround for jerky text.
buttons on left: before I didn't have the blue border around the page, and the buttons were OK. I'll just move the text in a bit, and make it a bit smaller (cos I've got ideas for stuff over that side and one of them has a long name that only just fits now, so...)
and you've just pointed out something: after I've finished, do I need to make it available in other languages?
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Post by musicfan on Oct 28, 2005 19:12:39 GMT
Digital-clock style is a cool workaround, no-one will ever know (unless they read this!). Languages: I guess it's up to you, how international you want to be. Google will provide translations of pages , and there are online tranlators like Babelfish. However, I believe they all work on HTML (because the file is easy to parse for printable text and therefore to translate). I don't know whether they work with Flash - I suspect the text is more deeply "embedded" in the file and harder (impossible?) to translate. I guess the only thing is to try... Just tried it with Babelfish and it doesn't translate! It doesn't complain or fall over, it just displays the original version. These translators aren't great, they do some fairly dodgy translations sometimes, but you can usually make out the intent more than without any translation! Is this another reason to use HTML? Don't get me wrong, Flash has its place. If you were showing off your talents as a graphic artist, illustrator or animator, then I would expect a fully-flash site. However, since most of the site doesn't need it, don't use it. Embed flash animations, demonstrations, clickable images etc etc where you need them. Historically, I have found that the more Flash a site contains, the less useful information it contains! This applies to big corporate sites just as much as (even more than?)personal pages. The Millennium Dome site was the all-time classic. Loads of fancy Flash animations, but no info whatsoever! No opening times, admission charges, how to get there - no wonder (allegedly) no-one went! Carry on with the Flash, it's a good thing to learn, but maybe an even more important thing to learn is when to use it (or not use it). All the tools at your disposal have their pros and cons. I think that's the best skill a web designer could have - knowing when to use which tool - but sadly most don't seem to know or care...
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Post by Matt on Oct 29, 2005 10:51:15 GMT
when the site is finsihed, you'll see how much better and how much more useful the site is totally in Flash...
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