Critique my web design work

Personally, I don't think you need advise...I think you should be giving it! That is some really nice work that you do. Welcome to TWF.

Welcome to TWF, could you please help us by critiqing some other sites in this section, thanks

shame you dont have a html version, waiting for 125kb to load on a 56k modem sucks, theres nothing to look at or read, apart from a grey screen, dont even know how far along it is. you need something there to keep peoples interest. status bar says about 1/2 done, and this is on IE

the text as graphics are hard to read, blurry and being grey is worse.

Ok page loaded, took about 4 minutes. umm what language is this? the text again is very blurred, I have to actually try focus on it to make it out

ok I turned the sound off but mousing over the squares i get some lady saying something not in english, off should be off.

I like the way you have done the square links but its very slow loading (navigation side at the right)
I tried looking at your portfolio but it says loading, sadly i dont have time to stick around - sorry

Building Flash sites for plastic surgeons, I'm a little surprised that you'd want a job

I took a quick look (not much patience for web sites that talk at 6am) and think the work is pretty good. However, I would have to say that your use of Flash is gratuitous at times - basic site navigation, etc. that could easily be done with html/javascript and use less bandwidth.

Welcome to TWF

Yes, that's what I thought too. Maybe this is just my style, but I usually prefer more straightforward design. On your portfolio page, for example, I had no idea how I was supposed to navigate. So then I figured out what those squares were doing, but that section is taking up most of the page, with the content sort of crammed into a corner there. I also agree with flash (usually I browse with plug-ins turned off, just to avoid annoyances).

Also watch your download speeds (the Salon Success site in particular took quite awhile to load). I'm finding that you're using *a lot* of graphics everywhere. Tale that High Sierra Times site for example - with a little CSS you could do those links in plain text and they'd look fine. There is no reason why that side menu needs to be in flash.

Pretty much everything looks really nice though.

I'm not going to make any kind of suggestions about your pay rate. First of all it really depends on where you're working, for what kind of company, what your duties are etc. etc. Secondly, price fixing is illegall, at least in north America. It's hard to say what applies to this and what doesn't, but just to be on the safe side it's best not to discuss specific salaries. Try looking for salary surveys online - I think salary.com has one (which is only for Americans but I guess you don't have to worry about that).

thanks for your comments guys.

i agree with you in regards to using Flash in a gratuitous way. i'm gonna use less of it as i have discovered that CSS and Javascript work just as fine. it's just that sometimes you get customers that want the extra animation in a menu or other with all the bells and whistles and they're willing to pay for it.

but, yes i have discovered that using simple HTML/CSS makes your work cleaner and easier to maintain.

thanks.

robert

I am on a cable modem so your site loaded quickly but I am in the minority, so working on its load speed is a priority.
Instead of just having the site in Flash you should give visitors an option of HTML or Flash.

The text on your site is blurry and hard to read, try a different less bold/bulky font.

All in All you have a great site, nice work,

Spidey

On Dsl, I had no trouble loading the page.

It was very easy to tell what was going on and I found it to be fresh and in a good direction.

Not sure what is so difficult about the navigation, this is actually quite good.

Anyone that cant understand your personal site is too uptight about not being able to recreate it.

Personally if you could do that personal site fast I would contract you for work.

Dont let these old hands steer you wrong, they dont see unique and usable when they see it.

I think the thing you have to think of here is your target audience, people that usually have the fastest computers, best video cards etc are people that know about computers, or use them abit, and at a quess would say most of these would have done or do some form of web page.
I think the target you need to aim for is the people who dont have a fancy computer, the ones that wouldnt have any idea what things like ram, cache, HD etc are, these are the people who employ people like yourself.
These people also dont upgrade a lot, they buy a puter and use it, my neighbour only just upgraded from win3.1 only because he wants a web page and wants to see what it looks like.

back in html 101 they teach you that you build sites for others, not yourself. People are lazy and inpatient, flash may be the future, may not, one of my favorite sites on the web is a flash site (david gray studios) but if you look around at the biggest and profitable sites you dont see flash being used.
food for thought

As Busy said you have to think of the audience that will be viewing your site and possibly offer alternatives. We are not wanting to stifle creativity or uniqueness but are just offering practical suggestions and personal opinions.

yeah, sometimes using flash is appropriate and sometimes not - as you have noted, alternative methods are often available, and you could build an html option
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I had trouble with the navigation on yer personal site myself - I don't think this is the result of any pronounced jealousy on my part

What trouble did you have? Its simple! lol

thanks for the comments guys.

you know, when i first completed my site around 6 months ago i posted it on were-here.com and flashkit.com for critiques, i got a lot of good responses but honestly i don't remember any comments about the navigation being difficult until i posted it here. interesting.

keep in mind that this is my personal site - i can go a little crazy on it. but i know not to an extreme where i will alienate the average user. i think building an HTML version will of course help.

thanks

highsierratimes wouldn't let me on w/o a password.

In general, I find your designs to be quite impressive and professional! But, I think that a couple of them, such as your personal page, are practical, and may seem a bit confusing to navigate. I'm dazzled by the looks though, but just a bit lost in the navigation.