home builder site review

I liked the internal pages but the homepage seemed kind of dark and depressing to me and I was curious of the empty white box on the homepage as well.
Other than that the layout was nicely done.

You need a preloader, and you need to optimize that .swf!

It appears that Flash is supposed to be loading into the white box, but three minutes have passed and the server seems to not be answering, telling me that is must be really huge. And I'm on cable.

Ah ha!! It's coding errors that is most likely causing this problem:
• You've got no beginning head tag!
• The code for embedding the swf is not correct
• This is throwing the whole page into not behaving

Link to html validation errors

The logo is very nice, the design is nice, and it's well organized...This site will be quite nice once you fix the code issues.

Yeah it's just a while box for me too. How large is your SWF file? Add a preloader even if it isn't all that large, some people are still on dial-up and they won't see that at all cos they don't know anything is meant to be there.

its only like 33kb

I also get a white box Pete. I'd do a preloader as people are saying.

When you go into your site do you notice that the logo background stripes are lighter than the rest of the page's background?

I much prefer the opening page's simple layout to the rest of the site. Maybe you should work with that?

-Rob

No No....I think it's the code errors holding up the Flash

Now there is a beginning head tag, but there is no closing html tag.

Fix those code errors and all should be fine.

BTW...

Valid code for embedding flash looks like this:

Since you are not using XHTML it would look like this:
(Replace ??? with dimentions, and filename.swf with your path and file name)

No...you've got some of that between embed tags...a lot of that code isn't valid.

Take a look at the links I posted..they lead to your validation errors that show when running the front page through the W3C validator.

Put in your closing html tag that is missing, and see of that will make the .swf show up.

Okay I tried going directly to the .swf itself, and it still isn't loading.

It's either:
a) Huge, and needs a preloader
b) The file is somwhow corrupt

In any case...you still need to correct the code errors...at the very least put in the closing html tag.

I tried right clicking on the link above to download the .swf...all I'm getting it a empty file that weighs 2KB.

Does the .swf play locally on your own machine from your hard drive?

Did you upload it in bianary format?

Can you remove delete the .swf and upload it again?

thats what i am saying, i dont have a beginning HTML tag to close yet that site says i do. i will try a preloader and try uploading again tonight.

thanks for the help

Edit---
Well you HAD one....you NEED correct basic structure:

The basic structure of html: (In this case html 4)

Title Here

Without the correct basic underlying code structure, web pages will not display and or work properly.

Other things:

You have one closing meta tag written like it's xhtml when you are using html 4.0
You have an extra closing a tag...plus it's written with a capital letter;

The Corrected code below using an html 4.01 doctype, and the object/embed issue is still there, but the basic errors are corrected: (The board is putting a smiley in the flash code)

Emerald Park Homes

• Builders Story
• Homes
• Contact Us

Welcome to the Emerald Park Homes Website!

We have been building homes for over 15 years and take pride in the quality
and unique design in every home we build.

Please browse our website to see the homes and communities we have built in
the past as well as those we plan to build in the future.

 [email protected]
Phone: 407-654-0999 or 407-947-1673 Fax: 407-654-1274
copyright © 2005 Emerald Park Homes - Orlando, Florida
 
 
Site by Allura Web
Design

And this is completly valid code for the front page:

Emerald Park Homes

• Builders Story
• Homes
• Contact Us

Welcome to the Emerald Park Homes Website!

We have been building homes for over 15 years and take pride in the quality and unique design in every home we build.

Please browse our website to see the homes and communities we have built in the past as well as those we plan to build in the future.

 [email protected]

Phone: 407-654-0999 or 407-947-1673 Fax: 407-654-1274

copyright © 2005 Emerald Park Homes - Orlando, Florida
 

 
Site by Allura Web Design

The existing code is a mismash of things...are you writing this by hand or using some sort of WYSIWYG editor?

There still is a problem with the .swf. What did you use to create the flash with? Flash, Swish or something else?

flash MX, and it plays in flash fine

Well then I'd say something happened during upload. Just delete it an upload again to see what happens.

Watch out for time outs on the server. If the upload is timing out, then all data isn't getting transferred.

This is also messed-up in Opera/Linux. The green part is the Flash, but is still not loading and I get the message: "Movie not loaded"

Ouch....I didin't look at it in Opera.

Did my post get deleted?? I think I might have the answer.
If it uses a flv then I know what the proublem is and exactly how to fix it.

EDIT: I found my old post, it was hiding in a diffrent thread

no it is an fla

When using Firefox on my Mac the phone and copyright info on the bottom of the page is HUGH and "falls" outside the bottom boundry. With Mac Safari it's centered within the boundry but again.. too big. Wit IE 5.2 on the Mac the entire top section is bad... the logo drops down and appear over the "Welcome text".

(Yes.. I know... Mac viewers are small in number but there's a good sized group of Mac fanatics out there that are not seeing your pages properly.)

OK on Safari but Firefox is till going to the big ugly default... Look for extra spaces in the CSS..
Firefox is real particular about extra spaces...
Look for
font-size : 18px; (wrong: space before the colon)
when it should be
font-size: 18px;

opps... looks great now...
even on Firefox..

zell, are you seeing the Flash movie playing on the front page? I'm still not seeing it.

How are you uploading? What FTP program are you using? What are your FTP settings for the mode in which files are being transferred.

I'd love to see this all worked out, becuase the site really is quite good.

i am using CuteFTP and i tried using you suggestion of binary, also auto-detect and nothing worked.

thanks for all your effort and compliments on the site.

the thing that i dont understand is it was working a while ago and then all of a sudden it stopped.

Does it appear to stall or time out or anything on upload? Have you tried uploading via your sites control panel? It just seems that something must be happening to that file on upload.

Well I've never used CuteFTP, but in going to thier site I see they have a support forum, and since it appears that this issue might be an upload issue, maybe if you tried the suggestion found in this thread over there.

i have also tried coffee cup ftp which is a free program and it still doesnt work. I dont think it is an upload problem

A thought..what version of Flashplayer was this configured for? I'm using the latest version which is Flashplayer 8.

Does this issue maybe have something to do with the way the .swf was saved/exported?
(I'm a Swish user, and haven't installed the Flash demo yet, so I don't know anything about Flash's save/export option)

Megan, I think is quite an authority on this...lets get her in here. This is baffeling!

alright i change the swf file to an older identical one i had found. it works locally in flash, when i run the html that flash generates locally it works as well, also, if you load the file by following this link http://www.emeraldparkhomes.com/flash/empark_slideshow.swf it works.

but when i try and load it on my index.html it does not work, i even changed the loading text to the bare minimum suggested by roo and no luck

here is the code in flash, i exported it as flash 6

pic_arr = ["fla_home1.jpg", "fla_home2.jpg", "fla_home3.jpg", "fla_home4.jpg", "fla_home5.jpg", "fla_home6.jpg","fla_home7.jpg"];
color_arr = [0xf75eb0, 0xf6f818, 0xbb57c8, 0xdf1734, 0xfe9809];
// specify pic locations, alpha increment each frame, and
// number of frames to keep current picture displayed before
// transitioning to the next one
blank_mc.attachMovie("slideshow", "uuShow", 1, {_x:0, _y:0, _visible:false, fps:12, nFrames:24, alphaIncr:10, slides_arr:pic_arr, slideDepth:50, repeat:true});
// tell blank_mc to listen for events broadcast by uuShow
blank_mc.uuShow.addListener(blank_mc);
blank_mc.onSlideLoaded = function(i) {
(new Color(this._parent["dot"+i+"_mc"])).setRGB(color_arr[i]);
// trace('slide '+ i + ' loaded');
};
blank_mc.onAllSlidesLoaded = function() {
this.uuShow._visible = true;
this.uuShow.beginTransitions();
};
blank_mc.onShowOver = function() {
// set repeat:false in uuShow for this to be called
// trace('slideshow is over');
};

Okay...again, you've got an XHTML tag in with HTML4..

Change this:

To this:

And see what happens...see something like that can and will throw the whole page off.

Okay give me a few minutes...there are more code errors...I'm checking the code locally on my own machine...

Whoa....hey you css is really messed up too!

it is!

Whoa yes it is:

For one thing it looks you may have copied an older style sheet from the browser..this is what happens when you try to do that

Your css gets all spread out and your semi-colons : get all spread out to where they don't belong!!!

You have a lot of places in that stylesheet where the : is wrong...also you have this stuck in with one of the id's !important

That can't be there.

I don't have time right now to comb through the css, but I'd suggest you take a good look at it, correct things and keep running it through the validator until you get rid of all of the errors

This is corrected valid html:

Emerald Park Homes

• Builders Story
• Homes
• Contact Us

Welcome to the Emerald Park Homes Website!

We have been building homes for over 15 years and take pride in the quality and unique design in every home we build.

Please browse our website to see the homes and communities we have built in the past as well as those we plan to build in the future.

 [email protected]

Phone: 407-654-0999 or 407-947-1673 Fax: 407-654-1274

copyright © 2005 Emerald Park Homes - Orlando, Florida
 

 
Site by Allura Web Design

Why when this is loading does it say:

"transferring data from members.xspp.com"? That's not where the flash file is loacted is it?

no, i am using a bannerless free host doteasy.com and when you use their free host they provide some free scripts that call their server which i am using on another page on my site but not the home page. that is just the host information

thanks, now it looks right in opera but the flash still isnt loading

Well ya know...........

It would appear that the call to that server, and that server not answering is what is causing the page load hangup....

i will email tech support now and let you know what they say

but if that were true it should not load when you go to the flash file itself by following this link http://www.emeraldparkhomes.com/flash/empark_slideshow.swf , correct?

Another question..

I can't save that .swf for the life of me..I only get a 2KB file.

Is this one big movie or are you loading movies one on top of another?

If you are 'layering' different movies into levels within the main .swf are all of them uploaded? Are they all located in the same directory? I mean is the hangup that the hosting server is somehow waiting for other .swfs?

I may be totally off here but my guess it this:

a) There are multiple movies loading into this .swf
b) The paths to those movies are incorrect

*If* this is the case, go back to the source .fla and make sure that the links to the location of those additional .swf files are correct.

This page isn't contacting members.xspp.com for nothing......

it is 1 swf and 1 fla.

i have uploaded a rar file at emeraldparkhomes.com/flash.rar if you want to download it and see it

i read that the !important makes IE ignore that line, and it worked. because the box that houses the flash was aligned differently in IE, Mozilla and Opera until I added that !important command

I couldn't figure this out either. The file didn't seem to want to download properly - it played okay in the browser from one of the direct links posted above but it doesn't work on the page. The current code looks quite different from what Macromedia generates but the problem seems to be with the file itself. Would you mind letting us take a look at the FLA file? There might be something in there that's causing a problem...

be my guest, in a couple posts above i provided a link to a rar file with the fla and swf files in it

Sorry about that - didn't know what that RAR file was for.

This makes a little more sense now that I can see this. It's trying to access photos outside of the flash file using Action Script. I'm guessing that it can't find the photo files and that's why it doesn't work properly. You might need to add a directory path to those images in the action script to get them to work properly.

If you look at the page in the browser the flash is loading okay - I just get a black box but if you right click you get the flash context menu so it is loading. It just can't find the photos so it doesn't display anything. Either something is wrong with the image paths in the flash once you get it onto the server or something is wrong with the action script. Since the file plays fine when referenced directly it must be that it can't find the photos. Maybe it's trying to find them in the root file from the HTML page (i.e. looking for http://www.emeraldparkhomes.com/fla_home1.jpg instead of http://www.emeraldparkhomes.com/flash/fla_home1.jpg)

megan thank you. something so freaking simple. i copied the pics to the root folder and it now works! thanks alot roo for your help too

i just have to fix the black bar at the bottom of the flash movie when i get home

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!! Yaaaaaay!! This must be using xml along with the swf?

I am using opera also, i figured it looked alright allover, however i may not be looking at the same thing you are.
Any complaints i may have are that it needs more content.

When ya gonna come and build my dream home here in Morro Bay????

I like the overall look and feel of this website. Its a very classy and clean look. Not to sure about the green on the front page, I would have all pages have the same outter template.

That's a great site! I like it. Add a tell a friend module on entry though. And even add an affiliate program where you offer a few grand if someone refers a client to you.

Matt