The End!

Semester one has gone way too quickly.

I am very happy with my final outcome, and it is certainly a big step-up from the site I created last year in Digital 2 with Flash using only one file!

I have enjoyed taking Digital 4 and have learnt heaps in regards to flash -most importantly: how bloody nit-picky the program can be when you're coding action scripts! There'll be no more naming containers 'content' from now on..

In my opinion, learning how you created the OSOP website and looking at the .fla files for it was certainly the most helpful and useful resource for me.

Thank you for all your help, and hopefully one day I can be as Flash-savvy as you are!

Best Regards,

Brooke.

Final Layout Design & Content

The Final Design:

After much fussing around with certain layouts, I came up with one I liked!


Technical aspects of my site include:

Navigation: Simply to the left. This is an external .swf file which links to a movie clip container in main.swf. When the porfolio button is clicked another two links drop down underneath it. I find this very amusing. :)

Content: Each page has its own .swf file, which once again, is linked to a movie clip container. I don't think I really need to tell you this eh? But I like making tutors reads endless amounts of information. :P

Page Transitions: a lovely alpha - fade in effect as each page loads.

Other notable features: (that were very time consuming) - my awesome slideshows featured in my portfolio pages. I think I may have a few strands of hair left on my head! Ah yeah, I wish I had more design work to place there, but there isn't any other stuff that is worthwhile!

Also, I probably could have put better quality design images to view, though due to time restraints I had to make do with Flash's resizing tools.

Logo

Logo Design:
Because my first name 'Brooke' means a little river, or stream, I thought I would play around with using a river flow to come up with a nifty logo idea.

Final Result:

Quick Thumbnails

Layout Design.

I pretty much have a general idea as to what kind of layout I want to design.

And like always I like to keep my designs simple - and is probably the best thing to do at this stage as I am still learning to deal with the basics of flash.

Research

Now I shall conduct some research as to what makes a pretty flash site:

1. Page transitions: Are the main thing what make the viewers go 'oooh' or 'ahh'. They're pretty much the essence to a flash website. If you're not going to have them, you might as well make the damn thing in HTML/CSS!

http://www.andyfoulds.co.uk/
Has some pretty sweet page transitions. But is where I learnt something else: Too many transitions can just kill the site.

I got a little confused here as to how to navigate the site, the moving site navigation irritated me - it seemed to turn into some wordfind puzzle.


The moving page transitions and the number of them, PLUS the animation time (not actual downloading time) it took for a single page to load got a little too annoying for me - I'm not that much of a patient person - and every other sane internet surfer out there!

So in short - keep transitions quick, and simple to some extent.


Rayman Website
Is a neat animated site for the Nintendo DS game, unfortunately I am not much of an illustrator so won't be doing anything remotely close to this. I'd hate to think about how long it took to design and create. The site has easy navigation, however the layout is slightly too large for my screen, even at 1152 x 864! That, plus the loading times were the only downsides to this site.

Fuel Design
Is an example of a NZ design website that has used some flash in their website in the top banner. The rest is done with good old html/css, which I suppose is easier for a site which has lots of content. Its a nice, simple and elegant design which loads fairly quickly.



2. Well that's it really when it come to rules specific to Flash, although because I'm a newbie, there may be others that I am not fully aware of yet.

And lastly, of course, not to forget that when designing a flash website, all the same rule for basic wedesign apply:

- Easy to find navigation and consistant page design -not always with flash, but to a limit.
- An aesthetically pleasing layout - nice colours, easy to read text, etc.
- And quick loading helps as well!

Flash Website

I will be doing my flash website on myself, more precisely a portfolio site that I can ultilise in the nearby future.

Of course, the body of work I present in my porfolio will not be my absolute finest, I am still a second year student you know!

It shall feature some lovely information about my self, cirriculum vitae stuff, examples of work from polytech and stuff I have done in my own personal time, contact details, etc.