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PLease review my sites and help me make them faster


crimsonvortex

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hello guys,

I just got started in web designing. I have finished loading two sites. and they are very very slow to load. They are flash sites published in html and then called in dreamweaver for loading. We have used AS2 for coding in flash. It is single file of 3.2 and 2.8 MB respectively. Is that two heavy for a website. How do i make these sites faster without removing the animation or losing on the quality of images i have used. I have tried to go as low as possible for the images.

 

Please help me make these sites faster.

 

ww w.tir than jali.com

ww w.cri msonv ortex.com

(remove the spaces)

 

 

regards

Jeanie

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I have a couple comments, mostly in regard to usability...

 

Crimson Vortex site:

-- The site feels amateurish. As you say, it seems to take a while to load, and having to possibly wait through both a loading screen (why the annoying sound effects?) and a slow moving intro is frustrating.

-- I don't like the way it takes over my browser and forces itself full screen. I want to be able to control that myself. This is especially bad in the portfolio section, where the portfolio items look pixelated and unprofessional.

-- The navigation is confusing to use. I often don't know where I am in the site, and I don't know how to get back to the home page. I could go up to the URL bar and reload the site, but then I'd have to wait again for the site to load. When I am on a sub page, I have to both hover over the nav in order to see my options, and tilt my head just to read the nav items. Also, even on the sub pages, the navigation doesn't stick to a consistent location, so I have to search every time to find it

-- The animated "crimson vortex" logo is distracting -- it draws the eye down to the bottom right and away from the content

-- You are using a lot of fancy special effects for some of the pages, especially when changing the page, that is totally unnecessary and increases load time. This site seems like it would be done much better as a static HTML site. Sure, you would lose the fancy effects, but it would actually make the site usable and understandable

-- From a accessibility perspective, I doubt that anyone who is blind and uses a screen reader could make any sense of the site. The animations and effects would be distracting to those who have problems concentrating, and could make the user experience frustrating

-- The copywriting could use some work, modifying the writing style to remove unnecessary long words. For example, the home page reads "It is a long and tedious journey to reach an appropriate and effective expression of your work, ideas and product. But if you are reading this, you have just reduced the journey considerably. Welcome to the experience of being on the cutting edge of communication." I can't tell where you are from, so I can't fault you if English isn't your first language. However, if you do have an English site and hope to sell to English speaking customers, it would help to reduce the wordiness and eliminate some of the long complicated words so that it is easier to read quickly. Perhaps even consider hiring a copywriter for this.

 

Tirthanjali

-- a lot of my comments above seem to apply to this site as well. Seems like an unnecessary use of flash, and seems to have both a loading screen and several intro screens. No skip intro link as well, unless the visitor is viewing the intro in the first place... Again, forcing the user to view full screen is frustrating.

-- The (second?) intro screen (that contains the text "A child is the most unique creation of God. His curious little mind is restless... etc.) has a lot of yellow that makes it difficult to focus on the light blue text. The text probably needs to be darker so it has more contrast with the background... I had a hard time reading it.

-- The subnavigation (for example, "Infrastructure, Curriculum, Team", etc. under the "Resources" item seems oddly placed (all the way over to the right side of the screen) and it doesn't seem to follow the same style as the rest of the site

-- Same comment as the last site about the wordiness of the text and run-on sentences... It often doesn't seem to make sense. For example, "Natural inclinations and instincts of a child have the ability to become his guide in future learning and our focus is to understand them and provide challenges and strengthening opportunities for them, so they evolve into more intelligent aids for the child in his voyage to growth."

 

So, to answer your questions... I agree, both sites are slow to load, primarily because of all the unnecessary effects. Seems like both sites would be much better off as static HTML sites, rather than Flash sites, which would increase their usability and accessibility. I don't think there is any way to "make the sites" faster, without either removing some of the animation or losing the quality. One or the other has to be adjusted.

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There is a site here:-

http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/

that analyses your page, both showed mainly green colors, ie no problem, but I don't think it was dealing with 3MB of Flash, I think it must have ignored it.

 

I suppose speed depends on your target viewers and what they might expect and whether it's the first page which they might expect to load quickly or a later page where they will be expecting some delay.

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I do my best to keep all my pages under 200KB, including images.

 

Your site is about 15x bigger than my heaviest pages. Without even viewing your pages, I can tell you one thing - a user could visit my site, know what I do, look at some of my work, and start filling out the contact form before your intro finished :)

 

That aside, the links have been removed from your post. PM me, and I'd be happy to go over them, and offer suggestions to reduce the size. Also, ActionScript 2 is dead, as AS3 came out a couple of years ago. AS3 is NOT compatible, and I would make it a priority to learn AS3 and upgrade my codebase ASAP.

Edited by lwsimon
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Hi,

Thanks for the reviews, i appreciate the effort.

Thanks falkencreative, i am sure i can use the tips. pretty generous of you to have pointed out the mistakes in great detail. Let me work on those sites and get back with better and faster sites

Iwsimon, i have pm-ed my site links to you, please do give me your feedback.

Regards

Jeanie

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I wanted to view the two websites, but there doesn't seem to be any URLs or links to them in the original post. Benjamin, how did you know what sites to review?

Oops, I nailed the URL's too quickly it seems.

 

Perhaps the guy could put them back for now.

 

-

 

I believe in the 'broken windows' theory where it is found that if you clean up a place of broken windows and graffiti, it is less likely that others will feel compelled to break windows etc ...

 

It's kinda like coming into a really clean home; I've noticed how people are much more careful about taking off their shoes.

 

Stefan

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  • 2 weeks later...
....but there doesn't seem to be any URLs or links to them in the original post.

Look again - the url is there, just has spaces in it - that's to avoid the appearance of spam

ww w.tir than jali.com

ww w.cri msonv ortex.com

(remove the spaces)

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