Mobotics.ca

[Mike Iantorno]

Continuing along the line of shameless self-endorsement, Mobotics.ca is up and running. Its a little hard to run on low res, lacking some content, and in desperate need of a intro page but asides from that its DONE. Comments and Criticism are welcome.

[Gope]

im pretty big into website interface design, and i must say, u've done quite a nicee job, altough the menu dosent fit into the interfacee well.

Consider the following:

trash the idea of an into-page....they just annoy people and are stupid

get rid of the menu start-up animation....it wastes people's time and annoys them, try only using animations that do not limit site functionality

perhaps redo the menu...it dosent go well with the rest of site








other than that, ,u've done a very nice job

[Suneet]

I always like a nice Flash menu. I think it goes fine with the rest of the site, and 'cause the opening animation is on a mouseover, it isn't really in the way. I'd totally keep it. Just one thing... the gear animation... it looks like you did a bitmap trace or something... I'd suggest tracing over the bitmap with vectors by hand, and then replacing it in the tween. And yes, the into-page is annoying. Otherwise a very clean layout. Nice looking work.

If you want to see what too much animation is, see this: http://robodox.tripod.com It's a layout I made a while back that the team never tried to use for the official website. I need to make one for the official site one of these days...

[Mike Iantorno]

I kinda need the intro page, unless we get around to figuring out how to use javascript to auto-redirect the user to the correct resolution site.

Also, we got someone making a no flash, no frames, low res version of the site for people with "less spiffy" computers. That'll replace the low res site thats already there.

And thats one trippy site layout Suneet, which the clamp/box animations and all. Thats some nice flash, but as you said, a bit excessive.

[rbayer]

Very spiffy looking. My only gripe (other than the intro page) is that clicking on the links opens the new site inside your frames. You can fix this with a target=_top inside the link tags. Or, if you'd prefer to open in a new window, the tag is target=_blank


If you're interested, the necessary JavaScript is:

<script language="JavaScript">
<!--
if ((screen.width>=HIGHRESWIDTH) && (screen.height>=HIGHRESHEIGHT))
{
window.location="my-high-res-page.html";
}
else
{
window.location="my-low-res-page.html";
}
//-->
</SCRIPT>

Just replace my-high/low-res-page.html, and HIGHRESWIDTH/HEIGTH with your values and you should be good to go.

[jonathan lall]

It looks great, but you know what? I'd consider trying:

1)to speed up the menu animation; i almost fell asleep waiting to access info (either that or bypass the animation with a click)

2)to just have one version of the site (i.e. no highres/lowres; it'll save everyone a bit of trouble

3)to get rid of the splash screen, espcially if there's only one version

4)to watch those frame targets; toronto.com for example is opening in the main frame

5)to change the small image below the email addresses that isn't rendering properly in my browser

[Mike Iantorno]

Booya, I'm finally getting some good contructive criticism. I'm going to do a massive site overhaul before kickoff, so I'll try implementing a lot of that stuff before then.

[HFWang]

Just an FYI for you... in mozilla/phoenix (I'm running 0.5 of phoenix) those pretty flashes don't work.

http://www.alistapart.com/stories/flashsatay/
details a solution. its very hackish... but whatever.

or you could drop flash because its a binary, propeitary thing, completely against the whole notion of the internet to begine with, but i doubt it.

[Taiguy]

nice stuff, our school's server has been down for a while and admin's kinda slackin off so we're still without a home on the internet.

the menu animation isn't over excessive, but you might want to think about reworking the interface so that it fits in with the rest of the site. The grey doesn't really go along with the blue/orange (great combo) btw.

-tai

[evulish]

I'm using Opera 6.0 in Linux and the vertical bar on the right side of the main content frame or whatever looks out of place. With closer inspection, it looks as though it's supposed to be that way...I'd think it would look better just straight down...

And the menu animation is a tad long...nice, but long.

Otherwise, beautiful site. One question...did you code the HTML, make the images, and make the flash? Because it looks great. Love the color scheme. I'd like to see your bot sporting a nice paint job with those

[jonathan lall]

Originally posted by HFWang
Just an FYI for you... in mozilla/phoenix (I'm running 0.5 of phoenix) those pretty flashes don't work.

WFM, trunk 2003010108

Maybe you should try a new build or newer Flash, because, it seems to be fine here.

[HFWang]

Originally posted by jonathan lall
WFM, trunk 2003010108

Maybe you should try a new build or newer Flash, because, it seems to be fine here.

how embarrassing, it only doesnt work in phoenix. its fine in mozilla...

I am forced to conclude that phoenix simply hates me.

[Mike Iantorno]

Originally posted by evulish
Otherwise, beautiful site. One question...did you code the HTML, make the images, and make the flash? Because it looks great. Love the color scheme. I'd like to see your bot sporting a nice paint job with those

Well, I did the html, and I designed the graphics. The colour scheme was brainstormed by the whole media team. Can't take credit for the Flash though, Kwun did all of that.

And yeah, we're thinking of doing the bot in Orange and Blue. We chose the orange because it was really "loud", and we wanted to stand out at the competition. Wait until you see the T-shirts....