Updates and Etc

OK a lot has changed. Well, a lot of the coding anyway. You may not see major differences in the overall look and feel, but I have changed how the site works substantially. There were a number of issues with how it was operating before, and I couldn't continue building the site knowing those problems were there. Now everything should be fixed, and I think it's on the way to becoming a nice little site. I have posted the link below.

Click here to see the site (make sure to read below first!)

Some things to keep in mind and watch out for:

- It's heavier than before, so wait a bit for everything to load. Building custom Flash Preloaders is a mystery to me and WAY more complicated than I thought. For now, you'll just have to wait.

- The "About", "Info", and "Support" areas are currently clickable pages. There is also some clickable content within these pages. You'll also notice that a large portion of the site is now Flash. It sort of evolved into this out of necessity and it's been a learning process to tweak it into this format.

- The menu is now up in the left corner. It's there for a few reasons, both aesthetic and functional. First of all, I think it looks better, but it also allows me more space to work with. It also fixes a terribly annoying Dreamweaver bug that was messing with alignment.

- The layout for the content is structured differently now because of the new menu position. I am using the floating boxes to house most of the content, with little extras (like the cloud-man and the swinging photo). I think this will be both interesting and more consistent with the feel of the page overall.

- You can click on both people (the guy in the plane and on the cloud). Each of them has something to say! The idea here was twofold: 1) Increase the "exciting" factor of the site, and 2) to provide me a vehicle for delivering Shakespeare-esque messages in a "voice" I thought appropriate for the feel of the site. It should feel silly, but also a bit theatrical. Later, they will look a bit more like Shakespearean characters.

- The clouds will follow your mouse slightly, so have fun with them. Also I fixed the man in the plane, he should move faster now.

- There is a lot still to be done. Obviously flushing out the rest of the content is the priority. Once this is done, and if I have time, I would like to play around with some other extra bits as well. Ideally, there will be curtain over the city that will "reveal" the scene and also set the stage as it were for the rest of the site. I am thinking about fixing the transitions between the pages so they flow into one another and don't just appear randomly. I know how to do this, but won't implement it unless I feel the rest of the site (content etc) is up to snuff.

- I am aware that the "pop" sound effects on the mouse overs are too loud. My export settings within Flash are being all screwy. Maybe it's time for CS4?