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Subject:	Re: FLASH: New Macromedia.com site
From:	Michael Penney
Date:	Thu, 15 Jun 2000 23:52:09 +0100

Main Page:
First impression is a major step backward. Blue on blue? Tiny, fuzzy text?
Looks like some higher-ups kid got the redesign job, certainly doesn't look
very professional nor usable. News and events just about unreadable here.
Obviously the small fonts and lack of contrast are a bit better on my Win98
box, still difficult to read and with an overall 'geocities' feel.

The products page is much better than the main page, but still confusing.
Why have a mass of icons on the left if I can't click on them?
Now I have to scroll way down (on my 17") to see all the products. One thing
I was glad to see is that SoundEdit made it back to the main products
page...

Support page: irritating scrolling as above, also confusing interface, as
the support topics on the left rollover, but the topics under 'support
hi-lights' don't. Why? Are they less or more important?

Solutions, as above, some links roll over, some don't. Now the text is
yellow on yellow. Very sad. Is yellow a color that is supposed to make me
feel confident that Macro. can help with my solutions? Instead it reminds me
to be cautious and a bit nauseated...

Overall: Why the major pull back from Flash? If on the one hand MACR claims
that some 90% of browsers have Flash, why did they so dramatically yank it
from their site? Especially to replace it with a clunky frames and scroll
interface? I used to show Macromedia.com to clients to demo the benefits of
Flash, how using Flash interfaces could avoid the very clunkiness that MACR
has now seemingly embraced.

The overall color scheme also seems a bit confusing or confused. Why are
some sections (the main page, support page) colored while most of the other
pages white? If the intent of the designer was to make me re-think my use of
MACR plug-ins and remind me of the good old days of the scrolling, notepad
and Photoshop web, they partly succeeded. The site would have been cutting
edge back in 96, but still would have been critiqued for the inconsistent
and confusing design.

Overall, gives me the feeling something very strange is going on at MACR,
hope there is not some of the Metacreations bug going around...

> What do you all think of the Macromedia site? All I'm going to say at the
> moment is that it seemed to take much longer to load here, am on a T1 as
> well. It also looks like they've taken out a lot of the Flash navigation and
> replaced it with dHTML.
>
> jb
>
> Jason Bouwmeester

=====>
Michael Penney
Sharpener of the Cutting Edge
BigTimeWeb.Com

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