Hi all. Please critique the first version of my website (currently working on version 2). www.zeeshank.com

One suggestion on the photo portion of things.

When I click on a photo to see the entire photo, it is distracting to the viewer to see parts of the clock surrounding the picture I'm looking at.

- Noel

Sites built with Flash annoy me, and I avoid them whenever I can.

advice noted. keep it coming.

Theres nothing wrong with making a site that more than 99% of users have a plugin for. But there is something amiss when it is optimised so badly and there is more than an arguement that it could have been more effective as a static site.

The waiting time for your portfolio is far too long for most users to tolerate. Dialup users will be long gone before it loads and broadband users will probably really want to see it to wait for it to load.

Navigation or the primary navigation should never be Flash based. It is certainly not standards compliant and moreover does nothing to aid the user to the final destination.

I can't hear because I have headphones instead of speakers and are not wearing them, but I see you have a button for music, the long and the short of it is - don't bother, it's a drain on resources and just takes longer to load a page. Chances are that not everyone will appreciate it either.

As for your portfolio. The catagories could do with some looking at and refining. You have a lot of photos split into catagories such as abstract, it would be more streamlined if you could almagamate some of the work into more defined catagories.

Some of the work may be a little lacklustre too. Not showing your best work off and in the best light is often an error bought about by being too close to the project. Be ruthless and weed out the weak pieces, if you are left with a vastly pared down folio then so be it. It is better to have less work that is strong than a lot of work that is mediocre.

You're a lot further along than what I could do. Maybe the thumbnails are a little small to discern what they are. Keep workin it!!

Cheers
Dave

I appreciate all the feedback. I am currently working on a much simpler effective flash version of the site.

The only thing I didn't care for was the small thumbs. I was just clicking blindly on them. It is ok now but when you get more photos up there it might seem too time consuming to visitors.

North sider eh? Heh heh... I recocognized that clock right off the bat. Nice selection job on that!

Jeff: Thanks mate. Lets see how my new version turns out. This website i designed was for a class project and my instructor wanted to make it a bit fancy and in 3 days!. The new design will be very simple, and eye catching.

Keep posting.

Cheers.

PS. Weather in Chicago sucks!

Hi, just to reiterate a comment above. I use a dial up modem, and your site was taking so long to load that I just did'nt bother in the end.

Gary, I understand your pain, the newer one I'm working on will be a lot smaller and easier to load. All this feedback is very important, it will help me develop a better site. Keep it coming.

I'm sorry to say, I cannot wait for the load time. I look forward to a quicker version. Maybe flash is not really necessary. Remember your audience.

I have a cable modem so there was really no wait for me.

Anyway - I think it looks great! I think you do some awesome work, and I'm having a blast going through it. It's easy to navigate AND easy on the eyes! Good job!