Website progress report.

Dear John, its coming along. After much deliberation I have decided to go with a new design for my site, still modern but it involves much more relevant images to the film, e.g. letters. Also my previous design using a multi swf approach has slightly changed. Instead of having a sub page from the main page, then going to another sub page I have just used a few drop down style menu's. This will save on site size and make the navigation even clearer.

Other subtle features include changing the text type from less of a modern design to more of a hand written look, to compliment the background of letters and paper. In places there will stil be a modern style design to make the pages more readable. (This will probably be included within areas such as the story information as well as the character info.)

Where am I? Currently I have more or less done the main features of the home page and completed the trailer page, although it may need some tweaking in the future. Also I have produced a working scrolling type gallery. This is still in its basic form as there are only 4 pictures and i am still undecided what is the best way to lay out the gallery navigation, I mean a simple click and view system is okay, but I'm sure there's so much more you could do to make the site more interesting. 

Here is what my main page looks like with all the menu's open, this will most likely be changing before I finish and I obviously need to do something with the background.

As you can see, the trailer from the film comes out of an envelope, relevant to the film and grabs peoples attention. The rest of the site seems to fade out a bit so there is a bigger focus on what you are watching. And then to return to the main page there is a clear 'close' button.

The site has a smooth feel to it so far as I have tweened all the menu's to come in at a moderate speed to suit the film type. Having a fast paced menu system wouldn't really suit a romantic comedy!

All of the other elements of the site will follow a consistant design, but by adding more interactive features on pages such as the 'cast' page it will make the site more interesting to visit, making the user feel more 'involved'.The feature I am hoping to add on this page will be a sort of scrolling mini site. When you click on one character, the page scrolls to their page for more infoirmation. In essence it is the same system as I have employed for the gallery page at the moment, just instead of using images using different pages that are linked together. I have taken a quick shot of the gallery page in it's early stages here. The idea is to click on a smaller image icon and this will scroll to the appropriate larger image.

So to recap the site is basically near finishing its structural stages, writing all of the code to make it work. After this ofcourse I will be be focussing more on the look and getting everything exactly how I have planned it. It will be including gallery, trailer, downloads, cast info, film info pages along with the 'buy' link, this goes to an external site and will not be part of my site. Other features may also be added at a later date should the need arise.