Treacherous Orchestra
______So a welcome return to Flash for me with this one http://www.treacherousorchestra.com. It’s great that the band decided to buck the trend for super useable, standardised web design. This site will not win any awards for use-ability with buttons along the bottom, confusing but authentic d-pad media player and vast amounts of space dedicated to vintage wallpaper and arcade machine facia. But hopefully it’s creative, stylised approach will prompt a renaissance in imaginative flash sites among the musical community. Although standards has helped progress the web greatly in the last year or so it’s noticeable that creativity and ingenuity has suffered as designers stick to the tried and tested idiot proofing that has become so wide spread. This site will be chalk and cheese and provoke reaction.
______So the site has some neat little features. Flickr Photo gallery using the excellent flashr api. RSS news and gigs section which gives the band total control of updating the bulk of the site. Add to this a superb youtube player by avalonweb germany. A special thanks must go out to them for help with integration and their superb open source ethos. There are some extra zany features to be added to the site in the near future so keep checking back…
______I had a few bugs initially with the usual suspect; Internet explorer. But I have managed to resolve all but one. Explorers chaching system can cause havoc with flash and there are some extremely intermittent problems with the browser re-scaling the movies. There is little I can do about it, refreshing the browser sorts it. When will microsoft give in and just accept that explorer is inferior to other free browsers and needs over hauled to follow standards. I managed to find a pals computer with Internet explorer 6 still installed on it, and it was depressive to use. Most of the sites I have designed in the last 2 years failed to work properly on it, and my own site schmo.biz didn’t even load. Please if you use Internet explorer what ever version please switch to Firefox, or one of the others you’re time on the web will be more secure and enjoyable. Plus no more ctrl alt deleting… For more info on how to get rid of this menace be sure to visit. http://www.bringdownie6.com/