Macromedia Gets a Facelift....

MM rolls out new Homepage Interface.

[mat_bastian]

[macromedia.com...]

[fathom]

hmmm... I guess they read my message yesturday... boy that was quick! :) "Successful" Flash sites [webmasterworld.com]

[daamsie]

I thought the old one looked better.. it also worked better for that matter, but I'm sure this being a beta - they will work things out..

Example: the buttons up the top don't work, unless you find the 'active' area for it.. pretty sloppy. ( in Safari btw ) CSS also seemed to be causing some problems when I did a site search - the whole screen looked pretty messed up.

I thought the original macromedia site was a great site for usability and design purposes - looks like they've decided to focus on the design part and sacrifice some usability.

[mat_bastian]

hehe... I actually saw a sneak preveiw of the home page about a month ago, but they quickly took it down. So they've been on it for a little while. Maybe you just pushed the launch date up...;)

[korkus2000]

I am not sure I like it or not. Then again I have never been a huge fan of macromedia's sites. I am just not a big fan of tan pages. I think the toolbar and buttons are really slick though. Just personal preference. Has the site search always been powered by Google? I guess I have never noticed before if it has.

[Nick_W]

erm.... I just get a blank page in Opera?

Nick

[korkus2000]

Thats odd Nick. I get it fine in Opera. Do you have Flash install, shouldn't matter since they are throwing up nonFlash content to people without Flash.

[Nick_W]

Yep, have flash. Opera 6 on Linux.
All I get is the background color.

In Moz it works fine. Verdict: Whatever....

Nick

[korkus2000]

Hopefully they will fix that. I would think several of their customers would have that configuration.

[edit_g]

[macromedia.com...]

I think the previous site was far, far better. But then I was used to that...

Here's what they say: [macromedia.com...]

[andreasfriedrich]

I get a blank page with a very nice gray background :).

There were JavaScript errors as well.

Andreas

[JonB]

i see new sitewithout problems.no errors.

[Marketing Guy]

It looked good until that big scary half-underwater face appeared! :)

"We refreshed the visual design, and we simplified the home page so that you can focus on the most important information."

That'll be the big image that takes up half the page then?

Music in the background too.....still unsure about that one...

I like the naviagtion (the little button that replaces the main image with navigation).

Also the product / solutions menu's work well and are fairly effective.

Overall - i like it - just the big image annoys me! :)

Scott

[lazerzubb]

Can't help to laught at the "Powered by Google" thing on the bottom :D
Maybe they should clarify that Google only powers the search, or maybe they are buying Macromedia, and that's why their stock has gone up big time the last months :)

[edit_g]

I take it you're not browsing using Safari then, JonB... :)

<edit> so far Mozilla has problems (grey screen), Safari (html errors) and forget about netscape... Opera and IE are ok.

[sem4u]

And I thought Microsoft was planning to buy Macromedia...

[webmasterworld.com...]

[WibbleWobble]

Phoenix without Flash shows the page just fine. I assume they've got some sort of Flash check code in there so I don't get bugged by it. Hurray for them.
The image looks terrible, though; the lighting makes it look lossy.

[rogerd]

I agree with Marketing Guy about the creepy face. Looks like something out of a Stephen King novel, and distracts completely from whatever message they were trying to communicate. There were some words that floated across the image, but I never processed them.

[4eyes]

IMO its awful

Lost the plot completely.

OK they wrote 'Flash' but that doesn't mean they HAVE to use it.

Not good

[jatar_k]

I get the grey screen in Moz, there is nothing more disappointing (read infuriating) than a large corporation who can't get cross browser coding down.

sad and disgusting, imo.

You'd think a corp that pushed so many web devel tools might actually know how to do web devel.

obviously not.

[rogerd]

Jatar, the gray screen may be preferable to the partially-submerged face... :)

[jatar_k]

very possible, :)

though I won't opening IE to see what it looks like.

[lorax]

Blank screen here too. Op6 on Win2K with the Flash plug-in installed. I agree you Jatar_k - you'd think they'd know better.

[edit_g]

I'm sure they must know. They have mistakenly thought that its a good idea to put a beta site live. They say that it is beta in their speil about the new look.

You would think that these guys would know that there is no such thing as a soft launch...

[bill]

Using Opera 7.02 I can see that they have a really nice favicon.ico file setup, but that's about it...a blank page here...

[bird]

Appears to technically work with Mozilla on Linux, but...

• Stupid: Tooltips that exactly repeat the visible text of the elements that have them.
  
• Misleading: Someone who doesn't know them would be hard pressed to tell what they do from any of the text on the homepage.
  
• Unflexible: Forces the browser to a certain minimum width.
  
• Incompatible: "You may not have everything you need to view..."
  
• Ugly: Shady blue combined with dirty beige - eeek!
  

I thought they hired Jakob Nielsen a while back?

[edit_g]

Maybe Jakob's changed tack? ;)

[sem4u]

Where's the hidden text then?

makromedia, macrowmedia.... ;)

[WibbleWobble]

"Experience matters: See why" is really terrible writing, IMO. The "See why" seems contrived, excessive; we want to know how your product can help us* - everyone knows why experience matters.
Also, the page it links to explains things with a goddamn image, in place of text? Hi poor modem users!

*I use the terms We & Us collectively for all potential users

[lorax]

I wrote them regarding Op visibility issues. I'll post their response if it's worth sharing.