An Invisible Refresh

Why?

It took 8 months of working in fits and starts, but I've finally converted the code behind danielboyle.net to Actionscript 3, from a mix of Actionscript 1 and 2. Why? As of Flash CS3, Actionscript 3 became available. It's essentially a complete rewrite of AS1 and 2 as a strictly object-oriented language. Practically speaking, as newer versions of the Flash player become universal, and Flash itself is upgraded, the older styles of Actionscript will fall away, and if you don't know AS3, you'll be in trouble. This particular project was probably the easiest way to learn. I had no real deadline, my math worked, my assets already existed, the logic was already there, and I had a working target to shoot for. For help, I turned to Google, Kirupa.com, and Actionscript.org. I also used Colin Moock's excellent Essential Actionscipt 3.0.

This is NOT a tutorial. This is a port-mortem of my thought process, lessons learned, and results of the re-engineering of my site.

Critique: YourPlayTherapy.com

YourPlayTherapy.com

There's a wonderful site called Coding Horror. It sounds worse than it is, really. It celebrates badly written code, or obliquely designed interfaces, and the thinking behind them. While it sounds extremely harsh (and it can be), it does frequently remind its readers that we are all walking coding horrors. We've all made stupid mistakes, reinvented the wheel, and occasionally done something so dumb, we print it out, tape it up next to our monitors, and write Never Do This Again in big red letters on it.

Designers have their own horrors, too. This time, I'm sharing one of mine. It's a fairly stereotypical story of a designer given complete control over something for the first time in his (or her) career.

Background Information

YourPlayTherapy.com was part of a wider strategy promoting tourism to the Jersey Shore. It has a reputation (not entirely undeserved) as a little dirty, a little crowded, and very gaudy. Sometimes that's the charm, but for many people in NYC, Philadelphia, and DC (the target area/audience boundaries) it's not always the case. There was a push in include not just the usual towns of Cape May, Atlantic City, and Wildwood.

Promotions and ads all revolved around the idea of a short vacation to the shore as Play Therapy - a time away from home that's only a couple hour drive away, helping you relax and maybe keep from flipping out. There was a sand dollar-coupon drop, newspaper and magazine ads, tv ads, banner ads, Mini Coopers dressed up as bumper cars and, of course, the website.

Our clients were a board of businesspeople and local government officials (and a couple state government people) - if you are cringing now, it's understandable. While our direct client was pretty good, you can imagine how some conversations went.

FWA: Had me, lost me.

For a while, The FWA was the site for the best web design out there. If you wanted the biggest, the flashiest, the sexiest - you went there. Where did they fall off the bus?

Self-criticism.

I suppose it's only fair to begin by criticising my own work.

When I was in class, the people who weren't afraid to stand up and point out the weak parts of their work were the students who would defend their work (intelligently and articulately, mind you) to the death. So, here goes: the tear-down of my own site.