I've been working on this particular portfolio design for sometime now trying to get passed the Flash MX - CPU Usage issue.
The site runs fine on my system and other high end machines but any PC with low memory or a low CPU and the animations get choppy.

My question is this, have I wasted an insane amount of valuable time and resources on a project that seems the net may not be ready for yet? The animation sequence thats published to the site now is only in intro. There will an animation for every possible mouse click.

Thanks for any and all comments, suggestions or criticisms.


Beta V1 - http://www.imd-media.com
Version2 - http://www.imd-media.com/test.html
Version2.1 - http://www.imd-media.com/test2.html

I gave up on your truly great intro at 8% (dialup). There is no way for anyone but you to answer the question you pose. I can try to frame the question within some context.

In the "no you haven't" camp the argument is a large percentage of people access via broadband. My own caveat to this is the whole reason they got broadband is to not have a delay. This means if the average wait on broadband is 3-5 seconds or less and yours loads in 22 seconds, there still may be a problem. Second there is some evidence people aren't as fond of looking at intros as people are making them.

Wasting your time may come down to whether users decide you are wasting their time -- or not. Cool doesn't cut it -- relevance does.

My suggestion is why not start off which quickly loading introductory pages at first. As people understand what you have to offer, they can decide to dig deeper. And you can signal which pages and clicks start heavy downloads. I think if you prepare users with immediate content, then slight lags, then the heavy stuff, more users will wait around.

Think of every second you make users wait as raising expectations. And that is not a linear scale. 20 seconds is not twice the wait, it's more like three times the wait ten seconds is.

Once users have a taste of what you can do, they now have the information to understand they want to see more. Intros are like showing up late to an interview. The idea is that if you make 'em wait, they'll appreciate you all the more. This rarely works, as people aren't telepathic -- they don't know what they're missing. Mostly showing up late annoys people -- and it is that annoyance which colors their experience.

I don't really know about your intro -- I didn't bother to see it. All I know is, for the time it would have taken to load, it had better have been truly great.

Thank you for your insite. You have a very valid point. This site is geared for the highend machine, broadband connection, CGI community but I don't want to exclude anyone from being curious.
So many sites, so little time.

Thanks again.