Interactive music video

http://www.beonlineb.com/
Looks like an old movie, but have weird elements in it.

Just click around and interact with the handsome singer (who looks a bit like Elvis Presley).

The whole atmosphere created by the music and visual is entrancing, and I think applying interactive flash clips to music video production is clever, since the budget is not so high while the content attracts eye balls.

Make a flake

http://snowflakes.barkleyus.com/

It's fun! I retrieved my childhood memories cutting numerous kinds of paper flakes, and all of them appeals to me.

The execution of this flash game is easy and user-friendly. The color tone is nicely soft and comfortable.

And I wish I could know what the actionscript is...

Pattern Pattern Patterns

http://patternfoundry.com/

This is another site done by Courier font.
And the pattern swatches are placed layer by layer loosely.
The viewing experience is a bit like choosing different fabric.

Basic and useful.

Peace Shadow project

http://peaceshadow.net/

It a Japanese site introducing their suffering from the nuclear bomb by the U.S, and to arouse people's awareness of world peace. The website is nice, the opening is eye-catching, also the girl's English in Japanese accent conveys certain kind of mood.

Japanese think the nuclear bomb was unhumane, unpeaceful, so what about Chinese, thinking of the massacre done by them?

Overall, it a good design. The interview videos are placed in a pleasing format, the bold font corresponds to the theme.

Mysterious interaction

http://www.gaite-lyrique.net/experience/

I love the opening movie and its music so much! It sweeps off my impression of 3D animation as unhuman and too technological . I enjoy watching this , all 4 times.

However, when it comes to interactive part, I have to say it spoiled all my patience. I click and click and nothing seems to respond, and finally I found that it only respond to cursor moves and that is all. I expect much more than this.

However, I still want to watch the opening over again.

"Every morning I check Many Stuff"

http://www.manystuff.org

This is another site with Courier font and a simple style.

The content layout is much more pleasing to eyes, compared to the former site I introduced. The text font and word space are just right that we read it through smoothly, even though the alphabets themself are surprisingly small.

By the way, it looks so French French!

Casual Poet

http://casualpoet.com

This site is for Casual Poet studio in Singapore, which is the first site I don't see any pictures. And the font is the most basic Courier.

I don't know whether it is the style they intend to show or the casual poets are too casual and lazy to add pictures or change font.

Without clear sections and empty space, the site content is really hard to read. You don't expect audience to read a website like reading poems.

A simple site

http://www.tithi.info/new/main.htm

This is a showcase of a jewllery artist.

The only interaction is clicking on icon and content unfolds, which is rather traditional.

I like the way to enlarge a picture by click on it, and the enlarged one take up the horizontal space and would not harm the overall site layout. While in many other site, the larger version always brings out another browser window, which is annoying to me.

As an artist's showcase, I deem this site worth studying.

Css or Actionscript?

http://csszengarden.com/?cssfile=/213/213.css&page=0

This is a static site created by CSS language. Nothing blinks, nothing moves, nothing swings.
Users simply scroll the middle mouse button to see the whole page.

However, I don't find the site boring at all. It's like an old mysterious textbook (maybe of a grandpa or grandpa's grandpa), one would look cautiously and carefully study the traditional style photos and illustrations. It gives me a feeling of authority and worth of respect.

Besides, the static content makes the site totally controllable. No thinking, no confuse, no mistake, no missing information.

Is the future CSS's or Actionscript's?

Walking in virtual reality

http://www.2gh.de
It loads slow, please be patient.

It is a nicely decorated space, with abundant lightsource, which makes everything look light and inviting. (Perhaps it's photoshopped?)

The color squares floating in the air make this space magical in the first-person perspective. It's like entering a nice little cafe with a bit background music, beautiful handicrafts on wall or on sofas. One could not help wandering around and have a look at everything.

The cube design is also amazing. However, it's a bit confusing to a first-time user like me.

By the way, it loads really slow... May scare away many potential audience...

Coca-Cola or Illustration?

http://plus.cocacolalight.com.br/plus

Turning a mouse cursor into a drawing pen is not unusual these days. I simply love this interaction, since I love doodling.

What I find this amazing is that whatever you draw wherever on the screen, the code would generate a line right from your drawing. And the line smoothly introduces a series of cool illustrations. This is an interesting interaction and I keep playing with it. But still have not tried out all versions.

Besides, the illustrations are simple and elegant, which makes the cola site more like an illustration site or some art thing, which, I think is good.

My own review on Actionscript code learnt

Var XXX:YYY=new YYY();

"var" is to set a variable XXX, which is a subset of YYY (YYY is a group name).
":" means "property or attribute".


XXX.addEventListener("ZZZ",AAA);

If ZZZ is completed, then excute AAA.
"." means 's .

Another Japanese site

http://www.muji.com/rhythm

Another Japanese site of Muji.

I don't know if you like the Muji simplicity. To me, I dislike most of the products except stationary, especially the color pens. I imagine putting everything in gray, brown grey, blue grey etc at home would be dreary.

I deem this site design-oriented rather than showing off coding or technology. Every product on screen is aligned to some kind of grid and jumps slightly, or switch among themselves dynamically to a heart-beat rhythm. It clearly reveals the designer's attention to give a vivid life to these products.

The interaction between the mouse cursor and the buttons seems to be diminished by the beating pictures themselves. However, it still fairly easy to use (simply double-click and enter a detailed page of a product), and successful keep the user's interest in this site and follow the rhythm unconciously.

However, the heart-beat itself scares me a little. Since it is so clear and distinctive, I cannot help thinking of a dying human.