new version.
any feedback on aesthetics or functionality would be much appreciated.
oh yea, and if you manage to find any bugs, please let me know.

Um...in what?

oh yea, my bad www.neworks.co.uk

Great flash interface. Simple and easy, fast too.

Looking professional. :) I like it, especially the portfolio page.

I like the design. Easy to get around.

And nice art, by the way.

Sweet deal. Very clean site, looks good.

Damn, I need to learn flash. That's damn good, Renuar. One of the fewer good flash sites I've seen.
Good layout, looks clean and spacious (great wall paper), and doesn't whore out on the flash effects. =D

Looks good overall, but a few comments...

I don't like how it hides the image when you mouse over, it's a bit confusing because the mouse starts over the picture when it first loads up and there's no indication of how to view image properly.

I also don't like the ridiculously small text areas for a ridiculously large window size. It would be fine if the text areas didn't have scroll bars. Why should I scroll when I have all this empty space? Perhaps if you made the size of the window dependent on the screen size...

Thanks to everyone for the positives, and also Marcello, for bringing up those two points, especially the first one.

now let me address those points...
The mouse over pic problem; seemed like a minor problem during the testing stages, 3/15 users got stuck but eventually realised that they had to roll off it, while the rest of the users picked up on the functionality a lot faster. Now I do realise that 15 hardly accounts for the actual number of people on the net, and I am aware that it can be problematic if not annoying, but I still haven’t been able to come up with a suitable solution which wont take away from the design (suggestions are welcome).

And as for your second point, i’m not entirely sure I get what your saying, but if it is what I think your saying, then I would respond by saying that the site does re-scale in relation to the size of the browser window, although the boxes do not. Now I don’t know at what rez you’re viewing the site, but ideally it should be 1280 x 1024. Nevertheless…I do see what your saying, I realised a few days ago that 90% of my implementation was done on a wide screen, I’m starting to get the impression that my sense of scale was warped by the wideness :/ not cool

Anyhow, the whole design and functionality thing, it’s a damn tight rope :]

There are a couple ways you could solve the first problem.

You could
...wait until the mouse has moved before fading it out, that way if you click and don't move the mouse, it displays.
...have it fade back to normal if you don't move the mouse for a few seconds (probably in conjunction with above).
...add a subtle 'x' or close or back or some kind of button off to the side of the image/in the corner. I honestly don't think this will detract from the design if you do it correctly.
...have the subtle x only display when you roll over the image (ie don't grey out the entire image)
...have clicking anywhere outside image close it. this could be related to the subtle x...
...have the gallery view move over to the left/side so you can see it, but it's behind the image and faded out until you roll over it (so you can easily load new images without going back and forth). I would probably extend on this to add next/previous buttons.
...support the browser's back button (this one is a little trickier since you would want to design your entire interface to support this mechanism, and not everyone knows that flash can read the back button so they might not expect it).

As for the second point, I can take a screenshot of what I mean but I do not have the time right now, but basically, having scrollbars is generally very bad. When it's unnecessary, just avoid it completely. Especially if it doesn't support mouse wheel. I'm running at 1600x1200, but the window size is probably closer to 1280x1024.

As for the design/functionality... good design means good functionality, so I wouldn't consider it a tight rope at all. There are a ton of design changes you could probably do to make the interface a million times better, but it really depends what you want people to get out of it... I'll resist commenting on them all. ;-D

On a side note, for the background switching, I would do a cross fade instead of cut disappear and fade in. At the very least fade out the old one. Might be cool to change the background automatically every couple minutes, as well.

Hey cello; After looking at your suggestions; I came to the conclusion that the simplest solution would be to write a condition which would test whether or not the user is rolling over the loaded image for the first time; so if true, don’t fade; else fade in.

Regarding your browser bk btn suggestion; I hear what your saying, but like you mentioned, the interface needs to support the mechanism, it’s a little too late for that, but what I could do is create some btns in a.s. which can be used to toggle backwards and forwards through the array of pics.

Mouse wheel support; your right, it would be nice. I’m working on some prototype, still dealing with bugs. Background switching; well yea...initially, the switching was based on a cross fade using set intervals, but flash started to glitch up during the fade (unexplainable). So I settled with a modest switch. Switching the bg at set time intervals was also an idea I had, but I thought it might piss some people off, so I decided to play it safe lol

Anyhow, I am planning to make some changes here and there, but like you said; ‘it really depends what you want people to get out of it’ – true that, key words; free-time & will-power.

thanks for the reply