Square Enix Redesigns Site

Posted on Monday 18th April 2005 at 01:20 by Phoenix

Square Enix released a new design for its company website at www.square-enix.com on Friday, April 15.

The new site combines all of Square Enix's previous sites (for North America, Europe, and Japan) into a single domain name, and incorporates a sleek new flash design to improve continuity among each language's section of the site.

Posted in: Square-Enix News

Written by	Phoenix
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	News articles posted: 22
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Comments

Racthoh	Comment 1: 2005-04-18 03:19
	Odd... Clicked on the Advent Childern link to see what they have: Downloads (Coming soon) News (Coming soon) Trailers (Coming soon) Characters (Coming soon) Story (Coming soon) All you can do is watch on trailer (which isn't from the trailer button oddly enough). Why would the company put up this page without having anything relevant on the Advent Children page? Edit: Also annoying... even though I click on "North America", a window pops up asking me to install a language package. Odd, I can understand everything on the site just fine...
Tiddles	Comment 2: 2005-04-18 18:22
	There's nothing sleek about entirely Flash-based sites, in my humble opinion, particularly if there's no visible HTML alternative. Tiddles votes: thumbs down.
Glenn Magus Harvey	Comment 3: 2005-04-18 21:25
	I agree with Tiddles. I've seen sites all over the place put up by various companies (this ranges from www.Lays.com to www.Pokemon.com to www.Metroid.com to www.donkeykongcountry.com) which consist purely of this one flash screen, with flashy (no pun intended) transfer sequences and nasty load times and no way to open links in new windows and absolutely no way for me to find out where links to external (i.e. in new windows) websites go until I click on them and no way to save graphics other than screenshots and no way to bookmark an important part of it for later use or for someone else and .... . Seriously, I prefer HTML over flash, unless it's like absolutely necessary (such as www.homestarrunner.com). ... And now that I've actually seen the site, it's not too bad, although I haven't had the desire to find a particular something on the site (which usually leads me to complaints about various flash sites). However, I did find this: Quote (Square-Enix website Terms of Use) You may not "deep link" or link to any other pages of this Site except the introductory page. ...@#$%.
Racthoh	Comment 4: 2005-04-19 03:51
	According to my web technologies teacher at my college, something like 60% of the world has dial-up internet access (apparently). These fancy flashsites aren't any good to the majority of the world who aren't going to sit around waiting. I think it even says on the new site high bandwidth recommended when it's loading.
Phoenix	Comment 5: 2005-04-19 06:56
	Quote (Tiddles @ 19th April 2005 04:22) There's nothing sleek about entirely Flash-based sites, in my humble opinion, particularly if there's no visible HTML alternative. Tiddles votes: thumbs down. Sleek, at least then, in comparison with their old kludge of flash sites.
The_Pink_Nu1	Comment 6: 2005-04-19 12:33
	You don't see the sleek in Flash-based sites on the Web, because 95% of those sites are done incorrectly. Now, if one was to employ all of Flash's capabilities, not only would you be able to access the back and forward buttons on your browser, see a custom right-click menu, load graphics faster than any HTML page could (thank you .swf file) and bookmark any page you want, but you would get the tremendous capabilities that will always accompany Flash. There are good, solid Flash sites out there that push Flash's versatility to the edge, and plenty of great hybrid sites too (Macromedia's own site is a good example). Remember, it isn't Flash's fault a site sucks. No matter what, it's the designer's fault. Square Enix already suffers like other improperly produced Flash-only sites. The layout isn't done very well, they tried to contain it all in one little interface (I never understood why Flash designers did that either), and...for some strange reason, there is no mouseover effect on any of the links. They also got ahead of themselves, seeing as you can't log in yet.
Tiddles	Comment 7: 2005-04-19 18:47
	The use of Flash on Macromedia's site seems quite token. It's a rather nasty mishmash of HTML and Flash-made-to-look-like-HTML in places, and right-clicking on any Flash based area still only gives me the standard Settings... \| About Flash Player context menu. What if I want to copy link location? What if I want to select, copy and paste? Oops. The Flash-based pages also have a noticable load time on my 2Mbit connection, which is a shame for something that looks like it could easily have been done in HTML, especially as a large portion of the site already is. And that's a relatively well done Flash site. I don't really want this to become an argument over Flash vs. HTML (though I'd participate in another thread) but I remain entirely unconvinced over its operational benefits as a core Web technology, except in special cases such as the excellent Homestar Runner. With stock corporate sites like Square Enix's being the most common example, it's hardly surprising that Flash gets itself associated with long load times and poor quality. I think it would be perfectly on-topic to post some examples of how Square Enix could have done better, whether in Flash, HTML, Java (cringe) or whatever. Anyone know of any game developers'/publishers' sites out there that are really good?
The_Pink_Nu1	Comment 8: 2005-04-19 23:38
	As I pointed out, it's the designer's fault. Flash is an excellent tool if used properly. Unfortunately, it is designer's like Square-enix that give it a bad name. On the other side of the spectrum: http://www.fantasy-interactive.com Nearly every page in that site is 5k, browser functionality is perfect, the right-click menu is custom, you can select and copy text, etc. etc. When I was on 56k the videos on that site loaded - astoundingly - perfectly quick. Try streaming video like that in HTML. Of course, I wasn't fond of the navigation; they tossed the dice with it. In the end it accomplishes the intent of the site very well: showcasing a portfolio. Plus, if you know even the more basic workings of Flash, that site is amazing. I've explored the Square-enix site a bit more, and saw that most of the site simply directed you to basic HTML pages (...some of which also don't function properly, I might add). The Flash startup screen is silly.
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