I'll start.
I considered not posting this, but thought it would be a good idea if only as an illustration of how important it is to bring developers into the design process.
Case in point: that god-awful preloader. It's a moderately interesting concept: as the site loads the jacket slowly opens. In execution, however, the keyword there is "slowly." With roughly 10MB to load, and the framerate of the animation tied to the load progress, even a 1.5MBs connection will look like crap. All this does is reinforce the perception of the load as occurring slowly.
And what are sexy preloaders if not tools to manipulate the perception of time?
Don't get me started on the deep linking. It still doesn't work. That's what you get when a producer (with no interactive experience, mind you) promises the client something requiring a change to the fundamental architecture of the site when the project is 75% complete.
It had the potential to be a great, engaging piece. All they needed to do was give the developers a chance to chime in before committing to a design. As it turned out, an inferior product was launched six weeks over schedule and substantially over budget.
:face slap:
This needs a complete rebuild, if you need someone who can fix the whole experience I am currently free and have messed with globes before, but I would have to insist on lots of changes so that it works well, currently it will not retain any of your clients users, well not any on a mac. My maya guy may need to look at the globe and he is off playing with crm for the next week or so I refused to help him with crms I told him I prefer to stick to flash. But feel free to contact me if you need a fixer, but I might be inclined to want to rebuild starting with something that is lean and works well and add fancy effects in later.
Ha! I washed my hands of this in July. Plus, I would never subject someone else to the nightmare that was that client. 
Producer: Hey, I know launch is not for another six weeks, but the client really wants to see a rough version.
Developers: Okay, but we only started a week ago. How soon do they want to see the rough?
Producer: Oh, you have plenty of time. Three days.
Developers: No way, Jose.
Producer: No, it's really important that they see a rough. They're breathing down my neck. Do whatever it takes - if it means just hacking something together, we can fix that later. Oh, and the rough needs to include the preloader, globe, navigation scheme, and all the transitions. Did I mention I have never managed an interactive project before? Fact!
Developers: Yeah, uh...
Producer: We gotta do this. They're breathing down my neck. And a little secret: I know we say we pay in 30 days, but we're actually going to wait three months. Hope that's okay!
Developers: Well, we have to stab you in the assneck. Hard.
:(
Sorry Baron, I think this is why so many of the actual people making the web want to be come farmers, were you doing the dev and design?
:(
It coulda been a contender.
Stinky feelings aside that works they will not loose customers.. maybe if you had had your way they would get more... but it does flow not always fast but it does.
I'm not even going to try to dig up some of the horrorshows I have happily accepted money for.
One of my favourites was one client who wanted some comps built out into web pages, and told me that he had fired his previous designer for trying to "fix" the designs, so I built it out exactly according to his (horrifying) comps. I got paid.
He's redesigned it since then, but it's still remarkable.
Okay, okay - here we go: Check out the latest version (it's not much worse than what he paid me to build out in an afternoon for beer money - shudder ) h o k e y s p o k e s dot com
I am reduced to fits of giggling just looking at it.
You boys feel better about yourselves yet?
Originally posted by: arigato
h o k e y s p o k e s dot com
bravo!
arigato for the win.
Originally posted by: arigato h o k e y s p o k e s dot com
The star background doesn't seem to be loading :confused:
Ha ha, just checking the source I see he had it rebuilt in frontpage.
Originally posted by: JLM Stinky feelings aside that works they will not loose customers.. maybe if you had had your way they would get more... but it does flow not always fast but it does.
Is that English? Not trying to pick on you but holy crap, I had to read that three or four times.
:( Sadly, but not entirely unexpectedly, the site itself has gone down.
Is it bad that i love that design MC?
Originally posted by: mclarkson :( Sadly, but not entirely unexpectedly, the site itself has gone down.
Thanks for the memories...