Final synthesiser and a review

I've finally finished my visual synthesiser, Temporal Paint. I have uploaded it on this page here: http://taraxanoid.deviantart.com/art/Temporal-Paint-140537874

Today I've decided to review a video site I have just been introduced to: Vimeo (http://vimeo.com/).

Vimeo is, to put it frankly, a javascript-heavy site. The side animations function purely on javascript (quite like actionscript but usable by browsers). But turning off javascript barely hinders the design at all and still keeps most of the clean, illustrative scenery around and at the bottom of the page. This clean imagery continues on and into the GUI of the site. There are large "Join Vimeo" and "Sign up for Vimeo" links, and large, friendly Welcome text detailing the site's features if you're not logged in.

In terms of navigation, Vimeo has some of the nicest-looking drop-down navigations around. Everything flows very well and the rounded-rectangle aesthetic continues into the Flash videos themselves. The videos have very nice, clean blue and black buttons for "liking", "sharing" and of course, playing. The play/pause button is quite large (in contrast to some video sites like youtube where the play/pause button is small but aligned in height with the time slider). In fact, its one of the better Flash video interfaces I've seen. Everything just works and doesn't get in the way of video content.

When searching for videos, Vimeo takes a bit of a step back. In a lot of video sites nowadays (YouTube and DailyMotion come to mind), videos can sort of be "previewed" before actually following a link to them. By hovering over the thumbnail of the video, a few frames will be presented to the user from different points of the video, showing the user a summarised view. Vimeo simply does not have this feature at all (though it might be understandable due to Vimeo's HQ/HD-heavy video content.