My Portfolio Site: Opinions?

[JP_N9]

I just put this portfolio site together for myself. It is still pretty bare, but I would love to get the input from the Elysiun crowd.

Thanks!

http://www.nuance9.com

BTW - Crits are very welcome.

[Fweeb (Jason van Gumster)]

1. It’s unfortunate that such a clean design is constrained to a 800px width. Since you’ve chosen horizontal menus, it might difficult (though certainly not impossible) to make it scale smaller (I like to shoot for a 600px target)… either way, you should allow it to scale larger for bigger browser windows.

2. The overall layout and navigation is very clean. Personally, I’d make a different graphic for your menu to indicate when you’re in that section of the site (and make it non-clickable). The php to automate that is pretty trivial.

3. I can’t wait to see more of what you have in your projects section.

4. Great article.

5. While it’s visually stimulating, that orange block at the bottom of the page doesn’t really do anything… so it’s kinda there just to stop the eye. From a design perspective, it might be a good idea to make more effective use of that space.

6. The code for your site is [impressively] quite clean. Did you hand-code or use something like Fireworks or Dreamweaver (I typically only see the table block of 1px spacers in generated code, that’s why I ask).

On the whole, most of my comments are nit-picky. Great site!

[JP_N9]

Fweeb -

Thanks for the comments. That is exactly the kind of stuff I am looking for.

1. It’s unfortunate that such a clean design is constrained to a 800px width. Since you’ve chosen horizontal menus, it might difficult (though certainly not impossible) to make it scale smaller (I like to shoot for a 600px target)… either way, you should allow it to scale larger for bigger browser windows.

Yeah, I guess 600px would be a little bit more friendly. Regarding the scaling larger, I just don’t think I have enough content. Plus I really hate when text gets much wider than I have mine set at. I try to keep the width of text blocks approximately the equivalent of a printed book. That seems to be most readable for me. I’m running at 1600x1200 and in my opinion a liquified version of this design would not scale well to that size. What do you think?

2. The overall layout and navigation is very clean. Personally, I’d make a different graphic for your menu to indicate when you’re in that section of the site (and make it non-clickable). The php to automate that is pretty trivial.

Ok. That is a good suggestion. Currently I had the little tab on the content area to denote the section, but a little re-inforcement up in the nav bar wouldn’t hurt. Plus, from a pure usability standpoint I should remove the home page link from the home page.

3. I can’t wait to see more of what you have in your projects section.

You and me both!

4. Great article.

Thanks. I hope to put a couple more up as soon as I get a chance.

5. While it’s visually stimulating, that orange block at the bottom of the page doesn’t really do anything… so it’s kinda there just to stop the eye. From a design perspective, it might be a good idea to make more effective use of that space.

Hmm. Any ideas? I am still considering adding some design elements into that area - but again they will not “do anything” from a function standpoint - although I think you were speaking more from a design standpoint.

6. The code for your site is [impressively] quite clean. Did you hand-code or use something like Fireworks or Dreamweaver (I typically only see the table block of 1px spacers in generated code, that’s why I ask).

Well to tell you the truth the code was generated by Adobe ImageReady.
My preferred workflow is to design in Photoshop, then add rollovers and generate initial code in ImageReady. ImageReady allows me suffecient control over how I want the code to be output. This makes development REAL fast. Then I can fire up an editor and begin refining / customizing as necessary.

On the whole, most of my comments are nit-picky. Great site!

Nah. They are good. Thanks. I will incorporate some of them as soon as I get a chance. Probably not till Friday though.

[MGK]

Why do you guys suggest building for 600 px ?
only like 2% of webtraffic has a resolution that low . if anything , make it for 600 pixels , but liqiud to expand and fill any resolution

[Fweeb (Jason van Gumster)]

Resolution isn’t everything… and not everyone browses with a maxmized window. Additionally, my suggestion was to target 600px as the minimum and allow it to scale for larger window widths.