Nother site crit request. thanks

just looking for opinions on design and coding etc.. the usual. this
is my personal portfolio site that i did under alot of time pressure.
thanks
www.johnnygolden.com

takmais (AT) yahoo (DOT) com wrote:

just looking for opinions on design and coding etc.. the usual. this
is my personal portfolio site that i did under alot of time pressure.
thanks
www.johnnygolden.com

Did you design this on a telephone?
http://users.bigpond.net.au/rf/screenshot/johnny.jpg

"best viewed in..." sreams out "amateur". Makes me wonder if you
intentionally exclude users of other browsers.

Putting your navigation in a flash object is just plain stupid. As you can
see your site is quite unusable for me and no, I'm not going to install
flash just to see your portfolio. You are trying to sell yourself to me,
not the other way round. Make it easy for *me*. Then again, perhaps all of
your work *is* flash. If so then tell me right up front so I can ignore
your site immediately :-)

Do you really think I would pay to download your resume? Of *course* it is
free. Stating the obvious is also amateruish IMHO.

--
Cheers
Richard.

takmais (AT) yahoo (DOT) com wrote:

just looking for opinions on design and coding etc.. the usual. this
is my personal portfolio site that i did under alot of time pressure.
thanks
www.johnnygolden.com

It doesn't fit in my browser window... could you make it a bit narrower?

Is it supposed to do anything in a browser without Flash? And
JavaScript?

--
-bts
-When motorcycling, never follow a pig truck

takmais (AT) yahoo (DOT) com wrote:

just looking for opinions on design and coding etc.. the usual. this
is my personal portfolio site that i did under alot of time pressure.
thanks
www.johnnygolden.com

How noble to prefer Firefox to IE, but alas _any_ "best viewed in" a

particular browser page also cries "...and badly written by someone who
has no clue about accessibility."

Why don't you display the resume in HTML as well as making available to
download? It is aggravating to have to download a resume before looking
at it. Trying to hide it from non-serious employers?

The pop up explanations of the portfolio links are far too small to read
on my monitor (a smallish 1280x1024). I'll bet you designed it on
either a very large monitor, or one with a lot less pixels.

Worse, there is no redundant navigation to cover for
flash/portfolio3.swf. Too bad for those without the flash plug in, for
they are also without any navigation at all.

To have only a mailto link for contact is a bad idea. I would back that
up with a contact form.

The colors used for the Golden Portfolio's graphics are decidedly orange
-- closer to the cheapest class ring 10K rose gold with a _lot_ of
copper in it. I think I'd pull them into the Gimp and shift the hue
back toward a rich 18K yellow. You might as well take advantage of that
name.
--
mbstevens
http://www.mbstevens.com/cgi/mkatt.p...ique_Generator

i'm sorta crying now.. but tears of joy.. tears of satisfaction. i
agree with the "best view in firefox and ie..." line being a bad idea
perhaps. if i went to the trouble of learning how to do css hacks for
IE i should be able to hack it to wokr in a few others as well.

also, perhaps i should have some sort of javascript or flash detection
set up so that you poor saps(or should i say, potential employers
can view my money making work...maybe soemthing that directs to a pure
html page. just out of curiosity, why wouldnt somenoe who obviously
has some higher understanding of the internet and how it works and goes
through the trouble of downloading firefox, not also download two
technologies that are becoming more and more widely used like
javascript and flash? this is nto me jumping your shit i promice. i
did ask for the critique. i'm just curious. i do web work all day and
i'm constantly looking at other people websites for inspiration or just
for fun. and even though i dislike the spash page, i do like to be
able to see what the designers intent was. anyway, just my 2 cents..
i'm working on the popups for the portfolio. i'm sorta learning flash
right now and i know what the main problem is.. and i will work on a
contact form as well. i agree that it looks more professional that
way. as far as the resume goes.. i do have an html version that opens
a browser window. or at least thats how it works on mine. maybe it
makes you download it.. i'll look into it. couple things i dont think
i want to change.. i HATE 18k gold.. thats too much bling for me.
give me 10k class ring anyway.. infact, i do have a 10k class ring!
and concerning the width of the site. well what can i say. maybe its
a phase but i really like narrow designs. i have sites in my portfolio
that stretch to fit most of a large screen but for me, i think i'll
stick with narrow for the time being. thanks for everybodys input.
some of it was quite neeeded

takmais (AT) yahoo (DOT) com wrote:

just out of curiosity, why wouldnt somenoe who obviously
has some higher understanding of the internet and how it works and goes
through the trouble of downloading firefox, not also download two
technologies that are becoming more and more widely used like
javascript and flash?

The vast majority of sites that use flash use it in a gratuitous and IMHO
incorrect mannar. Lots of jumping moving whirling stuff.

I visit a web site to read the content, not be entertained by something I
wouldn't even pay for if I went to the movies :-)

FWIW I did fire up a flash enabled browser just to check on the above.
Yours isn't too bad. Just a bit of a logo flying in.

However, flash is not required for this. The viewer does not *need* to see
that flying in text. What the viewer *needs* to see is your logo.

Same for the navigation. The viewer *must* have access to the navigation or
the site is useless. It is not the flash that is required, it is the
navigation.

Javascript is similar. Most javascript is simply for eye candy and is not
required. If javascript *is* required then the page is broken for many
users.

I don't turn javascript off. I *do* turn off those bits of it that annoy
me, popups, resizing my browser window. I even turn bits of HTML off, I
have a minimum font size specified

--
Cheers
Richard.

takmais (AT) yahoo (DOT) com wrote:

.... if i went to the trouble of learning how to do css hacks for
IE i should be able to hack it to wokr in a few others as well.

I checked a book out of the library recently by the same title --
"CSS Hacks." It made my skin crawl! You should be able to write a
page that is usable in all browsers in _standard_ CSS, without resorting
to any hack except perhaps the old "ahem" trick.

also, perhaps i should have some sort of javascript or flash detection
set up so that you poor saps(or should i say, potential employers
can view my money making work...maybe soemthing that directs to a pure
html page.

Ever consider a plain old link???

just out of curiosity, why wouldnt somenoe who obviously
has some higher understanding of the internet and how it works

Well, that rules out most potential employers!

and goes
through the trouble of downloading firefox, not also download two
technologies that are becoming more and more widely used like
javascript and flash?

Many advanced people surf with javascript, java, and flash turned off
because they find them irritating or dangerous. They have them, they
just don't use them.

i'm working on the popups for the portfolio.

Even more accessibility problems! Pop ups break the back button, and
are hard to use on many devices and browsers.

a phase but i really like narrow designs.

That doesn't mean some of your text has to be too small to read.

You're really wasting your time with all this flashy, java-scripty,
animated hoopla. Use that excess energy learning server side
programming and valid strict (X)HTML.
--
http://www.mbstevens.com/howtothumb

In message <1129862839.217420.114900 (AT) g44g2000cwa (DOT) googlegroups.com>,
takmais (AT) yahoo (DOT) com writes

just looking for opinions on design and coding etc.. the usual. this
is my personal portfolio site that i did under alot of time pressure.
thanks
www.johnnygolden.com

Just one or two observations as other people have raised most of the

important points:

Not a good experience.

The text was so small that I had to tell IE to override your font size.
In Opera I had to zoom the text to 150% just to be able to read it.

Don't use px in font sizes as you have no idea what the user's viewing
circumstances are. Learn about % (percentage) for font size definition
-- where 100% is the users preferred size.

Flash is OK. But for essential elements of a page (like a menu) you need
to provide an alternative, non-flash equivalent.

On your resume (which I guess was generated by MS Word) you need to edit
the HTML and get some headings (H1, H2, etc.) and some lists (ul, ol,
etc.) into the page.

I took a look at 2 or 3 of the portfolio examples; none of them
validated.

I would have liked to have seen bigger thumbnail images. Note also that
some of the thumbnails obscure the dynamic text descriptions.

Suggestion:
Do a lot more testing with different browsers and with various viewing
options set so that you can be sure that your page works under most (if
not all) viewing conditions.

Regards.

--
Jake (jake (AT) gododdin (DOT) demon.co.uk -- just a 'spam trap' mail address)

thanks again guys, you all bring up very good points.. mainly
concerning the accesability of a flash navigation. i agree. this is a
portfolio site.. its only function is to display my portfolio to the
widest audience of people and i'm just throwing in variables into this
equation that might not balance out for some people.. (perhaps not the
best analogy..)

also the use of fixed font will be addressed. perhaps after this
weekend is over i'll post again with a highly accesable (yet very
similar looking website..

to address the issue of using dynamic technologies for the sake of
animation and "bling" as i'll call it.. I see absolutly nothing wrong
with this. i understand that content is king on the internet. it was
not originally created to be an entertainment thing. However, LOTS of
people use flash and javascript for this very reason and LOTS of
clients will want some form of animation on their site be it a rotating
logo or an all out (and super cheesy/uneccessary, splash page). And i
think that when one is marketing themselves as a designer capable of
doing flash work it is not a bad idea to display some of this on ones
own portfolio site. I can see this easily going overboard however and
i can picture many many badly done "rotating logo" headers etc. but i'd
like to think (and i think one of you agreed) that mine is not TOOOOO
offensive i like the subtle use of animation to "thicken" an
otherwise flat site. at the same time, i understand that its probably
bad practice to rely on the macromedia (bag of tricks) to compensate
for a "flat" site.

and the sites that dont validate in the portfolio. well all i can say
is that they validated when i was finished cutting them up. Most of
them are eCommerce/CMS websites. alot of their content and
functionality is dynamic and totally beyond my comprehension. if you
look a the source for say, one of the balfour sites, most of what you
see has been dynamicly loaded into the page and i think there are
probably alot of debricated tags being used. I dont like it either.
i'm really not sure how i can explain to potential clients that i only
did the design, layout and markup for these sites but i'm not the one
who makes them funciton (these were done when i worked for a web design
company with a developer)

thanks again for everybody's input. i am defiant but open to all
suggestion (perhaps thats just the egotistic designer in me) and i
will take these into consideration this weekend when i work on the
site.

j

takmais (AT) yahoo (DOT) com wrote:

to address the issue of using dynamic technologies for the sake of
animation and "bling" as i'll call it.. I see absolutly nothing wrong
with this. i understand that content is king on the internet.

You miss the point. Here it is, as lucidly as I can possibly put it:

Content must *always* be available. Bling isn't always available. If you
place Content in Bling then it won't always be available.


Example: Flash navigation menus.

Navigation must *always* be available. Flash isn't always available. If
you place the Navigation in Flash then it won't always be available.

--
Ben M.