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My New Personal Website

Posted: Wed Jun 16, 2010 6:19 pm
by Jonah Bron
Hello, world!

Just finished and uploaded the latest revision of my website. I think it's really cool. I had more fun on this one than any other website I've made :D . Attention to detail. That was one of my big goals.

The first thing to do, was to model/animate/render the logo (I know, it's awesome, right?) in Blender (2.5). Then I started working with some layout concepts. The one I ultimately chose was cool because it didn't require any home-page content. Plus, the visitor is blown away by the huge logo. The background needed something, so I put in the diagonal line pattern.

CSS and Javascript are seperated from the HTML entirely. There's not so much as an event to be seen in the main HTML document. There are two CSS files, one for the pages loaded with AJAX, and one for the normal document. Back buttons work. Also, I went to the extra effort, and made the site work without Javascript enabled. Try it out.

Mootools. This is the first time I've used a framework of any kind (for any language). Needless to say, I LOVE IT!!! It really sped up development time, and reduced the overall size of my code.

There's ashamedly not much PHP to speak of. There's an email form on the contact page, and a smidgen of syntax highlighting on the about page. That's about it. Sorry. :(

Speaking of the contact form, there's no captcha! I did a lot of research and found out how to circumvent most spam bots without one. I know this is all old news to you all, but I thought that was pretty cool. Plus, all of the inputs are interactively validated (and then re-validated by PHP). This is the first time I've done that, too.

The lists on the portfolio page and skillset pages are both populated by an XML file. That makes adding stuff easier for me, obviously.

Oh! One more thing: the blog page. It's not finished, but I did make it a little more interesting than the average "under construction" page.

I've learned a lot from this project. When I feel like it, I'll go through the CSS and optimize a bit; and give all definitions and styles a logical order.

What do you think?

P.S., click the center of the logo on the home page. A little treat for you.

Edit: forgot, here's the link, http://nucleussystems.com/

Re: My New Personal Website

Posted: Thu Jun 17, 2010 5:48 pm
by Jonah Bron
Hm. Just checked in IE8, and it doesn't like it. Haven't done it already because I don't switch over to Windows often. Looks like I've got a bit more work to do :(

The spinny atom doesn't work, the text boxes have white backgrounds (which doesn't play nicely with the white text :? ). Plus, I'm getting several Javascript errors.

Why can't IE just drop dead? :evil:

Edit: fixed textbox background, used transparent instead of inherit.
Edit: fixed spinny atom, was firing an event it wasn't supposed to.
Edit: all Javascript errors are ignorable.
Edit: just tested on Safari. Wow, the animations are so smooth. Everything displays nicely.

Re: My New Personal Website

Posted: Thu Jun 17, 2010 7:04 pm
by McInfo
I like it. Thumbs up. :D

Two things I would like to see:
  • on the home page, some kind of hover effect on the main links -- a color change maybe
  • on the sub-pages, styled scroll bar to integrate it better with the rest of the page
I'm using Firefox 3.6 on Windows.

Re: My New Personal Website

Posted: Thu Jun 17, 2010 8:06 pm
by Jonah Bron
McInfo wrote:
  • on the home page, some kind of hover effect on the main links -- a color change maybe
  • on the sub-pages, styled scroll bar to integrate it better with the rest of the page
Cool. Yeah, I'll have to do something with those links. Styled scrollbars completely slipped my mind, too. Thanks!

Re: My New Personal Website

Posted: Thu Jun 17, 2010 9:04 pm
by Jonah Bron
Both ideas done. But Firefox/Chromium/Safari don't support them styled scrollbars :(. I just might go with some Mootools scrollbars. :)

Re: My New Personal Website

Posted: Sat Jul 03, 2010 12:46 pm
by josh
I don't think putting programming jokes in the 'about' page is helpful to a client. In addition to saying you're only 16. I'm not saying it shows a lack of maturity, but there are some clients who may look at it that way.

Re: My New Personal Website

Posted: Sun Jul 04, 2010 9:09 pm
by Jonah Bron
You have a point. Looking at it, I wrote it more for fellow developers, not potential clients. Any clever ideas for incorporating both?

As to the subject of age, I was trying to put all my cards on the table, so to speak. If they don't want a sixteen year-old developer, I'd rather they say "no" now than later, agreed?

OpenID Landing Page

Posted: Sun Jul 04, 2010 9:18 pm
by Jonah Bron
Just ~completed my OpenID landing page. I've never seen a "universal feed" like I made on it, but I'm sure something like it is out there. Right now it only pulls in updates from Twitter, Sourceforge, Stackoverflow, and PHPDN. To get updates from PHPDN, I scrape the "user posts" page. To any mods starting to frown, don't panic: I cache the page. It's only update maximum every one hour. And that's only if anyone visits. Same with Stackoverflow and Sourceforge.

http://nucleussystems.com/jonahbron/

Still have some things to do on it, but it's pretty much finished. As always, Progressive Enhancement (is that supposed to be capitalized?) was kept in mind during development. Also, this is the first project in which I've used SVN. Pretty sweet. As time goes by I'll add aggregation for other stuff (like my blog).

Edit: forgot to mention. I don't actually think anybody would be that interested in what I'm doing, it's just a cool project, and I wanted to put something interesting on my landing page.

Re: My New Personal Website

Posted: Mon Jul 05, 2010 6:05 am
by VladSun
There are some problems viewing your contact form page with Opera (v10.10):
* I can't see what I'm typing
* I don't see any labels for the text input fields.

EDIT: I've just seen it in FF - you've put the labels as default values ... OK :)

Re: My New Personal Website

Posted: Mon Jul 05, 2010 11:32 am
by Jonah Bron
Sounds like Opera isn't realizing that the text boxes aren't supposed to have a white background. I'll look into it.
VladSun wrote:I've just seen it in FF - you've put the labels as default values ... OK :)
Not sure what you mean... is that good or bad?

Edit: fixed the opera textbox bug.

Re: My New Personal Website

Posted: Tue Jul 06, 2010 2:36 pm
by josh
Jonah Bron wrote:If they don't want a sixteen year-old developer, I'd rather they say "no" now than later, agreed?
I'm 22. I don't tell clients that. I let them think whatever. One time a guy wasn't signing up, kept saying I was young, didn't think I could handle it. I didn't entertain any of this, I didn't say "ok". or "youre right"... I said "sir, you need XYZ and have ABC solution, it costs $x. would you like it"? (changed the subject). Why should a client be asking how old you are? Put your cards on the table as far as your experience. You don't need to tell them what color underwear you're wearing though ;-)

Re: My New Personal Website

Posted: Tue Jul 06, 2010 4:27 pm
by Jonah Bron
Your argument seems valid. I'll have to take it up with my business consultant (my dad), and see what he thinks.

p.s. is that you in your avatar?

Cheers.

Re: My New Personal Website

Posted: Tue Jul 06, 2010 5:18 pm
by John Cartwright
Jonah Bron wrote:Your argument seems valid. I'll have to take it up with my business consultant (my dad), and see what he thinks.

p.s. is that you in your avatar?

Cheers.
I worked for my current employer (remotely) for several years before the topic of age came up (and he couldn't believe how young I was). In this day and age, with youth being exposed to technology at a much younger age than our predecessors, I would argue that as long as they are capable/qualified (and of legal age to work) then I would hold no bias towards them.

Re: My New Personal Website

Posted: Tue Jul 06, 2010 5:34 pm
by Jonah Bron
John Cartwright wrote:I worked for my current employer (remotely) for several years before the topic of age came up (and he couldn't believe how young I was). In this day and age, with youth being exposed to technology at a much younger age than our predecessors, I would argue that as long as they are capable/qualified (and of legal age to work) then I would hold no bias towards them.
Are you agreeing with josh or disagreeing?

Re: My New Personal Website

Posted: Tue Jul 06, 2010 5:35 pm
by John Cartwright
Jonah Bron wrote:
John Cartwright wrote:I worked for my current employer (remotely) for several years before the topic of age came up (and he couldn't believe how young I was). In this day and age, with youth being exposed to technology at a much younger age than our predecessors, I would argue that as long as they are capable/qualified (and of legal age to work) then I would hold no bias towards them.
Are you agreeing with josh or disagreeing?
I would agree with Josh, in the sense that there is no purpose advertising your age. Let your skills and experience speak for itself.