I like the "Go to Admin Panel" link at the bottom of the page
I had to have a little fun somewhere...
I'm a 16 year old HS student - Feedback on my first personal website?
21–28 of 28 posts
Re: I'm a 16 year old HS student - Feedback on my first personal website?
#22thomas jefferson high? i have many successful friends who went to that school!
this is a great first start. i agree with mcallan83. if there is a way to start mobile first then web, that's where i would head. i'm going through tons of trouble trying to now strip out all poorly coded responsive design into mobile friendly view then stripping out a lot then creating responsive design again. www.reppio.com (you can see that my web is in pretty good shape. and now spending bunch of money to make mobile looking good!!!
plus, the way you should think for the foreseeable future (chance is that you won't create a legit business over the next 3-4 years because you have a ton of other skills to learn). however, during those years it's going to be all mobile/tablet first for most industries and for most people.
another advice i can give you is not go to just one type of forum to seek advice (e.g. hacker news has a lot of "hackers." but there may be other types of people you want to hit up. diversity/asking people you'd never do business with or hang out with or really cared much about, you should learn design, customer psychology, all of these things by constantly asking for feedback from a variety of people. you'd be amazed at how many people at cafes to classmates will give you the 5 min you need to learn something new about how different people are in the way they think.
lastly, i would study up on design trends as much as i would study code. for example, flat design with color palattes and fonts that match with those colors and theme---> branding is really hard to get but very important. most people don't get it so better to start early because it'll help you in the way you design, the way you learn to tell your story and probably the way you structure the pages.
Re: I'm a 16 year old HS student - Feedback on my first personal website?
#23I'm also a 16 year old high school student! I'm working on a website right now and i'm going to start adding projects soon. Regarding your website, my main criticism is the animations/transitions when you click on each tab (the page moves so fast-maybe slow it down). Otherwise, I really like your design-it's smooth and really refreshing to look at. You might want to consider changing the fonts though.
This is irrelevant to your website, but I noticed that you're from TJHS. Did you go to MHacks? I saw a few kids from that high school over there. I also noticed that you're involved with Pilot. I really want to get a hackathon started up here in Detroit, so we should connect.
Re: I'm a 16 year old HS student - Feedback on my first personal website?
#24Re: I'm a 16 year old HS student - Feedback on my first personal website?
#25Engineering advice:
in your enterX() functions, consider calling another function that clears the text of the UL of dots in the top left corner
then have each enterX() function add the text of the currently selected page section, and maybe change the hollow circle to a filled circle. Breadcrumbs are usually a good design element.
You might also want to move them down to the middle of the left of the page. That's a design decision, entirely up to the design owner's discretion.
From a design perspective, it's not terrible. I'm not a fan of the supersaturated color trend, but, that's me. I can tell you that the last inch or so of the page has a jarring color change. Consider transitioning to a darker color in the section that is currently yellow/orange, or change the blues/greens in the bottom.
I agree with mcallan with the typography. Typography is a much harder part of design than most people give it credit for. It's one of the oldest forms of design, and people have very strong and unconscious expectations with regard to words-per-line, kerning (spacing between characters), and fontface matching. Read up on it if you have a few hours over the next few years. This is the main area your site needs work -- fewer words per row, and maybe a different main body font. The font choice is up to the design owner, though. Some people, like me, can spend hours choosing a font.
On a brief glance through your code, I notice the use of timers. I didn't really analyze why, so I could be mistaken here, but you could maybe use jQuery's promise/done functions as a matter of good engineering practice. Magic numbers are bad, and are a last resort. Monads are good. Learn them early on, learn callbacks early on, especially if you're doing web development. You'll jump through hoops that will make Java/C++ developers' noses bleed with frustration.
For all the feedback and criticism in there, it's actually a good site. That was some serious small detail talk above. Also, I'm going to start using the pallets = []; idea in a few places. Thanks, sir.
Re: I'm a 16 year old HS student - Feedback on my first personal website?
#26Engineering advice: in your enterX() functions, consider calling another function that clears the text of the UL of dots in the top left corner then have each enterX() function add the text of the currently selected page section, and maybe change the hollow circle to a filled circle. Breadcrumbs are usually a good design element. You might also want to move them down to the middle of the left of the page. That's a de…
Oh, a more advanced tweak that I've only seen on a couple pages would be to take your vertical sections (about, intro, blog, those) and give them their own horizontal scrolling sections with left and right arrows.
That could easily turn into a significant time investment (a day or two, if you're a motivated beginner with some knowledge), depending on your current skill level, but it amounts to a few very wide 's, and some jQuery to calculate scroll distances. It'll make your page easier to read, and more visually complex in a good way.
Re: I'm a 16 year old HS student - Feedback on my first personal website?
#27Engineering advice: in your enterX() functions, consider calling another function that clears the text of the UL of dots in the top left corner then have each enterX() function add the text of the currently selected page section, and maybe change the hollow circle to a filled circle. Breadcrumbs are usually a good design element. You might also want to move them down to the middle of the left of the page. That's a de…
ok, one last one. I'm sure you already know this, but, just in case you haven't heard yet.
When you're doing design of any kind, but seemingly especially in UI design, everyone has an opinion. Most of them are wrong.
Re: I'm a 16 year old HS student - Feedback on my first personal website?
#28I'm also a 16 year old high school student! I'm working on a website right now and i'm going to start adding projects soon. Regarding your website, my main criticism is the animations/transitions when you click on each tab (the page moves so fast-maybe slow it down). Otherwise, I really like your design-it's smooth and really refreshing to look at. You might want to consider changing the fonts though. This is irrelev…
There's a startup weekend coming up in Grand Rapids soon, and another in Kalamazoo sometime in the next few months.
http://grandrapids.startupweekend.org/
They're pretty intense weekends. The teams that did best at the one in Detroit were pretty heavily stacked with very experienced developers. If you want to find out more about what's going on in the community, check one out. They have weekend passes for teams, and spectator passes if you just want to check out the final results of 54 hours work.