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Critique my portfolio design

Discussion in 'Design' started by KewL, Jan 20, 2014.

  1. #1
    Hey guys, this is most most recent web design, I was hoping you guys could critique it for me. Try and look at the design of the portfolio and not so much the work inside it.

    http://robbyk.com

    It's responsive, it's been tested on chrome and safari. If you have IE, i'd appreciate it if you could tell me if it works and send a shot of any bugs (I'm on a macbook).

    Thanks!
     
    KewL, Jan 20, 2014 IP
  2. turdi

    turdi Member

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    #2
    Hi,

    It's nice, clean and simple!

    We spotted some things though:
    1. Too much color in our opinion, it confuses the eye. You should think about changing the green buttons to other color.
    2. The contact button stands out to much. When you come to your site, you first see the button, not the logo. I think it should be the other way around.
    3. You're using modern Long Shadow and, in my personal opinion, the roundness of the buttons is too much. I get a feeling of mixed generations. I don't know if I make my self clear with this one, but I'm really trying :)

    Hope it helps, I tryed my best to give my constructive opinion and critique.

    Good luck!
     
    turdi, Jan 20, 2014 IP
  3. KewL

    KewL Well-Known Member

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    #3
    Hey Turdi, thanks for the feedback!

    1. Hmm, the idea was that each background would be different to suite the specific project. Maybe it's overkill, what do you think about maybe having it black and white, or low opacity until hover? This makes it difficult on mobil phones though :/

    2. Hmm I get mixed feedback on this one. Originally it was just black text with a black mail icon. I wish i had a picture of before to show you side by side.

    3. Nah don't worry I understand, I'll play around with the buttons. I haven't designed in quite a few years, I think I'm still stuck in the older days where everything was rounded and smooth with gradients haha
     
    KewL, Jan 20, 2014 IP
  4. turdi

    turdi Member

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    #4
    I don't see the problem in the backgrounds, it's commonly used these these, this type of layout. The button colors I don't like.

    The backgrounds are quite nice actually.
     
    turdi, Jan 20, 2014 IP
  5. deathshadow

    deathshadow Acclaimed Member

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    #5
    Your 'responsive' design is pretty broken here, not switching when/where it needs to switch in ANY browser under windows. This can be attributes to several things -- first and foremost a lack of testing because you're tying your hands behind your back on a quackintosh. If you are going to do this stuff seriously, do yourself a huge favor, install bootcamp so you can use a REAL operating system... or at the very least install VirtualBox (free) or Parallels Fusion so you can at the very least run Windows in a VM.

    Other problems include line breaks doing padding's job between paragraphs, 100% width and height on elements where that's causing MAJOR problems, HTML 5 for nothing (NOT a fan), dicking around trying to make media queries work in legacy browsers with some garbage media query junk instead of letting graceful degradation do it's job (since anyone using IE8/lower probably doesn't need anything your media queries do anyways), buggy/broken fixed height backgrounds that make the text hard to read in a few spots and don't dynamically adjust (much less the massive waste of bandwidth associated with them), gibberish use of numbered headings (since I doubt "about me" is a subsection of "Legit tutorials -- that's a what a H3 after a H2 means!), broken/incomplete form, div for nothing around the form, div for nothing around multiple div, div for nothing around images, and a rather nasty plethora of DIV for nothing.

    You should probably also read up on how to use meta[keywords] -- 7 to eight WORDS that exist inside BODY you want to uprank for. Yours is redundant to itself, and irrelevant to the page. Should probably also mention the broken viewport meta that disables zooming on mobile. I don't know who out there is encouraging setting maximum-scale=1, but they need a quadruple helping of sierra tango foxtrot uniform. Might also help if you used a ICON format instead of a PNG since browser support for image/png is hit or miss. (mostly miss, even in browsers that allegedly support it)

    ... and of course the scripttard bull for nothing, since there isn't anything on that page warranting the presence of javascript, much less fat bloated idiotic halfwit garbage like jQuery. (also not a fan!)

    In addition to the incomplete form, it has accessibility issues thanks to the false simplicity garbage of placeholder... see:
    http://baymard.com/blog/false-simplicity
    http://www.pardot.com/faqs/best-practices/placeholders-and-labels/
    http://www.webaxe.org/placeholder-attribute-is-not-a-label/
    http://www.456bereastreet.com/archi...te_is_not_a_substitute_for_the_label_element/

    ... and of course you've got ajaxtard bull pissing all over that forms usefulness as well since it has ZERO graceful degradation for if scripting is blocked or unavailable. Remember the unwritten rule of adding javascript to a website -- if you can't make it work without scripting FIRST, you have no business adding scripting to it!

    ... and really the contact being the most important thing you want users to do, rather than the goofy scroll, put the contact form at the TOP. Likewise the "about" text should probably be up top so that there's something meaningful to tell people where they are BEFORE you start prattling off sites you've worked on.

    Pretty much there are design issues related to a lack of proper testing and methodology, anywhere from a quarter to a third of the markup belongs in the trash, as does ALL of the "scripting for nothing" garbage that's just making the page inaccessible and bloated.
     
    deathshadow, Jan 20, 2014 IP
  6. KewL

    KewL Well-Known Member

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    #6
    Thanks... I think I was able to pick out a few important things underneath the bitterness and negativity. Hope things get better for you.
     
    KewL, Jan 21, 2014 IP
  7. deathshadow

    deathshadow Acclaimed Member

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    #7
    Wow, you thought that was bitterness and negativity? Christmas on a cracker what's wrong with people these days?!?
     
    deathshadow, Jan 21, 2014 IP
  8. KewL

    KewL Well-Known Member

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    #8
    That's how it sounded to me, yeah... I don't know why you think I'm some mac fanboy. All i have is this old macbook that will probably die soon. The hdd is fucked up, I'm not able to partition it. My site works fine on the latest IE and Chrome browser though windows. Anyways, I tried to fix a few of the problems you mentioned...

    1. I changed the icon, to .ico format.
    2. I changed the about me/contact me headings to h2 rather than h3 (thanks i've been confused for a while when/where to use what headings).
    3. I removed the extra div around the form.
    4. I used padding between paragraphs, rather than the previous line break.

    I'm gonna work on my meta keywords and read up on the placeholder problems.

    I disabled zoom on phones/tablets for a reason. Previously all the images were 200% of what they are now, and were displayed at 50% of their original size (that way it'd look crisp and nice on zoom). The load speeds were incredibly slow though, I had to choose between one or the other. I don't see the point of enabling it so they can see pixelated images. The text is big enough to read for most people.

    As far as your hatred towards my contact form, do you have any suggestions for a better same page contact form? I don't write php/javascript, so I'll need a pre-made one available online.
     
    KewL, Jan 21, 2014 IP
  9. mosalami

    mosalami Greenhorn

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    #9
    deathshadow i think u were too forgiving if anything. i dunno who this guy is asking for a critique and when u give it to him straight he bitches and complains that u didnt give him a good critique. its amazing what ppl think they can get away with in design. i think u were on point with all your points and the gratitude u get for putting in such a detailed response trying to help the guy is he calling u bitter and negative. well at least he went through great lengths to change the favicon and configure the h2 h3 headings properly. nevermind all the useless scripting (which he has no business implementing in the first place since he clearly states he doesnt know wtf hes doing) but thats fine because now we got a favicon in the browser tab. dont waste anymore time on this design reject.
     
    mosalami, Feb 4, 2014 IP