Portfolio

Facts
Name : John Long
Job : Web Designer / Slacker / Student / Etc.
Style : Simplistic
Websites Designed : 3
Money Earned : $0

Opinions on...
Images : I don't tend to use images because I can usually convey the same information they bring within javascript. Because I tend to try to keep my websites under 100kb, this also restricts my opportunities to experiment with them. To get an idea, my final entry for the 2007 JJC Web Design Competition was only 34 kb in size. Try doing that with images.
Javascript : I'm a programmer by nature, and with experience javascript has now felt like an extension of myself. Where most websites tend to be static in areas like links, I keep them dynamic so that I can change all the pages in a web site by editing one. It saves time, and people are amazed at the possibilities there are.
CSS : I've seen enough web sites to know to stick away from absolute positioning. The attribute seems to render different across browsers, and when you're dealing with Firefox, IE6, IE7, and Opera it's too much of a hassle to code different per site. I'm not opposed to using CSS, but I stick with relatively simple attribute handling.

Why?
Something new I'm trying to do is documenting the process of creating each web site I do. Maybe it's for the kiddos trying to get into web design and javascript, maybe it's for me. Either way, I'm not exactly sure why I want to do this page, but I figure it'll be fun to look back after each site's completion and view my process of thinking in implementation order.

This Site : In truth, I built the majority of this site on from midnight to three on a Friday night / Saturday morning. By the end of that period of time, the black & white scheme had already been thought of. Using hidden div elements to store data, I took their innerHTML and copied it to a visual div element handling overflows. The div elements hiding and showing from a command executed on a link click was what I coded this site around. Thinking about it, any site has a concept everything else is based around. This is mine. For future reference, I wrote the rest of the site the next day in about an hour.

Lost in Translation : There are always a few things I get ideas for I never code into the page. It may be a visual effect, a few extra pages, or something else entirely. In this case, I had thought of writing a five by five table in varying shades of gray that would change color from a recursive function. While entirely possible, I realized it would comprimise the simplicity of the site that I wanted.

Tips for the budding designer

Using WYSIWYG editors are fine... to a point. Look at the code, and you'll realize how inefficient they are. Myself, I use Adobe's Dreamweaver to get a basic table layout before some of my more complex designs, but I stay away from it's aligning tools because I don't like way of aligning elements. Different programs shine in different areas, and you need to learn sooner than later that no matter what you're going to have to edit some code. But with experience it becomes so much easier, to the point you never want to use visual editors again.
Hidden Content : Be careful how you code hidden content. Something I learned when coding this site is that often times when you display them the rest of the site messes up. Develop a strategy where to place your hidden elements and make sure you anticipate what they'll to the surrounding elements. If your navigation is pushed to the bottom of the screen, maybe you should code a little differently.
IFrames : I hate Iframes, as simple as that. It takes time to load content, where as I use hidden content to in a way emulate IFrames but load the content as fast as rendering allows. Of course, if you're pulling in content from the server, you may think that IFrames are neccessary. But with the rise of AJAX, they've now pretty much become absolete.

My Music

My most current piece - written for a high school final.
Theory Project - for a project in theory, I like the simplicity of it.
Longer - Not much information remembered.
Vibed - These last three pieces were written in a close time frame.
trio - Unfortunately, I've suffered writer's block on all of them, and can't seem to complete them.

Sim•pl	is•tic
Portfolio — Profile — Tips Making This — TimeFrame My Music

Web•d	esign