Dungeon Master Forum

OK, after a few more tweaks (and backtracks!) I have my final design:

http://www.friskdesign.com/2008/olivefinal.html

Odd, the left side slides off the screen for me

However, I have just upgraded firefox and not restarted yet - have a radio player still going

Yeah, it will do, the balance isn't optimised in this flat image. It'll work correctly when converted to HTML. (I assume you mean the feathery logo is getting cut off?)

All the text too!

What size screen do you have and do you run your browser maximised? The design is a fixed width targetting 1024x768 displays and higher.

Must be the firefox update - screen at work runs in a higher resolution that the laptop at home, and laptop can see the screen fine

Willl restart firefox at some point and confirm it's ok at work too tomorrow!

Ha hahahahahahha -- so much for saying final! Came back to it after a few hours and could only see that olive colour as pretty sickly!

*THIS* is final:

http://www.friskdesign.com/2008/blue.html

Oh that's cool, I kinda liked the dark blue one better anyway .

Lookin' good!

I'm curious.

I am accustomed to having many windows
open on my desktop. They are generally
much smaller than my screen so that I can
see several at the same time.

When I view your work, I can only see part
of the page ... a very common occurance.
The same happens when I look at the
Dungeon-Master Forum. I usually can
adjust the horizontal slider to see the part
of the page that is important to me. I
adjust the forum to see the text and I
ignore the left side showing the pretty
pictures of the folks doing the writing. BUT!
When I want to see the pictures, I can. By
using the horizontal slider.

Your page has no such slider. It does display
a vertical slider. If my window
is too small then it becomes totally impossible
to see the rest of the page. Is this a feature?

Firefox version 3.0
Opera version 9.25

These are just flat JPEG images forced to a fixed size, but centered in the viewport. No horizontal slider appears because they are 'background' images -- that is, they take up no 'real' space on the page; as you decrease your browser window it simply obscures the parts of the image that fall 'outside' the window.

Once this is coded as a webpage, scroll bars will work normally.

I am accustomed to having many windows
open on my desktop. They are generally
much smaller than my screen so that I can
see several at the same time.

I'd heard of people who do that, but never actually spoken to anyone who works that way... It explains why you're lines are so short.

Personally, I maximise whatever I'm working on to full screen. If I need to see a few things at once, I use multiple monitors...

I work that way to, for example cross-checking parts on a website with a parts list. My desk is not large enough for multiple monitors

This is why I hate excel - you cannot have multiple documents open. If there is a way to have multiple copies of excel running so i can compare wone spreadsheet with another, please do yell!

I also at home sometimes browse the net with a DVD running, or alternatively am working on a notepad/word document - with the little space at the bottom right useful for intermediate notes, folders, etc

beowuuf wrote:If there is a way to have multiple copies of excel running so i can compare wone spreadsheet with another, please do yell!

What version? It's easy in Excel 2003 -- just open two docs and minmise them*, they will tile and then you can drag each around in the excel workspace. Not perfect, but usable.

*Using the small minimise icon top right, just below the MAIN APPLICATION minimise icon.

This is why I hate excel - you cannot have multiple documents open

Me, too. That's why I switched to
Open Office. Better for me. And
certainly cheaper.

Is this off-topic? Sorry.

So... I left the design for a while and when I came back to it with fresh eyes, I realised that it simply wasn't good enough. It was fine but not special.

I wanted to make it a bit more visually interesting and also to have more of an impact. I started messing around with the header to jazz it up a bit and after an hour or so I came up with something that looked pretty funky. And then I realised that it looked like the sea...

... so I ran with it and changed the design to work around that theme. It seems a appropriate for the word frisk somehow: a frisky, playful ocean, fresh, blue, clean....

Here's what I've got. Again, these are large JPEGs which will take a while to load and are not usable web pages. They simply show the design/layout.

I'm really happy with this now and won't be changing it again. Time to start coding it all up now!

http://www.friskdesign.com/2008/homepage.html
http://www.friskdesign.com/2008/folio.html
http://www.friskdesign.com/2008/blog.html

Note that the homepage has a slightly different background -- this will be copied to all pages when I build the site, couldn't be arsed to change it in the other files!

The shifting blue definitely allows any examples/graphis stand out without crowding them, while the ocean theme and the shifting blues is soothing but interesting

I like it!

My only comment, or question. would be can you retcon any water/ocean link into your tag line, etc to justify it's existence? It seems a little random perhaps?

Wow man. THAT is a 'sticky' web site (sticks in your mind, stands out from the rest). I like that a lot, and don't have problems reading the text or anything.

If you get dynamic content for a page, you'd check if the text goes too far down through the sea bed?... Or is that like a footer and you have a stretchy sea blue background?

Wooo, that's very cool . I only looked at the first page because the other two didn't seem to want to load but what I saw looked really cool...made me go "Wooo..." anyway .

beowuuf wrote:The shifting blue definitely allows any examples/graphics stand out without crowding them, while the ocean theme and the shifting blues is soothing but interesting I like it!

ian_scho wrote:Wow man. THAT is a 'sticky' web site (sticks in your mind, stands out from the rest). I like that a lot, and don't have problems reading the text or anything.

Thanks!

beowuuf wrote:My only comment, or question. would be can you retcon any water/ocean link into your tag line, etc to justify it's existence? It seems a little random perhaps?

A billion portfolios have themes totally unrelated to what they produce. It's just something to add interest. It could have just as easily been potatoes.

ian_scho wrote:If you get dynamic content for a page, you'd check if the text goes too far down through the sea bed?... Or is that like a footer and you have a stretchy sea blue background?

The whole site is dynamic. Only the top and bottom are special, the central part remains a solid blue, no matter how much content is in there, and the footer always is pushed to the bottom.

Very nice work!
The effort put into it shows, I like it.
It is fresh(=has modern looks/ bubble icon) and I think you did very well with the shiny surface spray and the little details, which add the "playful element"
Now, good luck coding up this baby!

Here's are the final templates coded up into HTML. Not a working website yet, but you can see it progressing with these layouts. I've tweaked the design a bit too:

http://www.friskdesign.com/2008/final/index.html
http://www.friskdesign.com/2008/final/blog-list.html
http://www.friskdesign.com/2008/final/blog.html
http://www.friskdesign.com/2008/final/folio.html

None of the links work yet. It would be good to know if any of you have any problems viewing these.

It still looks cool, Gammy - easy to read and everything .






(Although I would be tempted to graffiti it by putting a little speech bubble above the clownfish in the bottom corner saying "Have you seen my son, Nemo?"
<ducks>

Woo hoo -- I've done it! The site is finally online! Yay.

I'll be adding more portfolio stuff and new blog entries over time. Check back regularly if you're interested in my ramblings about web development.

http://www.friskdesign.com/

Congrats man, it looks really good. I like your folio of the simple/concise web sites that you've produced. Having the HSBC one under your belt makes you look serious indeed. I still can't get over the fact that you've managed to get the sea bottom on your web site, yet the whole thing doesn't look cluttered or gimmicky at all.

Your 'contacts' form has all obligatory fields, but the text associated with it indicates that there may be optional fields as well.

Personally I'd have released your site in step-wise form, one page at a time. I suspect mentally there was a barrier (called 'perfectionism') to you for finally releasing it. Now you'll wake up in a cold sweat tomorrow morning thinking it's all wrong again!

ian_scho wrote:Now you'll wake up in a cold sweat tomorrow morning thinking it's all wrong again!

Ain't that the truth! Just going through it again now and I'm wondering if I should have made it more 'serious' looking? This is the first time I've done something a bit more playful and it's unusual for me and I wonder if I've not hit the right mark? Oh well, time will tell!

ian_scho wrote:Personally I'd have released your site in step-wise form, one page at a time. I suspect mentally there was a barrier (called 'perfectionism') to you for finally releasing it.

This is a good approach for larger more complex sites, but for my own portfolio simply would have made me look a bit unprofessional. Anyway, it'll never be 'finished' as I'll always be adding new content. Good websites are never finished.

Thanks for the kind words.

Wondered when your site would be on stage. The faster one is present the better it is, I'd say...
Time to let the river take care of the boat, enough paddling, on to steering!
how do you "advertise" your web presence? How do you make yourself known to the world?
i mean the bread and butter of all this is that you need many people to visit your site, be aware
of your service and contact you. I would not tweak the site over
and over again - it is definitely good enough I'd say, instead put your main effort into spreading word somehow.
Just a thought that popped into my head;it is not bad of course to have it change on a regular basis, keeps it fresh for people that visit.
Have I mentioned the 80% 20% rule ? I think I have.
Stick to it!

The faster one is present the better it is

I don't understand what you mean.

I will keep it up to date with new portfolio entries (lots more work to put on there) and new blog entries. A website that doesn't keep it's content fresh simply dies.

There are thousands of ways to promote the site but I couldn't pursue any of them until now because my old site wasn't good enough. You can be sure that I will now be following up on those options

What's there is there, what isn't isn't.
My reasoning was it is better to be available early;
yet this can be contraproductive when the site is not good enough!
Now you have a good basis to work on.
Wish you luck!

Hey, check out the homepage, I submitted the site yesterday:

http://cssmania.com/

...and I'm 'loved' already!