Feedback on my portfolio

billysielu said:
You could do a lot worse Sam. Your code is tidy, your design has good alignment and repetition. Your design is small because you don't have much content - that's perfectly fine. I would change the white background, see this for inspiration http://twd.trenchwars.org.

You could improve now by thinking about tasks. If I'm your visitor - what am I visiting your site for, what do I want to do?

This is what I did:

- land at site
- hover over icon at the top to see what it was
- found out it said toggle animation
- clicked it anyway
- animation stopped
- clicked it again
- animation didnt restart
- hovered over the other icons because I couldnt tell what they were
- didn't want to click them
- couldn't be bothered to read the small text
- rollovers are nice
- didn't want to read your blog
- didn't want to see development
- clicked photography
- really like the photo scrolling thing, would be better if the header was shallower
- dont know how to get to other pages or home page from here
- closed browser

I've also just noticed your CV is a word document. You should either:
1. Markup as HTML page
2. Use PDF and make it clear it's a download, with an indiciation of size, and link to PDF reader
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Amazing reply, will really help deciding what I need to change. As I said before, having a few problems with canvas in Firefox but will get that fixed. Thinking I might replace the small text with some super large quote (like in the links pieplough linked) and move the 'about' section to a new page completely.

Your idea of converting the CV into HTML is a very good one, and I might have to add some more information about the icons for people who don't recognise them initially.

You said you didn't know how to get back to the home page from the photo page, is the home icon on the header not visible enough?

@pieplough - thanks for the links, those sites definitely do have that 'something'. Unfortunately, those sites are made by professional designers so I have no hope of making something like that :).
 
billysielu said:
I guess not :)

There's no substitute for seeing what people actually do when they use your site.
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That's so true :). Big thanks.

Stuff I need to work on:

  • Fix bug with background not flowing to bottom of screen (footer problem) [FIXED]
  • Fix canvas functionality in FireFox (possibly Doctype error) [FIXED]
  • Remove 3rd person text, replace with something eye catching and very readable.
  • Make icon functionality more obvious (possibly add better tooltip?)
  • Make home button more obvious.
  • Make CV into HTML document for faster access (don't need to download word document and open it up).
  • Add some texture/image to the white background to make it more interesting and to make the site look larger.

Anybody else got something to add?

EDIT: Spent today fixing the two bugs, using pieplough's footer suggestion fixed the problem after a lot of tweaking and messing with the code. Also neatened the code up a lot, like removing unneeded divs and making objects relative position instead of absolute.

Making canvas input and the toggle button work in Firefox meant searching for a canvas input tutorial and rewriting my game's input code. Got there in the end though.

Also removed 3rd person text and replaced it with a very temporary bold quote thing, unsure what to do with that.
 
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Calneon said:
That's so true :). Big thanks.

Stuff I need to work on:

  • Fix bug with background not flowing to bottom of screen (footer problem)
  • Fix canvas functionality in FireFox (possibly Doctype error)
  • Remove 3rd person text, replace with something eye catching and very readable.
  • Make icon functionality more obvious (possibly add better tooltip?)
  • Make home button more obvious.
  • Make CV into HTML document for faster access (don't need to download word document and open it up).
  • Add some texture/image to the white background to make it more interesting and to make the site look larger.

Anybody else got something to add?
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Get rid of the bloody pixel font! heheh :)
 
You say that the pixel font goes with the theme of a game developer, of small shoddy 2D mini-games perhaps but not with the bigger games from what I have seen.
 
BUMP!

The more I worked on my previous design, the more I didn't like it. So I did a complete redesign. Please give your opinions, they were all very useful last time.

http://www.sambigos.co.uk/secrettestingarea/

I think I nailed out most of the bugs across different browsers, if you find one let me know. The breakout game took a whole day to code, doing collision detection for the bricks is harder than you might think :P. BTW, the small icons the on the left of the canvas will have javascript rollouts when you hover over the game to let you know what they do.
 
Much much better!

The game is much better too.

Probably need to make the game control buttons better and provide rollover or something for them.
UI design is a big part of game design so it'd be good if you could demonstrate that.

Would also be cool if you could make the game in flash and use that for browsers that dont support canvas.
On the canvas version, some small italic text below it could tell everyone it's written in html to show off your desire to learn new stuff.
 
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rickh said:
Much much better!

The game is much better too.

Probably need to make the game control buttons better and provide rollover or something for them.
UI design is a big part of game design so it'd be good if you could demonstrate that.

Would also be cool if you could make the game in flash and use that for browsers that dont support canvas.
On the canvas version, some small italic text below it could tell everyone it's written in html to show off your desire to learn new stuff.
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Not too fond of Flash, and I've never used it before so that's out of the question. I think even IE8 now supports canvas so most people should see it fine. Also, the game is written in Javascript not HTML :).
 
Calneon said:
Not too fond of Flash, and I've never used it before so that's out of the question. I think even IE8 now supports canvas so most people should see it fine. Also, the game is written in Javascript not HTML :).
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Canvas is a html element, you're interacting with it using javascript :)

IE8 doesn't support canvas unless google gears is installed, you should have something there at least for all the IE users (still quite a lot of them).
 
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Calneon said:
From scratch, in Notepad++.
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I must say that im impressed mate. You said in your OP that your not much of a developer.. well I think your selling yourself short. Well done, nice clean code and I like your new layout.

Maybe if you dont get into game dev you should go into front end dev :)
 
I like it a lot mate, about 500% more than the last design to be honest.

Actually to me the white text on the yellow B/G looks fine, don't personally think it needs anything changed there.

The game kept me entertained for a bit, though the ball started going really fast sometimes, and when the restart hapenned the ball appeared at random places each time.
 
Eulogy said:
I like it a lot mate, about 500% more than the last design to be honest.

Actually to me the white text on the yellow B/G looks fine, don't personally think it needs anything changed there.

The game kept me entertained for a bit, though the ball started going really fast sometimes, and when the restart hapenned the ball appeared at random places each time.
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Still need to tweak the game a bit, working on getting the actual content in now.

@pieplough Thanks, that really means a lot :). Nice to know I'll have something to fall back on if for any reason I can't get a game dev job. Thanks so much for linking those portfolios too, I wouldn't have been able to make this new design look as nice without pinching some ideas from them.
 
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