Any technical advice would be appreciated, since I am a beginner at it. I think all the bugs have to do with the timing of loading images and thumbnails.
I'd be happy for feedback about my new web design. Let me know if it is confusing. I am still working out some bugs so if it stops working as you'd expect usually reloading the website will start it working again.
Any technical advice would be appreciated, since I am a beginner at it. I think all the bugs have to do with the timing of loading images and thumbnails.
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As of December 2014 my portfolio site is brand new! (Still working on a mobile version so it is best viewed on a desktop computer for now.) I am actually really good at deadlines. But when there is no deadline - that can be a challenge. My old Flash website was in urgent need of updating for a LONG time. I finally mustered up the energy to redo it and decided to make it my first try at Javascript programming. I think the best way to learn something is to set yourself a goal, then jump in, muddle through and figure it out. This website redesign took an embarrassingly long time (I don't even want to say how long this has been on my to-do list), but now that it’s mostly done I can do some basic javascript and jquery programming (with the help of advice, demos and tutorials online at sites like Stackoverflow). Before this, I didn’t have a very good handle on HTML. I used to be able to get by in the past by just copying and pasting code without having to type it myself. This time I forced myself to type code and am so much better at it now. The Process of Redesign I made Photoshop mockups of what I wanted the new site to look like and thought about how I wanted the navigation to work. I looked at my old website and decided I actually still liked the general interface. I still liked the scrolling thumbnails. And I still needed the secondary thumbnail navigation because a lot of my portfolio is comprised of collections of related artwork that need a separate thumbnail interface. But everything felt too small. I decided that I like the look of using a full screen image as my portfolio and wanted to incorporate that. I found a useful tutorial on Codrops and used this code as a starting off point. I found a thumbnail scrolling plug-in at Malihu Web Design that functioned the way I wanted it too. Then I had to figure out how to pull it all together. This took me a reeeaaaallllly long time. Having worked with authoring software like Flash and Director in the past, I am familiar with Actionscript and Lingo programming, but it was slow-going. What I needed to figure out
Lightbox functionAfter I finally got the navigation working, I wanted to incorporate a lightbox functionality. I took a look at lots of lightbox plug-ins but by this time I felt confident enough that I could program my own lightbox functionality from scratch and this turned out to be relatively painless! I am pretty happy with how it works overall. There are bound to be bugs, but I decided I just had to make it live or it might never happen. Some tips for do-it-yourself beginners If you are a designer like me interested in learning how to program in Javascript. These are some things to keep in mind that might help.
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About Me
I'm an illustrator and designer that creates art for products, books magazines, and the web. Check out my new portfolio website! Categories
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