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Design

Eric Washington
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Eric Washington
iOS Development with Swift Techdegree Student 21,884 Points

Portfolio Feedback

Hey everyone, I just completed my portfolio and I was wondering if I could get some feedback on it. Ive been with Treehouse for over a year and it feels good to be able to finally release this project. All feedback is welcome d and thanks in advance.

http://www.ericwashington.me

3 Answers

I can tell you understand design, but you go overboard on a few things such as that box shadow.

Note that I am not commenting to make you feel bad, but to help you improve in your skills.

Some technical tips:

  • Combine your stylesheets. You want the least amount of http requests as possible.
  • Your social icons could be one sprite sheet and also mitigate http requests.
  • Stick with around 2 fonts, 3 max. It's not only a better flow and uniformity, it also helps with page speed. You may not care about page speed yet but it will play a crucial part in your career once you start developing much larger sites. Also if you are trying to land a developer job, they may look at that when reviewing your code.
  • Put your Javascript at the bottom of the page after your code, also helps page speed.

Design tips:

  • I think more top and bottom padding to the sections would improve the look a ton.
  • Having your portfolio as a portfolio icon in the iMac seems kind of redundant.
  • Reduce the size of your main banner background image as it's much to large in file size for its quality.

I can tell you are very proud of your site which is fantastic! Keep working hard and you'll see huge improvements real fast. Good luck to you!

-- Joe

James Barnett
James Barnett
39,199 Points

Excellent advice on those "technical tips", those are all best practices.

Eric Washington
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Eric Washington
iOS Development with Swift Techdegree Student 21,884 Points

Hey Joseph Fusco Thanks for the advice man. I'll def make those improvements to my site. I don't know why I didn't think about putting all my css into one whole file. BTW, your phuconcepts site is so dope. Def added that site into my website inspirations tab.

Hi Eric,

My name is Jesse Bray and I've been a freelance designer for a few years now. I recently joined Treehouse a couple months ago and have been really enjoying myself.

First off I haven't been on Treehouse nearly as long as you so I totally respect you putting yourself out there for critique. So in all fairness here's a link to site as well.

www.mrbray.com

Now to your website -

The positive: I think your site is really fun and super energetic! I love how playful it is and how much variety you have! I really enjoy your choice of color and fonts along with a nice single page layout. Simple and elegant!

The some what negative: The only thing I could be nit picky about with your site is how different the site feels on my iPhone vs my desktop. On the desktop all the icons bounce and the header font is nice and legible. While on my iPhone (point of note I'm using safari) the font changes. I don't really think this is particularlly bad per se it is just that the desktop version has so much bounce and fun to it. Though I do think the consistency of the header font between platforms would be nice to sync (minor critique).

Take care Eric, and thanks for letting me review your website.

-Jesse

Eric Washington
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.a{fill-rule:evenodd;}techdegree
Eric Washington
iOS Development with Swift Techdegree Student 21,884 Points

Jesse Bray thanks a lot for the feedback. I was def a little hesitant with putting myself out there for feedback but it was needed and I appreciate it. Your website is honestly dope. Its simple and elegant and thats def where I was aiming when I created my portfolio. Someone told me to take the effects off the iPhone viewpoint because it was being overused.

James Barnett
James Barnett
39,199 Points
  • Not a fan of the script typeface, I don't think it fits the feel of your site
  • I think you over did it on the use of dropshadow on your title typeface
  • On smaller viewports there's no margin between the 2 rows of your social icons
  • I'd suggest adding title text for the social icons.
  • Your title isn't all the on the page on smaller viewport sizes (e.g. phones)

You should scale down those images using a graphics program rather than CSS/JS as it is your page is much too heavy at over 6mb to be downloaded on a cell network.

http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/#!/cM8PZP/http://www.ericwashington.me/

I'd also suggest you lazy load the images, so that the page above the fold is fully rendered before adding in the screenshots to increase the perceived speed of the page load.

Eric Washington
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Eric Washington
iOS Development with Swift Techdegree Student 21,884 Points

James Barnett Lazy Load Images? never heard of them. I def look that up tonight. Thanks for the feedback btw. I also know exactly what your talking about in regards to the lack of margin when the phone is viewed from a phone. I'll correct that ASAP.