I'm a 16 year old HS student - Feedback on my first personal website?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6812823

by pandringa • 13 years ago

9 24 13 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

http://andrin.ga

The last few weeks I've been working on getting my personal website up and running... Its mainly built off of HTML, CSS, and jQuery, and the backend is run by Node.js.

Any design or engineering advice for me?

Thanks!

pandringa7• 13 years ago

Link: http://andrin.ga

lbr2• 13 years ago

Great stuff. Biggest issue I have is the "about section" is way too long. A huge block of text is tough to get through - it's not inviting. ALSO think a photo of you would make it more personal.ALSO I'd put a few sub points under each bullet in "work experience" ALSO I'd center the three projects in the "projects" section. Overall, great job. For more thoughts - feel free to check out my site - LoganRandolph.com

lbr2• 13 years ago

and I know you asked for design/engineering advice - But thought content stuff could be helpful too.

pandringa7• 13 years ago

No, thats awesome advice! Thanks!

flippyhead• 13 years ago

First off, good on you for seeking advice on a forum such as this. Even if you get negative feedback, nothing but good can come from additional information. You alone can choose to take this information negatively or otherwise.

Personally, I'd do away with any of the trickery (fading and scrolling stuff). Unless you can really nail it, it usually comes off as amateurish. It's also usually hard to pull off unusual font choices.

I dig the cards in the projects section, why not use those elsewhere? I'm not a fan of the color changes though, what purpose do they serve? In particular the purple behind blank makes everything hard to read.

If you're going to have sections, such as a blog, inline you should be updating the hash fragment so they can be linked to directly. Right now the only way to reference your blog is by explanation..

The navigation in the lower left is unusual and easy to miss. More commonly this goes topside, and could be a little bigger.

Good luck!

pandringa7• 13 years ago

Thanks for your advice! I'm a firm believer in constructive criticism, so thats exactly why I posted it here.

I had originally designed the color changes to further differentiate each section, because otherwise there wasn't much seperating each section.

I also had written the page to be able to be linked to by each title, (#about, #resume, #projects, etc) but I didn't think about updating the hash fragment... So you're saying I should update the browser URL using javascript?

Once again, thanks for your advice!

hablahaha2• 13 years ago

Hm, take a look at the Bootstrap scrollspy for reference, IIRC it updates your url, provided you play nice with its data api? It also gives you a class to light up the dots on the lower left hand corner, but that's nothing you couldn't write yourself.

I also am not a big fan of the color change, scroll as you go site. The colors are especially distracting if you scroll really quickly, because the timing has to catch up and you'll see colors change all at once. Font is a bit hard to read, I had to get really close to the screen to pick up the thin font on green when the page loaded.

The introduction is a little verbose. Combine that with the font, I had a hard time getting invested in it. It's a very cute story, maybe put the part about learning to code in its own section, something people don't have to pay attention to, then what you're up to right now in its' own section?

I'm kind of digging what's going on at the bottom of the page, it's more constructed and has a more consistent color scheme going on - maybe that is something that you could let flow through the rest of the site more?

gesman• 13 years ago

Animated gif + ugly HTML that makes $1 is more valuable than node.js + jquery + whatnot that makes $0.

You're lucky to hear that advice when you're still 16 :)

hablahaha2• 13 years ago

Hm, I was just wondering why a personal site need to be powered by node? If it's just as a learning experience - no shame in that!

pandringa7• 13 years ago

I used node to build other parts of the site - namely the blog, a link shortener, and a few APIs I wrote just for my own other projects.

bobfirestone• 13 years ago

I'm looking at it on an iPad and the text is quite difficult to read.

Symmetry is visually pleasing. The three blocks in the project section are all different heights and each has a different sized image which is awkward to look at.

When building ux and ui ask yourself does the /animation|feature|interface/ actually make the experience better than not having it. Does the animation pulling in the projects or loading the blog posts or changing the background color actually improve the users experience?

I think you are on the right path and will have lots of opportunities to build cool things.

pandringa7• 13 years ago

I haven't gotten around to optimizing for tablets yet... Desktop and Mobile were my highest priorities. But thanks for the advice!

LarryMade2• 13 years ago

I use Firefox on Linux, for me, nothing is clickable and the "Peter Andringa" is overwriting the Resume headline.

zachlatta• 13 years ago

Running into the same issue.

OS: Arch Linux

Browser: Firefox 25.0.1

pandringa7• 13 years ago

Thanks! I'll look into that.

kalagan• 13 years ago

I like the "Go to Admin Panel" link at the bottom of the page

pandringa7• 13 years ago

I had to have a little fun somewhere...

abcXyzza5• 13 years ago

Never give that up.

It's something you can never let go.

mcallan83• 13 years ago

Great site! I like the minimalist look! Here are a few thoughts:

Since you are going responsive, you may want to look into doing a mobile first design. It is a lot easier to get your content looking good on a small screen and then slowly work your way up to a full screen experience. Going from full screen down to mobile is a lot harder. You will end up with more code, and find yourself fighting your existing styles to get things working on the small screen. Since you are using bootstrap, I'd recommend you use the built in grid system to help with this. (I fought grid systems for years... now, I wouldn't build a site without them.)

Another area I would concentrate on is typography. Choosing matching fonts can be tricky. A good rule of thumb is to pick two fonts that really contrast each other. In your case, the fonts basically look the same. Try picking a serif font for headings and sans-serif for body copy or the other way around. Google "font pairings" for more examples. I'd also bump up the body font size a bit and increase the line height. Aim for no more than 10 words per line for the best readability. (HN doesn't follow this and it is a pain reading long comments!) Again, Bootstrap has great defaults for type. I'd recommend sticking with them at first and then tweaking things as you finalize your layout.

Finally, I'd simplify your effects a bit. Every animation should serve a purpose and enhance the user experience. It is fun to dig in and make things move, but if not done properly, they become a huge turnoff. The hard part is making them feel natural and finely polished. Many times very subtle animations do so much more that large ones. Think "pat on the back" vs. "punch to the face". (Not saying your site is a punch to the face.... just repeating some advice a designer once gave me.) As your skills improve, you can add more complex animations and effects that add value to your site.

Overall you did great for your first site. Digging in and trying new things is the best way to learn. If you ever need assistance with anything, feel free to reach out.

infinitebattery• 13 years ago

I'm also a 16 year old high school student! I'm working on a website right now and i'm going to start adding projects soon. Regarding your website, my main criticism is the animations/transitions when you click on each tab (the page moves so fast-maybe slow it down). Otherwise, I really like your design-it's smooth and really refreshing to look at. You might want to consider changing the fonts though.

This is irrelevant to your website, but I noticed that you're from TJHS. Did you go to MHacks? I saw a few kids from that high school over there. I also noticed that you're involved with Pilot. I really want to get a hackathon started up here in Detroit, so we should connect.

abcXyzza5• 13 years ago

There's a startup weekend coming up in Grand Rapids soon, and another in Kalamazoo sometime in the next few months.

http://grandrapids.startupweekend.org/

They're pretty intense weekends. The teams that did best at the one in Detroit were pretty heavily stacked with very experienced developers. If you want to find out more about what's going on in the community, check one out. They have weekend passes for teams, and spectator passes if you just want to check out the final results of 54 hours work.

abcXyzza5• 13 years ago

Engineering advice: in your enterX() functions, consider calling another function that clears the text of the UL of dots in the top left corner then have each enterX() function add the text of the currently selected page section, and maybe change the hollow circle to a filled circle. Breadcrumbs are usually a good design element.

You might also want to move them down to the middle of the left of the page. That's a design decision, entirely up to the design owner's discretion.

From a design perspective, it's not terrible. I'm not a fan of the supersaturated color trend, but, that's me. I can tell you that the last inch or so of the page has a jarring color change. Consider transitioning to a darker color in the section that is currently yellow/orange, or change the blues/greens in the bottom.

I agree with mcallan with the typography. Typography is a much harder part of design than most people give it credit for. It's one of the oldest forms of design, and people have very strong and unconscious expectations with regard to words-per-line, kerning (spacing between characters), and fontface matching. Read up on it if you have a few hours over the next few years. This is the main area your site needs work -- fewer words per row, and maybe a different main body font. The font choice is up to the design owner, though. Some people, like me, can spend hours choosing a font.

On a brief glance through your code, I notice the use of timers. I didn't really analyze why, so I could be mistaken here, but you could maybe use jQuery's promise/done functions as a matter of good engineering practice. Magic numbers are bad, and are a last resort. Monads are good. Learn them early on, learn callbacks early on, especially if you're doing web development. You'll jump through hoops that will make Java/C++ developers' noses bleed with frustration.

For all the feedback and criticism in there, it's actually a good site. That was some serious small detail talk above. Also, I'm going to start using the pallets = []; idea in a few places. Thanks, sir.

abcXyzza5• 13 years ago

Oh, a more advanced tweak that I've only seen on a couple pages would be to take your vertical sections (about, intro, blog, those) and give them their own horizontal scrolling sections with left and right arrows.

That could easily turn into a significant time investment (a day or two, if you're a motivated beginner with some knowledge), depending on your current skill level, but it amounts to a few very wide <div>'s, and some jQuery to calculate scroll distances. It'll make your page easier to read, and more visually complex in a good way.

abcXyzza5• 13 years ago

ok, one last one. I'm sure you already know this, but, just in case you haven't heard yet.

When you're doing design of any kind, but seemingly especially in UI design, everyone has an opinion. Most of them are wrong.

I'm a 16 year old HS student - Feedback on my first personal website?

Related Stories