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Feedback On My Portfolio Site

Gage Henderson on October 01, 2018

Hello everyone! I've been working on my portfolio site and it is now live. I'm still making tweaks and edits, but I was hoping to get some feedba...
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adam_cyclones profile image
Adam Crockett 🌀

Confession: I bounced from the opening text. You have quite literally ms to get the content to the user. Never block them. 100% remove this. You can reintroduce it as a feature in the page. The feeling I got was akin to walking behind somebody much slower than me and when I tried to walk around them they got in my way.

IL try the site again.

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adam_cyclones profile image
Adam Crockett 🌀

Next thing, I love the growing graphic behind the text. However when I scroll it seems to redraw. I'd like to see it just grow and grow. Maybe the origal red could grow over it one the panel is filled.

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Chiffre

Nice one. I think I'll post mine too!

I love that interactive thingy ♥

I found one issue (if that's not intentional). When you want to hover/click over bottom contact icons you can't do that.

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callgage profile image
Gage Henderson

Thank you!

I found one issue (if that's not intentional). When you want to hover/click over bottom contact icons you can't do that.

And ahh! This is the second comment that mentioned that, that's super concerning. Thank you for letting me know! Need to fix that asap that's like the most important part of a portfolio site!!

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Ben Halpern

I love everything about this! I find the opening monologue possibly frustrating, but also tastefully done. I'm not sure.

Overall it's definitely one of the more pleasing portfolios I've seen.

Only thing I'd say for sure: Shrink your images. I think you could save ~90% on most of them by running them through an optimization program. In general, it's not the most economical site but the only no-brainer would be the images. Everything else might include tradeoffs.

One more thing: the DEV icon is going to hit Font Awesome any day now:

Hope you add it to your the site when it does alongside the other badges when it does. 😄

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callgage profile image
Gage Henderson

Thank you! That means a lot!

Yeah image compression totally slipped my mind.

One more thing: the DEV icon is going to hit Font Awesome any day now

Nice! I was looking for this when I added those other icons! I will definitely be adding it :)

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern

Also didn't notice this at first:

Looks like there are some issues here.

Generally, there are a bunch of opportunities to send fewer bytes over the web. The images are the big one, but you might want to see how you can shrink your CSS/JS builds, just as an exercise.

I'm a perf nerd so it's where I go first.

But yeah, love the aesthetic soooo much.

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Ray

I love the feel of your site at the beginning when it's the text, and also once the main page has loaded. They're different enough though that it was jarring to go from the all-white to the colors. I'd consider dumping the intro bit.

The overall feel of the site is nice - font, animations, icons, illustrations - they all work together well. I did find the colors to be a bit jarring, and in particular, I found the blue text on orange background to be difficult to read (the inverse seemed fine to me).

The only "off" thing I noticed was then when the page first loaded the contact & other links at the bottom didn't work, either the mouse over or the hyperlink, until I'd scrolled a bit.

I think the best thing about your site is that shows that you can design & implement that design. You come across as creative and competent to technically implement something creative. Great job!

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callgage profile image
Gage Henderson

They're different enough though that it was jarring to go from the all-white to the colors. I'd consider dumping the intro bit.

I could see that. I thought something like that would help me stand out, but if it's taking away from the experience of the site as a whole, then I definitely need to consider scrapping it.

I found the blue text on orange background to be difficult to read (the inverse seemed fine to me).

Good to know, I might tweak the shades of the colors when it is orange background/blue foreground - Try to make the orange darker and the blue brighter to give it more contrast and hopefully make it easier to read.

The only "off" thing I noticed was then when the page first loaded the contact & other links at the bottom didn't work, either the mouse over or the hyperlink, until I'd scrolled a bit.

!!!! Need to fix this. Thank you for letting me know

You come across as creative and competent to technically implement something creative. Great job!

Thank you! And thanks for the critiques, definitely gave me some more to-do's :)

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Guillaume Martigny

Pretty much the same as

Hello Nicole,
Try to run LightHouse (embed in Chrome console) and address the issues.

The main issue I had with you site is loading time. Your images are too heavy. Try crop them to the exact size you display them and run them through tinyPng/tinyJpg. You can also use the free caching of CloudFlare.

Next thing is, you're not using HTTPS. It can be harder to achieve depending on your hosting. But today's browser warn user when entering non-secure website.

Last (but don't have to be least), you didn't have set a favicon. Recruiters bookmarking your site won't have the nice little icon reminding them what your site looks like.

Overall, good design (nitpick: not sure about some contrasts). Parallax effect is always a nice touch and I like that you don't have too much informations.

Keep on the good work ;)

The main performance throttle was you images. Properly size them and run them through TinyPNG.
Be aware that you might not see any issue with you images loading time because they're in cache (try disabling cache while you dev)

In terms of design, it's very nicely done. I personally love the colors even tho they're not accessibility compatible. The interactive piece are cute and well executed.

Nice job overall.

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adam_cyclones profile image
Adam Crockett 🌀

Your contact me CTA is way to busy, it makes me feel chaotic. Right I'm done I hope the honesty will help make this stronger, because it's 95% there.

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callgage profile image
Gage Henderson

Thank you for all of the feedback! Definitely helpful. The mobile site is really where I feel it's lacking the most (compared to desktop) - But these critiques are definitely giving me some clear direction.

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adam_cyclones profile image
Adam Crockett 🌀

My proficiencies enters too slowly on a mobile, I've already scrolled past it.

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Adam Crockett 🌀

Okay I'm not done. What is your website: it shows off your work? On a mobile at least, which order does your work appear? Be proud mate stick it up there. Show the world what you got.

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Adam Crockett 🌀

The text weight is too thin for accessibility and for general reading. I still like the site though.