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Discussion on: How did I create my first personal website?

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moopet profile image
Ben Sinclair

Looks pretty good.
I'm going to list my concerns with it (hey, I'm being constructive!):

Reading

  • Personally, I find the weight and extra spacing on your text a little hard to read.
  • You go on to say you use FontAwesome (which you don't afaict) - is that a mistake in the blog post?
  • "I just wanted to be quirky in terms of the typography" is fine, but it does make things that little bit harder to read.
  • It would be easier to read for me if the lines weren't allowed to run on. The max-width: 100% on the main parent DIVs means that these lines are too wide to read comfortably on a large browser window, and most people [citation needed] use maximised windows on reasonably wide screens.

General

  • Your highlighted text isn't links. For example, "estate.sell.do - a niche lead management software targeted towards real estate." has "estate.sell.do" in a contrasting colour, but it's not a link. Except... wait... some of them are links as I've just found. Under "what about open source contributions and other projects?" one is a link and the other isn't; I am now a confused user who has to hover everything one at a time to see if it's really a link.
  • You can only open one section at a time. Imagine your audience (a potential employer) wants to print off your content (which isn't totally rare). They have to open each accordion section one at a time and hit print again and again. They have to notice this in the print-preview before they walk over to the printer and back again or else they'll get annoyed.

Accessibility

  • The accessibility score you get (79) probably doesn't take into account the fact that that text only appears well after the page is loaded, as it's too low contrast.
  • Your links are either not distinguished from the body text at all (left sidebar) or by only a small luminosity change (main text). That makes them visually hard to find. The only indication you're hovering over one is a colour change, which is not helpful to a lot of people.
  • Your "find me on" links are empty as far as screenreaders are concerned.
  • The background moving under the text can be very distracting for some readers.
  • When using a smaller window (e.g. 768x640) the content reflows so the body text is below the sidebar, but if that was the first time I'd seen the page I wouldn't know to scroll down. It looks like a small "contact-me" type page.

That splash ("loading") screen?

  • It's ok if someone's only going to see your page once, but will get old fast if they have to keep coming back to look up your contact details, for example.
  • I didn't see it at all the first time because I opened your link in a new tab and didn't look at it until I'd finished reading your post.

Possible improvements

  • Your favicon could look like a little version of your main "face" icon. I'm not sure what it is now (a panda?) but it doesn't seem to have anything to do with the site. I really like the main picture, by the way, something about it not having eyes makes it cooler.
  • Make it printable!
  • Use an email address at your domain rather than a gmail address with numbers in it.
  • Employers (I can't speak for all) probably don't care about your GPA, but they might be interested in something cool you did while getting your master's. You could fill that section out with a line or two like you did in the previous sections - something that feels a bit more personal than stark numbers.
  • provide some indication that content continues now you've hidden the scrollbars.
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joshichinmay profile image
Chinmay Joshi • Edited

Hello @moopet , first of all, thanks a lot for taking your time out and giving me your valuable feedback.

  1. Reading -
    I agree with the font size. They are enormous. I checked my website on multiple displays. Previously, in the first few revisions, the text was tiny, which led me to add extra font size to the text. I will focus more on the text size and overall typography.
    Secondly, I am using font-awesome. Now it's evident that you didn't find any file in the code base, that is because it's not there. If you see the "find me on" icons, they belong to font-awesome.

  2. General -
    I am sorry that the colour of the link is misguiding. I certainly will work on that. Previously hyperlinks were active. Due to some reasons, I had to remove them. Thanks for pointing out.
    Also, isn't printing the whole page and viewing the page are two different things? Correct me if I am wrong. I have never made a printable website before. I will look it up and get back to you. It would be a nice feature to make the whole site printable.

  3. Accessibility -
    The accessibility score is not of a landing page. I calculated it before I added the landing page. Text size was the biggest concern according to the Lighthouse audit. And to fix that I had to add extra font-size.
    The icons are SVG and contain transparent background (you already know that). I don't think there's anything I can do about it. Also, I like it the way they are right now.
    On smaller screens, I have adjusted the height properly to keep the user focused on one content at a time. For example, contact us and then the main page.

  4. Possible improvements -
    As I mentioned in the todo list, I do need a better favicon. The current one is not at all relevant. Work in progress...
    Again, I am not sure if I need to invest money to have domain specific email address.
    Good point with the educational background. I don't need to my score anymore. I will work on that.

Again, thank you so much for your feedback.