Site Crit (Stewdio)
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- stewdio
I've been tweaking and restructuring elements, trying to make the logic more consistent. Swapped some items on the front page. Of course I'm too close to it to know what's working.
Fresh eyes please?
http://stewdio.org/
- Pupsipu0
pretty good, only the layout is kinda disconnected when viewing the http://stewdio.org/work/draftmon… work part.
- itsmitch0
It's very, very plain but not in a bad way. The blue links look like you just didn't put any effort into changing them from the default to something appropriate. It renders nicely in Safari 3.1 (OS X). It doesn't blow me away but it does provide a good environment to present your work.
- stewdio0
Do you mean the "floating" layout? (The content will re-sort itself based on your browser window's width while still aligning to the grid.) Try pulling your window wider or smaller. Is that what you're commenting on?
- stewdio0
@itsmitch: You wouldn't believe how much effort went into the link colors and hierarchy indicators :P But I see your point. I aim to strip things down to a point that nearly erases authorship.
- Or at least, in appearance something might feel author-less. Not in the construction or intention of course!stewdio
- toop0
Wow... typing this a second time because my first post apparently didn't submit.
I dig the minimalistic approach and love the grid... super-interesting fluid width implementation. I also like the link color; I think it helps punctuate the simplicity.
I do wonder if "Stewdio" and "Features" could be renamed to something a bit more intuitive ("About" and "Portfolio"). I get being obscure, but wonder if it's worth the hit to usability. I wasn't sure at a glance where to find your work. Also not a huge fan of scrolling divs (under Stewdio) -- that might not be necessary.
Over all, I think it's really cool stuff. Love the simplicity.
- ********0
I like it, is that jQuery for the hover?
- stewdio0
@toop: I see what you mean. I've been struggling with what the categories are and how they're labeled. (I picked the label "Features" to contrast with "Archive" which contains all of the projects I've posted.)
- stewdio0
@pyramd: I'm using jQuery (because it's written with elegance!) and then I wrote my own routines for the "waterfall" animation. Currently the animation is just still snowflakes for the winter, but I've also tested it using animated GIFs. Maybe for spring I'll have birds fly across or something.
Also looking to do more complex animation algorithms like flipping tiles in patterns or some such. Navigational tile flipping is an idea I was working with in early 2003 but forgot about for 6 years : http://stewdio.org/university/ob…
- juhls0
I think you should make the navigation more interesting.
I like the grid structure.
- stewdio0
@juhls: Can you give me an example? I was hoping to take the things that shouldn't be the primary visual focus and push them back in the hierarchy stack. I'm worried about drawing attention to things that only need to sing, not dance.
- utopian0
overall simple and clean, I like. I only have a problem with the old school hyperlink blue used for all of the navigation.
- monNom0
your 'expose grid' function is throwing [object Object] back to the browser for some reason. I can sometimes see the little grid BG for a moment before the page goes to blank with "[object Object]"
FF2, Win2k
P.S. the search box is also a bit lacking in affordance.
- stewdio0
@monNom: Yes, FF doesn't like JavaScript to return objects to an href. Fixed, thanks ;)
- stewdio0
Anyone up for making some deeper insights? Some conceptual thoughts? Europe should still be in the office and avoiding work at this hour, yes? ;)
- stewdio0
So . . . No other stripped down grid minimalists out there? Don't tell me everyone's into beveled edges and drop shadows?! Some day we're all going to choke on those glossy candy buttons. :P
- bort0
Nice. What's the backend?
You have very clean – albeit flourishy – code:
/***********************/
/* */
/* Miscellaneous */
/* */
/**********************/
- moamoa0
I love your work....the layout from the site is not my taste but I guess you want to provide something like an anti-design feeling ;) so the viewer can concentrate on the concept and work itself?
Thumbs up for Terre Natale
- stewdio0
@moamoa: Thanks :) I don't think of it as anti-design at all. In fact I think it's very pro-design. (Perhaps anti-decoration.) Certainly one can argue against this, but shouldn't design be clean, crisp, and see-through? My favorite design things are usually brutally minimal. Give me well-gridded old school Swiss typography over "distressed" or "grungy" or "glossy" crap any day. (Sorry, that's my ongoing one-man rant.)
Thanks on Terre Natale too. That thing had to be prototyped and produced on such an amazingly tight schedule! We actually had to write the animation framework from scratch to make it do the backflips we needed. Some description here : http://stewdio.org/blog/2008/10/…
@bort: Yea. Got to keep the code clean and documented. That's part of my schtick. I mean, I code totally messy like a drunken cowboy to get a demo up ASAP, but then you have to rein it in and make it tight. Code whitespace itself will tell you just as much about an author's personality as their algorithm's logic.
The back-end is all custom PHP / MySQL / apache hacks plus a generic WordPress install for the blog. In the process of debugging a Ruby on Rails / MySQLite replacement for the whole site. (But currently too broke to spring for a Rails server with actual horsepower.) If I fall into a load of cash I might skip Rails altogether and spend time thinking about an Arc web framework. Ruby might become "the standard" in the next year. But if you want to be the uber nerd and jump the curve just hack in Arc. All the kids in 2015 are going to love it.
- stewido. maybe the anti-design statement was a bit inconvenient. I didn´t meant it in a negative way...moamoa
- but still the minimal things could be a bit more designed (typecolour combinations/moamoa
- probably the blue links are my biggest problem, ;)moamoa
- reminds me on flickr facebook google.. etcmoamoa