bradbice.com

Newwwyear Grand Re-Opening

brad@bradbice.com (Brad Bice) — Mon, 08 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve redesigned and re-launched my website multiple times. Let’s go again!

Inspired by years of frustration of having my content fragmented across multiple websites and social networks, and the timely tweet above, I’ve spent the last few months pulling together this new project.

I’ve finally come to a place where I’m happy enough (but still embarrassed) to deploy my work-in-progress redesign and reorganization of my website. However, I can’t release my baby into the wild without some caveats:

Perfection is the enemy of done

This is a work-in-progress, and it’s meant to be. There is a lot going on in this simple personal website that I’m not happy with, and a lot I want to improve and add on to. However, if I wait until I’m absolutely happy with what I have, I won’t ever publish it. This includes:

The color scheme - After experimenting with a bunch of color palettes, stripping it all and going with black & white was the quickest and allowed me to focus more on the content and layout.
The typography - I generally like my selections here, but am not completely sold on them. Plus I’m using 3 separate font-families – Roboto Slab, Montserrat and system fonts – so I’ll need to reconcile those for performance and aesthetics at some point.
Work portfolio - I’ve added most of my examples of work, but no actual visuals like screen grabs or images just yet. I’m still looking for the best way to present those in a gallery-type fashion.
Resume - The information is there, but it’s not too aesthetically pleasing. I need to spice that up, and add in some print styles as well.

Other stuff

Contact form (currently using Wufoo)
Tag/category page list styles
The logo - It’s version 0.5, for sure.

With that said, I’m happy enough to push this live and start publishing content to it. Any Twitter posts will hopefully be mirrored here, except Retweets. If you don’t know what that is or don’t read Twitter, then you’re missing a lot and nothing all at once.

One point of all of this is to combine my personal and professional-facing websites into one. I don’t need two, no need to put on a business face or anything like that. Might as well push everything together and make it simpler on myself.

Thank you for reading, please stop by again (or add my feed to your device or feed service), and follow me on Twitter for update notifications and other stuff. Yay!

(Also, if you’re wondering about the “After Hours” title of my blog, it’s a name I’ve wanted to do something with for a long time. I’ve always been a night owl, and have historically stayed up late and worked late and actually do most of my best thinking and work at night. I’d like to parlay it into a brand of sorts maybe, given the right ventures and opportunities. If not, it’s a fun blog title that gives a little spice to my thoughts and ramblings.)

The Mythical "Fold"

brad@bradbice.com (Brad Bice) — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000

The “fold” on the web is a controversial topic. I personally believe that the web is different from print (where the term and concept originated) in that it is interactive.

Scroll bars and touch controls allow users to manipulate their viewing experience more and more with each new device and browser. Also, “mobile” internet use will surpass desktop use by 2014 (Update: it actually didn’t happen until November 2016,) meaning that any concrete identification of the fold will be out the window.

Obviously there are cases where putting content near the top of a page can be beneficial, since most if not all browsers render pages with the starting point scrolled to the top (is top a relevant term when describing page location anymore? Especially since devices can be rotated and turned more than older monitors ever could.) But I believe that is different from expressing that something be entirely or mostly “above the fold.” There should always be a content hierarchy and browsing trends will usually point to people scrolling from top to bottom to support this.

Responsive design especially defeats the concept of the fold since it makes the “fold line” a floating and ever-changing border. Instead of concentrating on what should be above or below a line that may or may not even exist in a majority of cases, I believe authors should instead focus on a consistent hierarchy of content and embrace the ambiguity of the web.

Responsively Redesigning

brad@bradbice.com (Brad Bice) — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 00:00:00 +0000

I’m currently redesigning this site to take advantage of Responsive Web Design, something anyone with a website should be doing.

I’m using a “Mobile First” approach (do you see a trend here?) by serving up a minimal content set for those on cellular networks or slow connections. As the screen size increases, the design will change to allow for a different experience (a slightly different layout, larger images, etc.) The design is also resolution independent, thanks to icon fonts (the exception being photos and images, I have yet to provide new versions of those, as my focus has been on the mobile side for now.)

This is a work in progress but I wanted to express my desire and determination to create a responsive version of my website. It’s part of a “design in the browser” method that I’m using for this particular project where I am the client. So if things happen to look a little muddy at times, that’s why!

Note: Current development and testing has taken place in Google Chrome and Safari on iOS 5. These are the most-utilized browsers according to my analytics so I design in those first. Firefox and IE support is coming next. I am only using this “live-redesign” process on my personal page, and would not use or recommend it for a commercial site. See Zeldman and Zeldman.