Portfolio Site Upgrades
In preparation for graduation, I’ve made some upgrades to my portfolio website. As happy as I am with the site, there is always room for improvement.
www.mattaebersold.net
Design
In terms of the design, the site is largely the same. There are a few changes, which are apparent on the “About Me” and the “View Project” pages. I have streamlined the interface and tweaked the layout. I believe that now the site is organized better and is easier to use. In addition, a new map has been brought into the visual resume section.
Content
The content of the site is getting some serious work done. I’ve added links in the “About Me” section, and have added additional content to the navigation. The major additions are in the “Works” section. I’ve added projects that I’ve worked on since the site’s launch, as well as some projects that I’ve dusted off to include on the site. By the time you read this, these changes should be live.
Development
I’ve made some great progress here. I finally got to add the audio effects to the interactive elements of the site, which is something I’ve been wanting to do for some time. When I first built this version of the site, the audio wouldn’t work in Firefox, and would subsequently crash the site. I finally realized this was due to the code re-loading all the same sounds into the program, which was conflicting with the sound files that were already loaded in.
This duplication of code in all the classes made the scripts crash in Firefox. I centralized all of the interactive elements into the parent class (button effects, audio, etc) so that all the actions are now in one central location, and thus only loaded in and called once. This seems to have corrected the Firefox issue. One positive side effect is that the site runs a bit smoother and quicker.
Future Updates
There are still a few items to complete before graduation. I intend to re-build the way the initial “Works” page functions. I want to bring the interaction back to a simple scrollbar, rather than the auto-scrolling when the mouse moves. This will make the whole experience more simple and easier for the user.
I will update here when these changes are live.
