I finally completed a good chunk of a project I’ve been working on (in design and in implementation) for a couple of months. The new redesign of justinrussell.com (version 7.0 by my count… can you believe it?) clears up a few things that have been bothering me about the old version.
Before explaining those, though, I want to just mention a couple of small tech details. The new site is completely done with div elements and CSS instead of using tables. Most people reading this right now probably don’t know and/or care, but CSS allows for some powerful new functionality. I might play around with it if I get bored sometime. Also, the site is W3C validated. This means the code is clean, and there’s a better chance it will work on most browsers. I’ve checked it on Firefox 1.0 on Mac and Win, Safari 1.0, and IE 6 on Windows. IE has some very slight alignment problems with it, but hey, if you’re not using Firefox already, go get it.
The design changed, first of all. I didn’t have any particular problem with the old design, other than it hadn’t really been changed in a while. This one’s simpler. The first non-design-related thing you’ll probably notice about the site is that I’ve combined my portfolio with my main site. I wanted there to be one central source for anyone interested in me and what I’ve done; while the Portfolio Server is a great resource, I figured it made sense to put everything on my own page. Also, you’ll see right up front that there are links to external sites (including my items for sale at Half.com and my links on del.icio.us). These will change over time as I gain and lose interest in different services and sites, but they’ll always be in the same place. Once again, I’m trying to realize that I don’t have to reinvent the wheel for every service out there. I’m playing nice with standards, so I’ll play nice with other sites, too.
I’ll tell you, it’s a relief to get that off my chest. I wanted to launch it with my blog at the beginning of the year, but… close enough.