About This Site
This site is pretty much what the "masthead" says: Emily Lewis' Design Portfolio.
At present, I use this site for job opportunities and showing off to my friends and family. That's about it for now.
This iteration of my online portfolio was launched on September 20, 2007. It is embarrassingly outdated and I'm currently in the process of a complete redesign, which will include ExpressionEngine 2.0. Despite it's dated appearance, it is mostly up–to–date in terms of projects.
That said, this site was designed with standards-compliant browsers in mind, so it looks best when viewed in one of those (Firefox, Safari, Opera) or IE 7. Though it will render just fine in IE 6 — but why on earth would you be using IE anyways, much less IE 6?
Go get Firefox or at least upgrade to IE 7!
A Work in Progress
As you gaze upon this page, I am in the process of working on the site map. I've got the markup in place (spider away, Google et al), but the styling still needs to be done.
I also plan to replace the email link in Contact Me with a simple ASP form.
The Design
I intended this site to serve as a plain canvas on which to showcase my work — which is why it is a simple, clean design. Perhaps, in the future, I'll take the time to come up with some snazzy new interface … but, again, it is all about spare time.
The Markup
The XHTML behind–the–scenes is, for the most part, semantic. Like many designers, I had arguments with myself about using a dl or a ul in some cases. So, I split the difference and used both throughout. I hope to find the time to get off the fence and make it all consistent at some point.
That said, the markup does validate.
The Styles
Sticking to my philosophy about separating content from presentation, the CSS for this site entirely controls the layout and display. Just like with the markup, I tried to be as semantic as possible in my naming conventions, but there is much, much, much more work to be done, including print styles.
Not to mention, the CSS I do have is far from optimized and there's still a bunch of tweaking left to do — just more stuff I've still got to find the time to do.
The Behavior
Right now, there isn't alot of behavior on the site. I am using a canned lightbox script — unobtrusive, of course — that I've really got to go back into and clean up or find another alternative.
I'm also using a canned "tree" script for the left navigation. While it is unobtrusive, it generates a bunch of extra markup I'm not entirely sure is needed. But, it works for now; I'll revisit later.
The Analytics
I'm using Google Analytics on this site to track activity. I'm also using it to help me determine the viability of several other domains I've registered.
I only recently purchased these domains, but it has been on my mind for a while. I never liked emily-lewis.com. So, I'm forwarding and masking these new domains to this site, and hoping the referrers will tell me which one to keep as my permanent domain name.
For My Fellow Geeks
Not that you probably haven't already viewed the source code by now, but I'm using an XHTML Strict DTD and CSS 2. I'm also using an IE 6 CSS filter for my IE 6 hacks, which I hope to eliminate once I can get the CSS in better shape.
For the canned JavaScript, these are my resources (modified, to a degree):
I also used thumbalizer for many of the screenshots … the jury's still out. It seems to render the screens in something that smells of IE 6, so I'm not too keen on that. But, it has served its purpose for now.
Disclaimer
Any editorial content, comments and opinions found on this portfolio are the responsibility of me, Emily Lewis, and do not reflect the opinions of my employer.