OT Questions

[Dwight Hutto]

On Wed, Oct 17, 2012 at 1:25 AM, Demian Brecht <demianbrecht at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> You haven't been on lists long enough then to have seen some real
>> flame warts...no offense.
>
> No offense taken, it's why I said it in the first place ;) Having said that, generally engaging in flame wars solves nothing and sheds a negative light on the individuals who take part in it.
>
>> It's in a design phase, and I'm asking the local experts to critique
>> it, and even be harsh.
>
> You're not a designer. There's nothing at all wrong with that (I'm not either for the record). Most aren't good at both left *and* right-brained functions. My sincere suggestion is pick which aspect of development piques your interest the most and follow that. Delegate the other aspects to others who are good at what they do.
>
> Remember.. You're asking for feedback here :)
>
>> It was meant as more of a commercial to show a little more umph in my
>> site presentation, and I'm working on reducing the size through
>> several different means.
>
> It's a bad way of advertising your business. In this day and age, there will likely be less people looking for potential contractors on desktop systems than on mobile devices. As such, you want to make sure that your site has very little in the way of heavy graphics (unless there's a version that the user gets redirected to that's mobile-friendly). Take advantage of client-side rendering where possible.
>
>> I know this, and I'm trying to reduce it, but show something that's appealing.
>
> My point was that it shouldn't be there *at all*. Automatically playing music is widely thought of as being annoying and does absolutely nothing at all for your business. You're not selling games, you're not selling DJ services. I can guarantee that you will turn away more prospective business by having the music there in the first place than not having any at all.
>
>> I kind of like my designs, and they're being refined through these
>> conversations.
>
> I like my designs too. However, I realized *long* ago that I'm not good at them. I even grew to dislike even doing design work because of how much extra time and effort it took to develop something decent rather than just concentrating on what I was good at. My designs wouldn't hold up compared to other professional entities and unless there are remarkable improvements, yours won't either.
>
>> I like w3schools.com, and I know that it's a rough draft, and so
>> should my critics.
>
> w3schools is generally thought of as being a bad resource. Take a read through http://w3fools.com (there are many other resources, that was just the first one that popped up on Google search). Udacity has a high powered academic faculty. Coursera is another great resource. Both have content that you'll never get from resources like w3schools. Open higher learning is where it's at.
>
>> I like to work alone, and his is an attempt to get others in the OS
>> community to comment.
>
> Working alone is almost always the worst thing that you can do if you're new (or newer) to development, design, user experience or any combination thereof. Surrounding yourself with people smarter than you is the best way to learn and grow. Sure, you can attempt to get some of that over mailing lists and the like, but nothing will *ever* beat in-person environments.
>

This is my prototype portfolio for freelancing. If you have an honest
critique, then what, in your opinion, am I good at?

https://www.odesk.com/users/~01710ac049863018eb


-- 
Best Regards,
David Hutto
CEO: http://www.hitwebdevelopment.com