REBOOT LAUNCH: Hi, Mike
Wednesday, May 3rd, 2006 by MR
Saying that this site has taken me a long time is like saying that gas prices are a touch too high, it’s a huge understatement. Phark.net was my personal site before but it wasn’t very functional, it just chilled there, never being updated, never looked at, never cared for. I’ve been planning my new personal site since the beginning of last summer (!!!) but haven’t finished it until now. Here it is, the new himike.org:
There are lots of things that I could say about the design, but I think I’d rather have people check it out and let me know what they think. It’s big, it’s dark, it’s different from what I normally do. It combines posts from this blog and 9rules, has a mini-portfolio, and also has a new linklog called “Hi, Links” (RSS) which should be fun. Basically it’s a lot of eye candy mixed with some useful functionality.
I’ve been designing professionally now for about 3 years, and in that time I’ve never had a personal site that I could say I was proud of, until now. A gigantic thank you goes out to all my readers who have pushed me to become better at what I do, and hopefully you guys will dig himike.org as much as I do.
Reader Comments
19 Responses to “REBOOT LAUNCH: Hi, Mike”
Wow, I’m loving that site, you really have done a good job on it. I won’t go into details because I’m too tired, but it really is looking good.
You must have launched it just after I checked it too, because I’ve been going back to your site over and over again after May 1st and still hadn’t seen anything.
Congratulations on getting it up :)
May 3rd, 2006 at 5:48 am
Minor bug(?): My browser windows need to be fairly strange widths(Firefox, 1040; IE 1060, both Windows) to avoid the right column wrapping under.
Also, you’re triggering the IE double margin float bug on the left column, which would explain the width differences above.
Bit redundant to have the “Site: [sitename]” and then “From [sitename]” headers on entries, no?
May 3rd, 2006 at 6:26 am
Not a bug Su, it’s a wide site. Instead of forcing the width of the browser and dealing with ugly horizontal scroll bars, I decided to just deal with the float wrap.
May 3rd, 2006 at 7:42 am
The header rocks!
May 3rd, 2006 at 7:49 am
Excellent Mike I am glad to see that its up. Heading over now to check it out!
May 3rd, 2006 at 9:23 am
It looks hot! Your header looks like a forest fire. :) Well done!
May 3rd, 2006 at 9:33 am
Haha forest fire, I like that!
May 3rd, 2006 at 10:01 am
Nice work Mike! I like how it’s got kind of a strong visual look but is still really simple and clean. Good job. Also, I’m diggin’ the portfolio, it’s a good snapshot and doesn’t seem like it’d be hard to maintain.
May 3rd, 2006 at 10:39 am
Finally! I’ve been not so patiently waiting for the himike.org launch. :) Though I generally eschew dark designs, the contrast is good and I like the overall style.
By the way, in the future, will it be mashing in Phark postings as well?
May 3rd, 2006 at 1:43 pm
Sweet! Very artistic - and you know what that means coming from me. ;)
May 3rd, 2006 at 2:24 pm
Hm. I’d kinda thought that was intentional. Not sure what I think about it. The width just seems needlessly arbitrary, given it wouldn’t take much to fit the layout within a 1024 window. This only mentioned because it isn’t far enough beyond that to make this seem worth the bother.
The wrap itself when it happens is just awkward(Read: looks kinda broken and not “I meant to do that.”) Overall, it could be handled more elegantly, and not just by reducing the layout. The float wrap itself can be better positioned with a bit of thought.
Maybe the main thing that weirds me out about this is that the actual original content, minor as it may be, is the first thing to get shunted out of sight when someone visits at what is likely your visitors’ most common screen resolution(I doubt 800×600 users are a significant portion.) Just seems like something that would be better served by resolution-dependent styling than choosing an arbitrary width requirement to see things properly.
[Insert standard, "But it's your site." disclaimer here.]
May 3rd, 2006 at 3:08 pm
Looks great, good to see people trying out new stuff. Great colors too.
At first the site reminded me of an action film, as I thought the header was some kind of epic explosion. Now however, I don’t know what it is at all.. :)
May 3rd, 2006 at 5:00 pm
It’s hot:)
Absolutely awesome Mike. Nice work!
May 3rd, 2006 at 7:10 pm
very nice redesign Mike, keep up the good work.
May 3rd, 2006 at 10:06 pm
Very sweet Mike. This is by far some of your coolest work, and the idea of a mash-up site around a single author is a very novel idea. I love the type (as usual) and the grunge is very well integrated.
May 4th, 2006 at 3:06 am
I really like how it looks — the dark background gives it a nice depth, and the softly colored text has a good professional feel.
I agree with Su though, why not make it work in all screen widths? You could make it a fluid layout that has the main and right column widths set in percentages, and it would still look good.
Also, a minor thing: your statscounter ‘hidden’ image at top right has a blue border in my browser, Firefox 1.5/XP.
Great job getting this done — I know how hard it is to design for yourself!
May 4th, 2006 at 3:09 pm
I modified the layout a bit so that columns no longer wrap, the body now has a minimum-width set around 1040px. I do understand that some users don’t have a screen large enough to view the site, however I would rather have a horizontal scrollbar show than to have certain elements wrap or not get shown.
May 4th, 2006 at 3:19 pm
Yet another beautiful 9rules redesign.
Nice work. =)
May 7th, 2006 at 2:54 am
I haven’t noticed any problems while checking the site; I guess you have managed somehow to solve the equation of making a good looking website, while keeping it functional.
May 7th, 2006 at 10:02 am
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