This week our Web Tech assignment was to review a website by another student. I got assigned to this portfolio website by Louis van Maurik. The review won’t be published here for privacy reasons, but I can say that I was rather impressed by the overall package. The site was build from the ground up using HTML, CSS, and Javascript, and as someone who uses wordpress it really impressed me what Louis was able to do. He also adhered to a very minimalistic design language which really spoke to me.
The page that impressed me the most was a page where you could play an actual iPhone game on a virtual iPhone next to some text about it. Unlike the rest of the website, this wasn’t made fully by Louis in HTML which makes sense because it’s very complicated. He used a tool called Marvelapp (in which he made the game a long time ago as well) and implemented it to the right of the information about it.
While investigating the Marvelapp page I found a jquery plugin through the inspect feature. This seems to be used for the read more/read less feature in the blog section.
Writing the review showed me just how different portfolio sites can be, and moreover what you can accomplish with just code. I felt somewhat intimidated by the premise of building a whole website on my own, which is why I gravitated towards wordpress. However taking a good look at Louis’ page showed me that there is certainly something to be said for building everything yourself. Of course you learn more that way, but also it feels more genuine and you can implement way more of your own style and features. Now I won’t be switching anytime soon, but if I had to start again from scratch I would probably try to build it all by myself.
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