My new site - AlexPlank.com

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I know an aspie IRL, a 18 year old high school student who loves public speaking. Me on the other hand is not very comfortable speaking in large groups.

Go figure.

Hi Alex. Your site looks nice. If you're interested in some constructive criticism, though...

(1) I'd suggest you spend some time working with the raw text produced by whatever HTML editor you are using. It looks like one of the Microsoft editors judging by the way it fills the page with inline styles that override the ones defined in the linked sheet. If you moved more of the rendering information into the CSS sheet then both the appearance and content would be easier to update independently.

(2) You've defined fixed sizes for table columns. Although that validates, it's generally considered bad form to optimize sites to a particular screen width. Ditto for absolute font sizes. For example, on my display the web site is centered and horizontally squished even though that causes some cells to word-wrap. Always ask yourself: "What would my site look like on a smart phone or PDA? Will visually impaired people be able to access my site using their screen-reading tools?" If you have access to a text-only browser (like Lynx) it's a good idea to review the page that way, too.

(3) The style used to do the "small caps" in your acting resume is awkward. Rather than specifying a 20pt bold for "P" and 16pt bold for "LANK", you could have simply wrapped "Plank" in a class that specified "font-size: 20pt; font-weight: bold; font-variant: small-caps". That would have the advantage of allowing editors to recognize "Plank" as a single word for spell-checking, etc., and would also cause the rendering engine to kern the text properly. Using your method, my display has an added gap at the font size change so that the text looks like "P...L.A.N.K".

(4) The "skills" list is wrapping so that the text is mixed with the headings. There are several CSS tricks that would fix that. One would be to use a P or LI style that included "padding: 1cm;text-indent: -1cm" so that your list items are all hanging indents if they go to a second line.

(5) Proof-read. Then have someone else proof-read. (You have mis-matched parentheses in your resume entry for "typing skills". The irony!)

(6) Last but not least, avoid "font soup". Most of the site uses a very consistent style and that's a good thing. Your "About" page looks like a lot of cut-and-paste, though, as you are mixing serif and sans-serif within the text, and are using italics for emphasis in some areas and bold for emphasis in others. You also have paragraphs that are different font sizes than the ones around them. Again, if more of the rendering information was moved into the CSS then it would be easier to avoid font soup because you would be using the same styles over and over rather than editing the appearance in-line.

Scary Picture but a nice site Alex. Well Done!!
Keep up the hard work...

well done!

My comments

I like the colours and the overall layout, very businesslike.

I agree with Jetson - I like "stretchy format" websites so I can squish up the columns so I can read them more easily.

I think I'd find your photo easier to look at if you looked away from the camera lens instead of straight at me - a bit over-familiar and confronting and either had a lovely broad grin - if you think your teeth are up for it or a more pensive neutral gaze with no smile, but no frown either. Ok I'm aspie I'm going to say it - your current photo looks smug with the direct gaze and the mona lisa smile.

For some reason - the fonts are all over the place on your about/profile page. As are the colours and decorations on the links. The other pages with consistent size and type fonts looks much better.

And strangely after reading your profile - I still feel I have no idea about your character apart from you like helping people maybe. I'm not sure what would fix this for me. I guess I like Tony Attwood's profile where he puts in a bit about how his wife describes him: single minded, eccentric etc.

From your OdioWorks segment:

Any public servant would be pleased with that murder of the English Language, except perhaps Don Watson who wrote a book called "Death Sentence" about this linguistic abuse. "task" is an noun not a verb. And if you were "tasked with" the task - did you actually do it or was it merely an assignment you ignored. I would replace it with "I developed PHP-based web applications". Or even "I lead a team which developed PHP-based web applications". Unless you really want the big bureaucratic jobs with your project specifications in the same language. http://www.weaselwords.com.au/about%20us.htm

Overall - A much better website than mine, and a pleasant web based business card.

Good for you Alex.