Linda Reedy Artist Site Up and Running

Just finished uploading my prototype for artist Linda Reedy. I ended up (for now) hosting it as an extension of my personal website and am pretty pleased with how it looks. 

I keyed in on Linda's preference for a "quiet" site that features in the forefront the art itself and am pleased with the overall tone and mood of the site. I still need to test it in IE so it's quite possible that there are some issues that still need to be resolved, but the main elements are there as is the structure. 

Homepage Revisions Complete

Last week, I finally had come time to dedicate to many of the revisions to my homepage proposed by others in my Online Publishing class. The final site is accessible here.

One of the major structural changes was suggested by Brett and touched on by Chris. If you visit the site, you'll notice that there has been some major revision of the main menu categories and the way that these main menu links are now consistently presented on the interior pages. Brett's suggestion to better showcase the portfolio work helped me solve a problem I'd been struggling with anyways. Now instead of writing, design, illustration and interactive work all compiled within a portfolio link, each is a main menu item, accessible from any page. As Chris noted, too, there was a discrepancy with which menu items were included on each page. Each page now includes all six major menu items, as well a "brain" icon that takes users back to the home page and helps carry the metaphor throughout the site. 

I also reworked some of the text, and fixed the justified text problem that was causing some shifting and incorrect realignment of other objects. I was also able to diagnose and resolve the issue I was having of the linkable items appearing outlined in hyperlink blue when viewed Internet Explorer but not Safari. I also added in hyperlinks to related information in the text blocks and my resume.

One thing remains... the podcast is currently linked to an html page that contains the podcast (but which you still need to either right-click on Windows or control-click on Macs-the html page otherwise looks like a black white screen) to bring up the contextual menu in order to access the "play" controls. I struggled (unsuccessfully) for hours over the weekend trying to embed a flash player on the podcast page - one that would actually play a podcast and not render as a white box. Will continue to work on this.

Have also been working on the Linda Reedy site and hope to share something from that project here soon.

* there also seems to be a weird color shift on the homepage that wasn't on my Mac's screen last night, but now appears on my Mac at work but not on the Dell computers in the lab... grrr!