GENERIC TEXT, a preview
work Tuesday 17th of March, 2009
I've been working for a little while now on getting my portfolio site, GENERIC TEXT, back up to standard. Last time I worked on it was mid-2006, right after I finished my degree. In addition to all the new work that I've done since that time, there's also the fact that when I last coded the site, I shared the common graphic designer's opinion that web design == Flash. Obviously, the theme of my work since then has been very much to the contrary, and I felt that my portfolio site should probably reflect this.
Well, it's still going to be a little while until I reveal the full site. But I have put together a fun (and hopefully useful) little holding page until then.
One of the things I've been trying to explore with the new GT site is a combination of all the stuff I love about the web, both past and present. I love standards-based, semantically structured design, and all the advantages that these things bring — portability of data, integration of external tools, the ability to take what you want from any given document. At the same time, I fondly remember the off-the-wall graphic enthusiasm of the pre-standards days (where Flash roamed the earth). You never knew what a site was going to throw at you — and sites like db-db made mental shit into an artform.
Anyway, I wanted my holding page to also reflect this theme, as well as trying out a few new things. The little guy came from one of my prototyping sessions — a simple bit of code, a simple bit of character design, and a mug of hot tea.
I set up a separate Twitter account to provide the content. I wanted to use Twitter for a few reasons:
- It's pretty simple to hook it up as a very basic content management system, which is perfect for projects like this.
- It provides a quick and convenient way for visitors to stay informed with what's happening, or just get in touch with me.
- I hadn't had a chance to use the Twitter API previously, and thought it would be a useful exercise!
It was actually very simple to set up a feed between the Twitter API, a PHP script (which caches the Twitter stream) and the Flash file, thanks to the API's useful ability to output a range of formats. Handily, this includes JSON, which PHP can convert directly to associative arrays, making it extremely simple to sort, store, and serve the data up to Flash.
I also put a fair bit of time into making the alternative content (served to visitors with access to Flash or Javascript) as close to the original as possible. It loses the Twitter interaction (I might put it in at some point, depending on time) but it does keep the look and feel of the whole thing. It's already a definite improvement on the 2006 version.
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