JasonNeel.com

Project Details

This was my entry into the popular CSSOff contest, “a competition for front-end developers to show off their skills in a no holds barred display of CSS and markup skills”.

This was my first attempt at using the concepts of Responsive Design in a significant project, even with this being only a single-page contest entry. However, the approach I needed to take when developing this fictitious game show’s website has ultimately changed how I approach any front-end development task. Mostly gone are taking measurements of a design in pixels and instead looking at the sizing of elements on the page as a proportion or percentage of the page itself. I no longer look at font sizes in terms of pixels, put instead in relative units like em or rem. Admittedly, this was a bad habit I should have dropped a long time ago.

I also tried to take the concepts of a small screen or mobile first approach when finishing the project. Since I started the project with a Photoshop document seemingly developed with a traditional desktop view in mind, it initially felt much easier to develop for a larger viewport. Once that was in place, I tried to make sure that my CSS was structured in a way that was mobile friendly.

Looking back on the project now, I do see things that could have been improved if I had given myself more time. Specifically, I wish had the opportunity to go back and optimize the images and textures further. That being said, I loved working on this project and I'm excited to see how I faired in the judges’ eyes. (Scores have not been released yet.) Being able to take a well-designed concept that was developed by the guys at Paravel, and creating the markup, styling, and a little bit of Javascript to bring the design to life is something I hope to do more of in my career.