Overall I enjoyed the experience and I like where they are going with this open source project. First off you do not have to use every aspect of the framework. If you would like to just zero out all the elements you can do that, but the real selling point is their customizable grid that you lay everything out with.

The default size is something like 950px which to my mind is a bit too large, however an active community has provided a third party (also open source) solution for making a quick custom grid.

I settled on 750 pixels and began exploring. Going through the tutorial took about 10 minutes and allowed me to grasp most of the functionality. A few more minutes reading the well commented files filled in the gaps.

One problem that I did run into was some browser rendering issues. While my layout looked great in Firefox and Safari, IE refused to render the main column’s background color all the way down the page. It took about 30 minutes to get things working correctly, mostly finding the correct places to put height=100% (on the html, body and center column). I have been using my own framework built over the years which the correct code already built in so this was a bit frustrating.

There are a few default settings that I do not agree with as well:

1. The body has a top margin by default. and while this might be nice for a text only page, almost every site I desgin (and have seen) has it’s content at the very top.

2. Images have a default margin of 1.5em. Once again this works well for a plain vanilla layout, but once you have some design elements worked in this becomes a pain. I would prefer image margins of zero since that is what I use mostly, and I will adjust them as needed.

Overall it was a fun project and I enjoyed learning a new tool. I will certainly continue to use the feature that zeros out all the elements, mixed with my own style sheets. I am not sold on the grid yet. There seem to be a few oddities still in the code, but hey, it is only version .6 and they seem to have a lot of positive momentum. I will certainly be keeping an eye on their progress.

And that is not all: This open source component also allows the playback of AVI, MS-MPEG4 v1 & v2, DivX, 3ivX, H.264, FLV1, FSV1, VP6, H263I, VP3, HuffYUV, FFVHuff, MPEG1 & MPEG2 Video, Fraps and more!

The latest changes to the site are
1. Added a favicon to the site (make sure to download the free open-source exporter for Photoshop to get them to work on the PC).
2. Added a slick ‘to the top’ floating link to the portfolio pages
3. Went in and figured out permalinks so the URL looks nice now, instead of .com/P=3223?
4. Added some new work.
5. Added new flash buttons to the home page with fancy rollovers
6. Registered and figured out how to use feedburner for the blog’s rss

Design Considerations of the Portfolio Section
I mentioned before that I had one reason for doing the new site in such a big format, but I actually have three.

1. I never updated my old one. With the new CMS/Blog engine running the back-end, all I have to do is prep the image and upload it. I also decided not to do any descriptions with the projects, as that would have just allowed me to procrastinate. Upload an image, its title and category, and new work is live!

2. Keep it simple: Instead of having an individual page for every project, I show one long webpage that can be quickly scrolled through. This has its downsides because the portfolio section does have lots of large images. I think this is outweighed by ease of use by my primary audience, creative directors, who on fast connections can get a good grasp of my work quickly.

3. Full-size (or close to it) presentation of my work. The web and digital media is about the pixel, and many times I spend hours getting a sight looking just right in 5 browsers. I want to show the hard work off at full size!

More soon I hope. I am looking to put a Flash section up and add some more work. I am also going to take some time to look at how I can control the order of the portfolio more.

1. Updates: Wordpress is a complete CMS system that I can easily add new work to. As many designers and companies know, the job of updating a website can often fall through the cracks. With this in mind the open and full size portfolio section was born.

2. Blog: In the coming months I will be sharing my thoughts on my favorite techniques, software and interesting tidbits from across the web.