Ringing in the New Year
Hello, and welcome to the newly redesigned enjoy|smile. I've always played with the previous version of the site while I was bored, letting it grow organically and gradually changing the design- but I'd had enough. I decided I needed to do something radical, something that would redefine the site and set the approriate tone for what it actually is.
Less if Always Better
... at least when you're trying to get your point across. I've spent many hours nailing down the best way to bring you content while not hiding important bits of imformation to the corners of the site. What you're looking at is an extremely minimalistic website governed by one and one-half handfuls of css rules. I took it a step further by abstracting my css classes properly so most elements are styled by just four css classes. This is only possible because of the ability to give multiple classes to one element.
Learn to Love JavaScript
http://enjoysmile.com/content/image/lovejs.jpg
I used to hate Javascript. It had its place: for asnchronous data transmission on a webpage, but I highly underappreciated the power of Javascript for presentation. I've made use of several libraries that take advantage of jQuery including prettify, masonry, and fancybox. This site is proof that Javascript for presentation can work on a minimalist design with graceful fallbacks for non-capable clients. Apart from presentation, Javscript is a key player in the future of the web. Used widely in most, if not all Canvas, WebGL, and Video components, Javascript is an important tool and essential knowledge for any web developer trying to keep current.
Not Just a Redesign
enjoy|smile has extended its functionality even further. Blockquotes now look and function like blockquotes. Every page is valid HTML5. Subheaders have been added for better post organisation.
<enjoysmile>
<changelog>
<feature>Automatic syntax highlighting in code samples</feature>
<feature>Featured section</feature>
<feature>Headlines to quickly jump to an article</feature>
<feature>New contact options</feature>
<feature>URL slugs for SEO</feature>
<fix>Removed ugly colour palette</fix>
<fix>Allowed bbcode markup on portfolio pages</fix>
</changelog>
</enjoysmile>
Focus on Content
I don't mean it in a design sense, but I will be focusing a lot more on the actual content provided here. I've been doing a lot of work on the web and I know people will benefit from my shared experience. There are a few good pieces in the queue, but the design and capabilities of the site weren't there. enjoy|smile has also received a huge increase of traffic thanks to a comment posted on reddit, so more useful posts will be created in hopes to draw more regular visitors. Content is King, isn't it?