Minor Updates on Visualgui

The main navigation for Visualgui has been reworked on small screens to allow more contents showing up on mobile devices. As much as I liked the colorful menu on the previous version, this is more user friendly.

FancyZoom, which being used mainly on the graphic section, is replaced with FancyBox2. FancyZoom worked well for what I needed, but has not been updated since 2008. In addition, FancyZoom doesn’t work with Infinite Scroll, which are used on both sites and motion. FancyBox2, on the other hand, has been reborn with CSS3, responsive design and integrated slideshow. The script loads faster than the previous version and works well with Infinite Scroll.

FancyBox2 is now also used to open Flash files on the motion pieces to improve the user experience. Infinite Scroll breaks the back button; therefore, visitors would lose their spot if they click to view a slideshow. Now they just launch FancyBox and close it when they are done viewing. This is also an issue for the site section and the easiest solution is to open a new window. I know that opening a new window is not recommended, but it makes sense in this case. Users go off my site to see the work I have done and then close the browser when they want to get back to my site for more samples. This method makes much more sense with Infinite Scroll.

I haven’t thought of a major redesign for Visualgui. I did a realign a year ago and still enjoying the simplicity of this site. It allows me to do what I would like to do: showcase my work, add new graphics weekly on the homepage and just write. As you can see, I write quite a bit on this blog and I hardly reread for grammar mistakes. I would love to because every once in a while I reread some of my posts and I can’t even figure out what I had written, but time is nothing I have plenty of these days. With two kids, the only free time I get is from 11pm to one in the morning. At that time, my brain is half asleep and half fried. As a result my posts are not as polished as I like them to be, but I still appreciate the ability to just write.