Tribute Page to David Foster Wallace

This is my first ever attempt at coding and it’s pretty addictive so far. I enjoy the problem solving aspect to it even though it can get frustrating at times. I borrowed some JQuery script to make my embedded video an image until clicked–to improve load time but I can’t seem to get the play button (i.imgur.com/TxzC70f.png) to display over the image. Apart from that, I would love feedback and suggestions. Thanks. Here’s my Tribute Page!

Update: something happened last night when I tried re-loading my page and the images simply wouldn’t load. I can’t tell if they’re loading for other people or not. I thought it might have been the image hosting site postimage since they’ve been having troubles lately but I tried using a source from imgur and couldn’t get them to load either. If you know what’s going on with my page, I would appreciate some clarity.

3 Likes

Well done for first time. Some suggestions:

  • I would add some margin between the portrait photo and the top of the page.

  • Break up the big paragraph into smaller sentences.

Cheers

Hey McDowdy,

I think it is a fine tribute page, you’ve gone above and beyond the call of duty!
The fonts, images with shadows, really nice touches.

All I can say is, like doubleUTF, I think the paragraph detailing DFW bio could be broken up into smaller sentences - or at least spaced or presented in a cleaner way.

But, serious excellent work for your first coding project.

Good luck and happy coding

1 Like

Thanks. I’ll try to clean it up a little bit. Do you simply mean syntax or style & formatting? If pressed for a specific detail change, what would it be?

Thanks again for checking out my work.

Simply the way it presents, or the typography.

Like, as simple as changing:

Born 1962 in Ithaca, NY and raised in Illinois, David Foster Wallace–latterly known simply as DFW–self-identified as a regionally ranked junior tennis player in his teens. While earning two BAs for Philosophy and English at Amherst, David Wallace wrote what would become his first novel, The Broom of the System, as his senior English thesis. He received an MFA from the University of Arizona in 1987 and briefly pursued graduate work in philosophy at Harvard University. His second novel and magnum opus, Infinite Jest, was published in 1996. While teaching creative writing at Emerson College, Illinois State University, and Pomona College, Wallace published several short story collections, including: Girl with Curious Hair, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, Oblivion. In addition to short fiction, Wallace also published to great acclaim, numerous essay which became the collections: A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, and Consider the Lobster. He was also awarded the MacArthur Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Award, and a Whiting Writers’ Award, and was appointed to the Usage Panel for The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. He died in 2008. His last novel, The Pale King, was published posthumously in 2011.

To:

Born 1962 in Ithaca, NY and raised in Illinois, David Foster Wallace–latterly known simply as DFW–self-identified as a regionally ranked junior tennis player in his teens.

While earning two BAs for Philosophy and English at Amherst, David Wallace wrote what would become his first novel, The Broom of the System, as his senior English thesis. He received an MFA from the University of Arizona in 1987 and briefly pursued graduate work in philosophy at Harvard University.

His second novel and magnum opus, Infinite Jest, was published in 1996. While teaching creative writing at Emerson College, Illinois State University, and Pomona College, Wallace published several short story collections, including: Girl with Curious Hair, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, Oblivion.

In addition to short fiction, Wallace also published to great acclaim, numerous essay which became the collections: A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, and Consider the Lobster. He was also awarded the MacArthur Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Award, and a Whiting Writers’ Award, and was appointed to the Usage Panel for The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. He died in 2008. His last novel, The Pale King, was published posthumously in 2011.

Just simply breaking up that abstract about content from a wall of text into several, smaller, manageable paragraphs might do your viewers some justice!

Other than that, you might find a sweet serif font to apply to it? Browse Fonts - Google Fonts
That’s up to you though!

Cheers, Allan

Awesome. Thanks. Saw your research on games and autism. Looks pretty sweet! Keep it up.

Quick question: do the images for my page load for you? Ever since last night they stopped loading and I can’t figure out why. I didn’t mess with any code that would’ve made them phase out.

It was working this morning, but checking just now, the banner image with DFW is no longer displaying.

It might be the case that the fault is with whoever is hosting the image? I know I had some issues with displaying imgur hosted images on my own tribute page.

Good luck!