About me
Hello, I'm Sunil Patel (pictured left, not above), welcome to my personal site. I'm 28, have studied physics for far too long, love swimming and have a very creative streak.
I now have a very interesting IT job that keeps me very busy with learning, testing and implementing the latest cool technologies I can get my hands on.
There's lots of good things to see, read and download on here so explore and look around.
My email: web [at character] sunilpatel [dot] co [dot] uk
Viewing this site
This site is best viewed outside, between 03:00 and 15:00 GMT+05, upside down, balancing a cat on the right arm, while playing a banjo using the left foot.
Seriously, there should be no major problems viewing this site on any browser on any OS. Each page validates with the latest W3C:XHTML/CSS standards and has been tested on the following browsers:
As long as you have a modern(ish), graphical and standards compliant browser, or Internet Explorer, everything should be fine. If you notice a page element is not displaying correctly or you are unable to access content, I have been bad and you must scold me.
Accessibility
If a link has a single letter underlined, that is its keyboard shortcut key. Shortcut keys make the site navigation easier if you have difficulty using a mouse. To use the shortcut, you can usually just press the [ CTRL ] key (even on a Mac) plus the shortcut letter, though this can depend on the browser you are using.
This site will look fine and will not break when you increase the text size to HUGE levels (for example, if you have difficulty reading smaller sized text). Most browsers have the option to increase/decrease the default text size to any level somewhere in the browser options.
I have tried to make this site easy to explore and use with each page having breadcrumb navigation, but if you become lost, there is a sitemap and a search page. If you come across any bad examples of usability or borked accessibility, then you need to email me and tell me so I can fix it right away.
Site History
This is the third revision of my personal website and I may have got it right this time. The layout and style is pure css, each page fully validates, there is user feedback via a guest book, a fully integrated search and the whole site has a simple elegance about it. No whizz-bang distractions and no annoying advertising or pop-ups.
It all began with "My Site", version 1.0, and the layout was done using tables (CSS wasn't really around then). At the time I thought it was all the rage and the best thing I had ever made; how things change. I was so naiive back then. For historical records, (and just because it makes me cringe) here is a picture of what the home page used to look like:
It was online for a long time. As my design skills, knowledge and experience improved, I noticed it began to look old, tired and simply out-dated. Eventually, I had to do something about it and started work on "My Site", version 2.0. It was a first real attempt at a CSS and web standards layout and took a lot of learning and trial and error. In the end, I ran out of time and inspiration. After only a few pages, the project was stopped - it never went online. For the record, the home page looked like this:
A while later, I was bitten by the creative bug again and so I fired up Dreamweaver and really settled down to business. The result is "My Site", version 3.0, and is the third total re-design and hopefully this one will be here to stay for some time. The site is not quite complete yet and there are a few things to finish off. The list of tasks remaining and possible future developments are:
: Design Portfolio needs to be built and brought online
: Picture Galleries also need to be created and uploaded
: Test text scalability for each page
For a less vague "To Do" list, you can look at the site Forge. I will eventually get round to finishing some of these tasks when I have a minute...
Roll Credits
Though I wrote most of this site myself, not all the code or images are my own. Here is a list of credits where you can find the places where I nabbed the pretty pictures, code and art from:
- The beautiful icons you see littered around the site are from Alexandre Moore
- The header on the "Links" page is an art photograph by Pearl John
- The Europe map on the "Overview" page comes from NASA Visible Earth
- The cool way large images display is down to LightboxJS by Lokesh Dhakar
- The Google based "Site Search" page comes from Dan Karran
- Email addresses are protected using a modified JavaScript Obfuscator from Joe Maller
- The beautiful header images at the top of many pages come from Matthew Heaton
- The guest book system is powered by Powered by DRBGuestbook, available here
This site was made using Dreamweaver and Fireworks plus lots of other small tools and apps on my iMac. I hope you enjoy browsing this site as much as I enjoyed building it.