Welcome to the new NOVALISTIC 4.0, codenamed “Sarathos”!

NOVALISTIC N Logo

Finally, after going through numerous on/off periods of development spanning over a year but being worth only a few months of actual work, I am officially relaunching my web development & design site!

It’s been over two years since I was about to launch NOVALISTIC 3.0 “Oltanis”, which failed miserably in the end. But that’s over, because now, here is version 4.0, and with it comes a whole new start.

You might have noticed by now that the site started off really small, despite me having taken so long to develop it. Don’t worry! I intended to start small to let everyone have a feel for the brand new site first, before I start to add, or switch on, the following site-wide features:

• More color schemes for various sections of the site
• A new section altogether at that
• A Mobile Safari-optimized interface for iPhone and iPod touch users (like myself)
• More portfolio features such as filtering, tagging and screenshot galleries
• Inclusion of blog posts in site-wide search
• Other nifty little interface effects

And of course, over the months and years I’ll be adding new stuff to my portfolio as I avail myself for client work and such, so that means more to see.

Not only that, but you’ll start to see new posts here at blog.NOVALISTIC as well. Finally, I’d say, after having lain dormant for months. Articles about web development, more detailed case studies than what you’ll see at my portfolio, new tutorials, and more!

Thank you, everyone who’s been offering me moral support all this while as I pulled through the development of the new NOVALISTIC. You guys rock!

Enjoy the new NOVALISTIC!

Now, I know I’ve been pushing the launch date back many, many times:

1. I’d originally intended to launch in early-to-mid-November 2009;
2. Then I had to push it back to the end of the month;
3. In early December I decided to launch on my birthday;
4. But then things just had to mess up again at such coincidental timings and you could probably say the site was indefinitely delayed for a while;
5. I decided to go ahead and try for February, but quickly realized that was a wrong decision right from the start;
6. So it finally comes to today’s post, a decision made at the very beginning of the month, a decision I will definitely honor when the time comes.

I’d bet that a good number of people might have been completely turned off by all the postponements building up nothing but suspense. I understand how frustrating it feels, so I’d really like to offer all the apology that I can. I’m deeply sorry to keep you all waiting, especially since I was featured on Smashing Magazine, which by the way is still awesome. I promise that my new site will be a refreshing experience for everyone!

So, development hell aside, following are some important things I’d like you to know of before the site launches for real (yes, these are adapted from an older post…):

Main objectives of the site

• Personal online portfolio of my web development work for myself and clients
• Blog for all things web development & design, as well as some other technologies if I may
• Showcase of other projects I’m working on behind the scenes

If you care about my personal life, remember that there’s a blog for that, and a Twitter account for that. I’ve also recently returned to updating my personal blog!

Availability for jobs and projects

I still can’t say for sure that I’m ready for work, since even now that school’s out, I’ve got a lot to think about and work on. However, please feel free to contact me regarding web design work you may want me to do and I’ll think about it and get back to you once I have an answer.

Just remember that I’m still putting schoolwork first!

blog.NOVALISTIC

I will be performing the biggest post purge ever. I’m not too sure yet how I’m going to do it, but you will soon start to see posts disappearing from blog.NOVALISTIC on a very large scale. It’s sad, but I have to do it. It’s because I wish to keep my content fresh, on-topic and of good quality. The past few years of posts have been irrelevant, too short to belong on a full-fledged blog, doing/teaching things wrong, or just generally poorly-written. Therefore they shall be subjected to a very vicious, merciless purge.

Of course, I’ll make up for the disappearance of old posts, now that the site’s relaunching. It’ll be a challenge because I have so many other things to take care of, but I’ll do my best. After all, this blog has been stale for long enough…

Browser compatibility

For prospective clients: this means, ‘will your site look OK in my Internet Explorer?’

If you’re using one that doesn’t have something called tabs, I’m sorry. You’ll probably not see what I designed and expected people to see, but you should still be able to find what you’re looking for.

If you’re on Windows Vista or Windows 7, or not using Internet Explorer at all, the above doesn’t apply.

For fellow web designers: this means, ‘hell yeah, CSS3!’

I know! I’m quite excited to take my design skills to stellar heights There’s no HTML5 though, maybe next time when it’s more mainstream.

The new NOVALISTIC has been tested and found to work correctly (but not always perfectly) on:

• IE7+
• Firefox 3.0+
• Opera 9.50+
• Safari 3.2+
• Google Chrome 2.0+

And I guess that’s about it. See you on March 15! It’s going to be a great month ahead and you can wager that I’m really, really excited for my new site finally coming to life.

The new NOVALISTIC, which I said would launch last month, has now been pushed ahead to January 2010. You can see the change in launch date being reflected in the front page.

What’s on in January 2010?

I previously wanted to launch NOVALISTIC 3.0 on my 16th birthday in 2008. For reasons which I can’t disclose unlike in this post, that never happened. I thought it’d be great to launch version 4.0, and start a freelance career, on the month of my 18th birthday this time.

Why is this happening?

I’ve been presented with a seriously tight schedule of schoolwork, and I have tests the week following when I write this. I’m unfortunately unable to cope with all that load.

Too many other things, some good but mostly bad (i.e. robbed me of at least 2 weeks of development time) have also happened in the month of November, and I need time to recover.

I’m not working on NOVALISTIC full-time. While it is one of my primary projects (after all, it’s my online identity), there are several things we need to bear in mind:

• I’m in polytechnic, which means school projects are aplenty, and I’ll need to devote a good amount of time to schoolwork.
• Although I’m really passionate in web design & development (why else would I want to freelance in this field?), doing paid work is a very new experience for me.

None of that will make a difference to the quality of the work I’ll deliver, however! No matter the constraint, the work I produce will be work that I put in as much effort as I can into, and I’m sure it’ll be a delight working with you, if you’re reading this post as a prospective client.

That’s about it. Thanks for your understanding on this situation, and I’m sure working with NOVALISTIC in the near future will be a great experience for you as a client, and me as a developer!

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