Rodrigo Fernandes
Why this website is so simple
Why not?
My first personal website was a Nextjs app. It was as simple as this one, though I had some projects on it for which I actually needed React. I decided to build this one for a few reasons.
You don’t get lost in it
No one spends that much time in your website. When they land on it, they have to have some familiarity with it’s UI. Otherwise, they end up getting lost or fed up with it.
The UI here is simple. There’s no footer, popup or anything distracting from the main content. The navbar is very simple.
I’m not a fan of the fancy websites
That’s just an opinion I have. I’d much rather visit a website that is very simple HTML + CSS than one with fancy animations.
There’s obviously a lot of impressive stuff out there. The best one I’ve ever seen is this one by Bruno Simon. The level of creative and coding skill necessary to do this is mindblowing.
However, most of the time it’s just fancy CSS animations that the author probably found online. Or worse, a bunch of laggy JS animations.
Since I don’t sell myself as an amazing designer, I just stick with the engineering side. I think this website reflects that.
Seeing how far Astro can go
As of 2024, I’m testing how far I can go with Astro. It supports frameworks like React, but only when you need it. If you don’t, they’re not downloaded.
I was partly inspired by Pieter Levels approach. If he can create powerful SaaS projects using jQuery, maybe Astro can also do it.