Michael's Blog

This unit has been very interesting for me. Before I didn’t know much about web design and...

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 08:39:53 -0400

This unit has been very interesting for me. Before I didn’t know much about web design and after taking this unit I have learnt a lot more about it, especially css (cascading style sheets). I am looking forward on doing more web design in the future.

Website

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 08:31:42 -0400

My website is finally up on the internet!!!

I’m sharing my friends hosting service and I have placed my website on the back of his website.

Below is the link to my Stonefest website.

http://msolon.cdfreelance.com.au

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 08:23:16 -0400

http://msolon.cdfreelance.com.au

Blog Theme

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 06:48:29 -0400

This is the final design of my blog theme. I applied one of the tumblr blog themes to my blog and then used the custom html to modify it to the way I wanted it to look. To upload my images I hosted them on www.imagehosting.com. Below is the link to the original blog:

http://rworks.org/

This is a tumblr theme I just applied to my blog which I really like and I most likely will use this...

Wed, 27 May 2009 05:24:23 -0400

This is a tumblr theme I just applied to my blog which I really like and I most likely will use this template for my blog theme because it’s really nice and neat.

Web 2.0

Wed, 20 May 2009 02:44:14 -0400

Web 2.0 is the second generation of web development and design. Web 2.0 is a concept of the development of web communities, hosted services, video and music sharing websites, blogs, social networks, etc. Social networks and blogs such as Facebook and Twitter, allow people to generate and control content, in which they form communities. These Social network websites are very similar and rely on the ability of people to easily generate and retrieve their content and to present it in an appealing way. You can also make different interfaces using data from the above web communities such as Mash ups. Mash ups are a way to change various concepts of web 2.0 into hybrid forms. It involves exploiting the API by using the same data and presenting it in a different way.

Website

Mon, 11 May 2009 01:32:39 -0400

My website is pretty much done. My website contains nearly everything that is required in the unit outline except for some things like sub pages and a page fragment. This is because my website has being design to not scroll so therefore I can’t apply these to it.
Along the way of developing my website I learnt about position: absolute. I found it interesting how you were able to move div tags around the document like layers when applying position: absolute. This method of positioning seemed to have more too it because it is really simple how you can easily move things around. The problem that I found about it was that when you open the document in the browser, what ever had position: absolute would not stay in the position I wanted. This problem always happened everytime the size of the browser was different. This problem kept happening even though the div tags were inside a wrapper but I then found out the way to solve this problem. Everytime you would move something with position: absolute in css it would make a left style which cause it to change positions in the browser. So if you delete that style then it will not move and then you just need to adjust the margins and padding.
Now that most of my website is done i’m sure there will be a few minor things I will need to adjust for it to be completely fine but shouldn’t be a problem.

Lecture 6

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 04:37:47 -0400

Week 6 lecture was about Web Publishing. There is an important aspect of the term traditionally referred to the distribution of books and newspapers, and now publishing has expanded to incorporate the Internet and other digital information systems. Electronic books, resources, videos, music, periodicals, blogs and other similar kinds of media, have also been part of the distribution of publishing. The Internet allows publishing of a vast area of media where as Web publishing is media that is accessed through the web browser. To publish files on the web you need a web hosting, and a domain name (url). Both of these are independent.

The ideal for moving files across a network is a FTP (File Transfer Protocol). Web browsers aren’t the way to upload web files. You get a dedicated program that works with the FTP. Programs such as Dreamweaver have FTP functionality already built in.

Week 5 Lecture

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 04:56:22 -0400

Week 5 lecture was about information architecture. In 1976 Richard Saul Wurman coined the term Information architecture. Louis Rosenfeld and Peter Morville describe information architecture for the web in 4 ways:

The combination of organization, labelling, and navigation schemes within an information system.
The structural design of an information space to facilitate task completion and intuitive access to content.
The art and science of structuring and classifying websites and intrants to help people find and manage information.
An emerging discipline and community practice focused on bringing principles of design and architecture to the digital landscape.

From my understanding, information architecture is planning and structuring of your website in regards to how everything will work.

Richard Saul Wurman also describes a way for organising content called LATCH:

L) Location

A) Alphabet

T) Time

C) Category

H) Hierarchy

This will help to decide what you want and how you want things to be found on your site. There are different classification processes that can be applied to websites.

Below is my design draft. It doesn’t look much like the websites in my design reference but it does...

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 03:19:31 -0400

Below is my design draft. It doesn’t look much like the websites in my design reference but it does have some design elements from them. Because this is the first design draft I made, I’m sure there will be some modifications to it.

Photo

Sun, 22 Mar 2009 20:26:00 -0400

Here are some interesting points in lecture 4 about why code is important HTML/CSS =...

Sun, 15 Mar 2009 03:56:46 -0400

Here are some interesting points in lecture 4 about why code is important

HTML/CSS = Code

(X)HTML is used to describe the content in a web page and CSS describes how you want that content to look.

Working with code provides better results

Design softwares that don’t involve code such as Photoshop can be described as WYSIWIG (What you see is what you get) editing.

HTML 5 can use video and audio elements

To achieve stability in all browsers, careful consideration of code is needed

It is efficient to have clean, compact code with smaller files which download quicker

Web standards is the best way to make accessible web pages with clean semantic HTML and will also improve search results

Longevity can be improved by the understanding of code

Knowledge of code can help you with concepts and construction

Design References

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 04:35:31 -0400

7 Characteristics

Style

The style in all these websites has different grunge elements, which gives the design a more realistic, genuine look, a look you would expect to see in real life.

Colour

Most of the colours in these sites are dull or dirty colours such as black, grey, and brown. Even though these colours don’t necessarily look the best, they have a more natural and subtle feel.

Content

The content in all these sites are different. The contents are comedy, outdoor adventure, music, art, and personal. Even though the contents are different, they all have a similar style.

Sections

The main menus are located on all of the sections, which are all linked to each other. Flash websites usually have one main page, which has links to sections that show in one area of the page.

Simple Layout

The layouts are fairly simple in that there’s a grungy background. The header has the title of the website and an image. Below the header, these websites have 2 or 3 columns, and at the bottom is the footer that also has some kind of grunge or plain look. It is common for the main buttons on the pages to be below the header but now a lot of websites place them in various areas of their sites. Usually in websites the main information is in one column with images, and links/dates/brief information is in the other.

Navigation

The navigation in all these websites is easy and common sense. The websites that have information squeezed in are a bit confusing for the reader and forces people to think while navigating.

Title Location and Visibility

All the titles in these websites are located at the top left of the page except for one that is located at the top in the middle. This is common in nearly every website you see because you read from left to right and top to bottom so when people first look at a website they want to make sure what the site is first.

Photo

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 04:29:14 -0400

www.teamgreenonline.com Team Green is an outdoor adventure club in Tennessee, USA. This website has...

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 04:28:47 -0400

www.teamgreenonline.com

Team Green is an outdoor adventure club in Tennessee, USA. This website has a “handwritten notes and paper clips” trend and it reflects the subject matter that it relates to. The photo slideshow in the top right corner is eye catching because it looks like it’s a pile of photos stacked on top of each other. The layout is fairly simple but has a lot of text and images, which looks jammed in but still appears neat and tidy.

Photo

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 04:28:13 -0400

www.killswitchengage.com This official Killswitch Engage website has a grungy feel which relates to...

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 04:27:27 -0400

www.killswitchengage.com

This official Killswitch Engage website has a grungy feel which relates to their hard rock/heavy metal music. The skull image in the background definitely grabs your attention and the florals in the Killswitch Engage logo and background are very appealing. The navigation looks unique but is too small and isn’t very noticeable.

Besides that I really like the grunge style in this website which I want to use for my website.

www.dotcomedy.com This is a comedy website that provides web videos of comedy from TV shows, movies...

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 04:25:28 -0400

www.dotcomedy.com

This is a comedy website that provides web videos of comedy from TV shows, movies and other sources. This website also has a grungy feel and a dirt look. The navigation for this website is a bit confusing because inside the header are links to different videos and the main navigation is just above on the right which doesn’t make them stand out for the viewer. Besides the header, the layout is simple but the colours just make it look a bit messy and dirty.

Photo

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 04:25:00 -0400

Photo

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 04:25:00 -0400