Classwork...

Here's the link to my navbar.

I thought I had breezed right through this but when I actually viewed it once it was ftp'd, I was wrong! :) My buttons weren't aligned properly, but as George said, "It has an artistic appeal to it" Alas, I fixed it, no artsy here just practice! :)

Texture, according to Jason Beaird.

Overall, I really enjoyed this chapter. It gives thoughtful insight on how to use layering effects and pixel gradients to make a page stand out and direct the movement of the viewer's eye around the page to specific focal points. The example images he chose gave justice to his topics. I liked the bouncy feeling of the whimsical style and freshness of web 2.0. Also, I'm particularly glad he took us on a step by step process of how he created his background layer in photoshop. It's always nice to have some insight on how others work and create so you can pick up tips for yourself. I'm always looking for little bits to add to my toolbox. Great chapter!

This one was entertaining. Rollover images. Much easier I'm sure because the images were pre-made and half the work was done for us. But it useful stuff, though I think this is something that should not be used willy nilly, a good tool for the box but not right for all pages, I think, or maybe all this walk of what NOT to do has influenced me a bit too much at the moment. :)

Rollovers

Here are my banner designs.... first drafts of course. I'm getting quite comfortable with fireworks. It's fun to play around in. Though perhaps a bit too addicting, I'm going to miss the sleep I could be getting.

The first one is pretty. It has to do with flowers and pastels, that fresh perfume that seems to overtake the air on a nice spring day when the flowers are blooming and the wind is blowing them around just enough.


The next one is for the wetter part of spring. Those days when you wish you had your umbrella and galoshes. Luckily I've supplied them for you.

I'd be happy for your feed back and can't wait to see what everyone else came up with!

Vincent Flanders and his site that teaches what sucks!

I enjoyed watching the video excerpts immensely. I wonder sometimes if designers don't get caught up in the "look what I can do" state of mind. I think that basically what Flanders (and Nielson for that matter) was trying to say is that just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. I really liked the site he showed for Ear Shades I think it was, it was a completely black screen and your cursor acted as a flashlight until you clicked and the whole thing came into view. I thought that was neat but he was right, if I went to a site and it turned out to be a black page I would think there was something wrong with it and go somewhere else. Internet users are not a patient group. We want innovation that is going to make our experience cleaner quicker and easier, not some flashy coding that is used so the designer can pat himself (or herself) on the back because he is so clever. Web design, especially commercial web design needs to make sense for the end user. Flashy razzle dazzle is meaningless and a waste of time unless it is going to enhance the user experience without sacrificing speed and ease of access.

So about our final project. I've had an idea for my project since I signed up for this class. :) My dad is a photographer (amateur only because he doesn't get paid) and he really needs a comprehensive website where he can share family photos with those out of state and can truly show off his amazing ability to capture these random odd and sometimes extra ordinarily every day scenes. There is so much to add on here and I know that I'm going to have to do a lot of this work by pulling teeth but I'm up for the challenge. He really deserves a good site to display his talent. Obviously there would be a content page showing his different galleries and I was even thinking of having an access controlled section where he can safely put up pictures of our family and have the rest for sale. If anyone is interested in checking out the work he currently displays at a thirdparty site: the greatest photos ever!

Perhaps a bit late but I still wanted to comment on Nielson's articles.

Firstly, "Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design". While all of these things are good to keep in mind, as an internet user I am apt to agree with him most on the points of numbers 7-10. I make a rule to ignore anything that looks like and quack likes an ad. Consistency is key; he puts it nicely in his "Jakob's Law of the Web User Experience". People definitely get their own ideas of how things should work based on other sites. Another point, which harkens back to #7, opening new browser windows is crappy. :) It reminds me of those annoying netflix popups at almost every site I visit. And if I hadn't disabled the pop-up blocker on my work pc, I wouldn't even see these things. Besides since the amazing implementation of tabbed browsing, I don't need anyone opening up new windows on my computer, I know perfectly well how to do that on my own, thank you! :) Also, I HATE when I can't easily find information on a site. For example, I do data entry at my full time job (so exciting) and I need to verify addresses of clients, so I naturally go to their websites. There are more sites (all doctor's offices or clinical research sites) that have their location links/pages hidden or in an obsure location under some strange heading. (an interesting market to approach if anyone is looking to design sites, most are truly awful, but I digress).

In the article "Guidelines for Visualizing Links" I found a few points to be highly useful. Color is so important when making links. It's not something I would initially think about from a design prospective (except how it works with my ideas) but as a user it drives me nuts to see blue underlined text that is not a link or for that matter any text that is contrasting to the main text, especially in the body that is not a link. I find his point on making visited links a dull "used" shade of the unvisited link color very useful, a good way to denote a link, without commanding the presence of a new-to-the-user (unvisited) link.

As far as the "Breadcrumb Navigation Increasingly Useful" to put it shortly: I heart breadcrumbs! (of the hierarchal sort that is) I completly agree that historical breadcrumbs are repetitive to the the back button and history drop down of most browsers (and a bit redundant I might add!). I really think that breadcrumbs are so useful, especially when I'm at some site shopping (when I should probably be doing the above mentioned dataentry) and I utilize the search box and find my self in the middle of a site and don't know how to get back. The breadcrumbs allow me to show the page logic, how things are organized so I can use the site better next time without having to search again, maybe I'll find something else I didn't know I couldn't live without!

I like Neilson's writing style, blunt and unflowered. I chuckled throughout the articles as I recalled many a venture into the internet unknown.

Top Ten
Link Visualization
Breadcrumbs

I've just read the chapter on color. In comparison to another class I'm taking... Color.... it's interesting. Colors are extremely complex and very subjective. Colors schemes really do need to appeal to the target audience and we might not agree on what colors are appropriate... Reading the chapter was very similar to my most recent lecture... Red is this and blue is that but don't think about it too much because it's different for everyone. The traditional color wheel (first drawn out by Newton in the 17th century, though I was sad that Da Vinci wasn't mentioned...) is the best starting tool, and it's always best to try different color combinations out for yourself. There is no mistake better than the one you make yourself.

I got through the classwork easily enough, only a few minor glitches... operator errors or somthing like it :) I kept using the same names for different pictures... and linked two of the girls to the same page... oops I got it all worked out now though.

week 4

Lesson 4
I'm not sure if this was an easy chapter or I'm getting a better hang of this Dreamweaver/Photoshop thing...

Chapter 4

Here's how Chapter 3 turned out. I had a bit of trouble with this one, more like, had some trouble following direction! Stop, slow down, read the WHOLE sentence, go!

Chapter 3

Classwork, week 3! This was fun, I played with the colors and such, kept them pretty uniformed for the whole site. I think I should have played a bit more though.

Kona's Page

I read the first chapter of Jason Beaird's The Principles of Beautiful Web Design. It makes one feel that they could create any site for any body, ever! Then you realize that it's just the first chapter and you still haven't quite figured out how to work all these programs he was talking about! I think I'll just take a deep breath and learn these things, one chapter at a time.

Creating a Site... (ooooh, ahhhh)
Here is the result of making a site with multiple pages... I feel so accomplished! :)

Kona

So I've covered a lot of ground this week... as all of us have in CAT274... Woo Hoo!
We watched quite a few video demos, which were all informative and I'm sure I'll be using them and sending people their way....
To Get Started (in Dreamweaver CS4 that is)
For Workspaces/Views
On Defining Sites
Text/Images
Manage/Upload Sites
Holy Cascading Stylesheets Batman! (to format text)

So about these sites we're experimenting with..
I seemed to have little trouble in class working on the assignments. It's always when you're at home at an un-godly hour and in a stubborn "It's the computer's fault" kind of mood when you have trouble! I figured out what my issue was though... I had trouble viewing my pages through the web browser and couldn't for the life of me figure out why. Then I realized that I was missing a part of the URL... what I had entered was: http://bcts-potomac.aacc.edu/CAT/CAT02/page2.html however what I should have entered was:http://bcts-potomac.aacc.edu/CAT/CAT02/week2/page2.html. Notice the red text... oops! My bad sorry for the frantic string of words I threw at you computer!

My Page2 with links!

I actually finished most of this sometime last week and I don't recall any particular trouble with anything I read in Chapters 1 or 2. The only real trouble I had was with some of the wording, or locating toolbars/icons. That is until I tried to view my creations in FireFox and I.E. I think I need to FTP the photos they use as well. I'm not sure. Other than that I've thoroughly enjoyed working in Dreamweaver.
Below are the links to see my handy work:
Chapter 2
Chapter 1