Bad Website - Part Two

After finishing my website and writing up the analysis, I fell asleep. So, I wasn't able to blog about it after I finished as I had planned, so here it goes.

I really feel like I did this project, and built this website to the best of my abilities, but I can't help but wish that I could have done more. Thinking about it today, I think that if I hadn't been so busy with everything else this week, and had more time to actually plan out exactly what I wanted to do with this project, I could have found ways to make it more annoying. The thought actually never occurred to me to look through some other website's coding, and steal ideas... but I guess now it's a little late to worry about that.

Despite wishing that I could have done more, I still like to think that I did a good job. Finishing this project has really increased my confidence level for the final project. Obviously, I think that it will be a lot harder building a good website than it was building a bad one, but, either way, I'm feeling a lot more confident overall.
After working with dreamweaver more, and compiling a list of ideas for the final project, I really feel like I could make something that I will be proud of.

Bad Website - Part One

This morning I came in for a little extra help with linking my two web pages together for the Bad Website project that is due tonight. It took a while to actually figure out what I needed to do, but, after some time, and with considerable help, the problem was finally solved. This was really the only big issue that I wanted to get done before I started my major work tonight... mostly because I knew that I probably wouldn't be able to fix it on my own, and didn't want to put myself in that situation.

I hate that I haven't really had any time to work on the project earlier in the week, but all of my classes seem to be piling in everything before Spring Break, so what can I say?

So far the project is going pretty well; the website is really, really ugly... but I just wish that I could figure out how to make it a little more annoying. So far I've been able to making the load time for the page a bit slower by simply adding a lot of content, and I've made both pages pretty tough to read with color schemes, but I feel like I'm only able to do basic things.
I feel like I've really been getting the hang of working with dreamweaver a lot better lately, but I still wish that I knew how to do more... hope things turn out well.

UPS

I was reading through the UPS article, and, frankly, it suprises me that so much analysis can go into the changing of this company's logo! To me it seems almost mundane; definitely nothing worthy of a press release... but I suppose its important in its own way.

After quite a long period of time, UPS has finally decided that they need to alter their logo, if only ever so slightly, to keep up with the changing times. I feel like they chose to remove the package from the top of the logo to make the shipping process appear faster... while I don't completely understand the logic behind this, I can see where they're coming from. Perhaps if they have a sleeker-looking design, it will help potential customers to believe that the delivery is sleeker and faster as well?

Nevertheless, I find it interesting that such a successful company has decided to re-design. It shows that they are paying attention, that they must care something about customer's opinions (besides the quality of their service), and this definitely helps to show that they are making an attempt at staying up with the times.

In the Lab

Okay, I'm in the computer lab right now working on my multiple web pages. It's fun! (I have to admit, I was skeptical...) But, on the down side, I have just realized how much time this will actually take me to not only work on my Module 3 for Friday, but also to organize all of my other web pages, decide what I want to do with those, and make changes to the website that I already started working on in class.

I really like working with dreamweaver, but it's a little annoying when I run into problems that I just can't seem to figure out. For example, I was working on my 'Interests and Hobbies' page, and I aligned all of my pictures to the left and right of the screen. I really like how this looks, and I wanted to insert some text to talk about the pictures, but I couldn't figure out how to put the text where I wanted it. It seems like a simple problem to solve, I'm sure that someone could easily explain it to me... but it would just take so much less time if I could figure it out myself!

...but, besides this small problem, I'm really enjoying working with dreamweaver without the time constraints of working in class. (Plus, I feel a lot less stupid when I don't have other students' websites to compare mine to.)

:D Good day!

Again with Dreamweaver...

Looking back through all of these dreamweaver articles that are supposed to be helpful, I still sometimes find myself feeling more confused after reading them. A lot of the terms I don't understand, but I suppose that the only real way to learn them would be to work with the program more often... as much as possible, I suppose.

I think that if I can put aside some time this weekend to really sit down and look through all of these articles, as well as simply playing around with the program, and just trying to work on fixing my website design, that I can probably get a better handle on everything.

I really feel intimidated by all of this. Pretty much this whole class is intimidating... but if I can begin to understand how to use the program, even just a little bit better, I think that things will begin to go a lot better for me.

There. I'm inspired. I think I might just head down to the computer lab right now.... maybe.
:D

Home Page Goals

I liked the artcle "Home Page Goals" because of the examples that it provided.
I thought that the Flickr example was a really good idea; giving new users a different page to view to make site navigation a bit easier is a great idea... it just seems like it might take alot of work. Obviously this wouldn't apply to any site I'll be making in the near future... but I can still appreciate the concept.

I also like the three second rule that the author talked about. "If a first time visitor to your site’s home page does not understand what it is within three seconds, you’ve failed goal number one."

This is definitely a good point. I think that I can definitely put this tip to good use for any site that I choose to design. The only problem might be whether or not I can realize that my site is, or is not doing it's job. This is where some outside advice might come in handy...

I can't believe that I didn't know that we could use computer labs to use dreamweaver! For some reason I never realized this before last Wednesday's class, but now that I have been enlightened, I anticipate making much more progress with the program. I haven't had much of a chance just yet to really get to work with it, but hopefully this weekend I will be able to get in some solid time, because I know that I will need more time that we get in class to work on this Bad Website project.

Hopefully all goes well.

Yesterday when I went over to the computer lab in Hubbard I was able to find the dreamweaver program with relative ease, however I had a bit of trouble finding my afs space on that particular computer. (Probably because I'm not used to using dreamweaver with PCs.) What was strange though was that I was able to bring up the websites that I had begun working on in class, but I couldn't figure out how to open them up and alter them using dreamweaver... but, I anticipate things going better next time.

Reading Design

This article was interesting.

The last time that I was really taught about font, etc., was when I attended a newspaper camp during high school. Briefly, I remember my teacher instructing us about basic fonts on the last day of class. I didn't understand at the time, and am still just barely grasping the concept, of how and why font can be such an important design element.

I've had a little experience with programs like InDesign, but the work that I did was so starkly different from the type of things that we are doing now, that it hardly seems valuable.

I appreciated the tips that the author put at the end of his article, for instance, "letters are not pictures of things, but things," and "words are not things, but pictures of things." It's a strange concept to think about, but I think it makes sense overall... I'm just trying to understand how I can incorporate this into websites that I will be designing for this class.

Paper Prototyping

I really like the idea of paper prototyping, probably because its more familiar to me than simply using web design tools. I understand as well as anyone just how intimidating impressive design ideas can be, and I think that paper would definitely do a good job of levelling the playing field.

I liked the ideas that the author gave for making paper prototyping seem more like actually using the internet: Setting up 'tabs' and 'buttons,' and clicking on 'drop down menus.' I think that if someone were actually thorough enough to go through the motions with this type of prototype, that they could probably get some really valuable ideas brainstormed.

I think that if I could follow the author's advice and actually try creating a paper prototype as well, that it could be very valuable to me as well. I will definitely consider doing this when creating my final project.

Bad Website

I'm excited about the bad website project that we were assigned today in class. Judging from my website-building skills thus far, I should be able to ace this project! j/k

I really enjoyed looking through the list of bad websites today in class as well. The wolf site was truly inspiring.

I'm considering a few different topics at this point, mostly corny things like a site dedicated to unicorns... or, and this is a far more likely topic, a site completely dedicated to the band The Cure. It may not be completely original, but there are a lot of ways that I could envision making this a completely horrendous website. I'm actually excited to get started!

more mail.msu.edu...

In comparing the two websites for the project that was due last night, I really like to think that I learned a lot. I didn't find the project to be quite as frightening as I had originally anticipated, and I think that helps to show that I actually learned something while doing it.

I went back to use some of the resources that we originally used for our tech terms definition list earlier in the semester, and I found that this really helped. As I was nearing the end of my project I really started feeling like things were beginning to come a lot easier to me.

Some of the definitions for terms that I looked up were things that I had never even seen before, things like 'dt', 'p' and 'dd.'

. But after doing this project, I think that I can say that if I come across any more terms that I don't understand, (and I undoubtedly will) that I can feel confident enough to just look them up, without freaking out.

Principles and Elements of Design

I liked the examples that the author used in the article "Principles and Elements of Design." The Zen Garden website seems to have a really great concept, teaching about CSS with different backgrounds that designers/users can choose from.

In addition to just being a darn cool website, the examples really enhanced the article. Without such great visuals, I doubt that I would have understood half of what the article was talking about. As previously stated, I liked all of the examples he used, but I also found it to be very valuable that the author talked about how the page would fit with different browsers.

These four articles about web design seem to be very valuable, and I hope that I can take something from them... or at least remember to refer to them at a later date.

While going through this week's readings I was pleasantly surprised to find that the readings by Sharon Lee were easy to read. I actually enjoyed the layout of her site, as well as what she happened to be writing about. I am particularly fond of her article, 'Human-to-Human Design.'

I like the idea of creating websites that aren't so completely generalized that they don't really work for anyone. When tailoring a website to a specific audience, one does risk excluding other prospective readers, however, if the topic of the website is completely irrelevant to someone who, to use Lee's example, isn't a real estate agent, then that person should be able to find that out before wasting ample amounts of time searching through the site for an answer that isn't there.

--

On a separate note, I also found it rather amusing that in her 'Understanding Web Design' article, that she mentioned Blogger's minima layout, giving prime examples of how the simplest design can be used, altered, and loved by so many different people.

Today in class we worked with dreamweaver. I liked that we were given pretty much the whole class period to play around with the program, and kind of figure out how to use it. I'm sure that there are a lot of things that I still have yet to learn, but it was slightly reassuring to realize that it's really not too complicated of a program to use. I'm actually, maybe, almost, just a little bit excited to start working with it more often.

On a different note, I've been thinking about my final project proposal a little bit. I have an idea to create a sort of online portfolio-resume thingy for myself... but I'm not really sure if that would be what we were supposed to do...

I was thinking that it could be really valuable for me if I were to create an online portfolio of some of my written/published work. (Being a journalism major and all...) I know that when I applied for the State News last semester I had to hand in a whole pile of different clips that I'd written... and I thought that it could be significantly more convenient if I could simply provide an easy-to-use website link for prospective employers to simply click through at their leisure. Of course, it would be incredibly important that this site would be easy to use if a future employer were to look through it. The last thing I would want to do would frustrate someone who is considering hiring me.

I think I'm going to ponder this idea a bit more, maybe think of some other ways that I could create a website that could serve as a final project and (hopefully) double as something that I can show off later.

Web Standards

"Web standards are not arcane laws decreed by ivory-tower organizations. As we have described, the standards are for the most part decided by representatives of the same people who use them - browser makers, Web developers, content providers, and other organizations."

I found this to be an interesting quote, because I wasn't quite sure what the author meant by it. I couldn't decide if he meant this to be a good thing or a bad thing. Considering the first sentence that I placed above, I suppose it's most likely that he sees this as a good thing, and it very well could be... but it seems to almost contradict everything that he's been saying throughout the article. How can web standards help the disabled if people who are disabled aren't having some input in the creation of these standards?

Besides that one paragraph, I essentially agreed with everything else the author had to say, and found it relatively interesting. He even addressed some of the same issues in the Zeldman chapter, like forward-compatibility, and denying portions of a target audience aka accessibility.

Today's class cleared a few things up for me. I didn't feel quite as stupid as I did yesterday after looking through the HTML Dog Tutorial. Some things still confused me, but for the most part, it helped to listen to everyone talk about the Zeldman chapter, and, surprisingly, it also helped when Joy went through the new assignment.

The new assignment seems daunting, but definitely doable. I am a little worried about the fact that we chose to analyze the MSU email site though. It seems like it might not have been the best choice for this new project. We're supposed to look at the 'main' page of the website we analyzed... well, I'm not really sure which page that should be.... But, I guess I'll figure it out.

I'm just worried that I might not find enough information to write a two to three page paper about it!

HTML for Beginners...

I feel really stupid right now, because I didn't really understand what to do for the HTML Beginners Tutorial. I tried saving the 'this is my first web page' thing on notepad.. but honestly, I have no idea how to save something on to my C Drive. I saved it as .html, but was still unsuccessful.

I tried reading through the rest of the tutorial, and it seemed rather straightforward and basic, but, seeing as I was unable to complete the first step, it was tough to follow along for the rest of the tutorial.

This just feels like another reason why I shouldn't be taking this class... but I'll see how class is on monday, and if I can get any of this cleared up. :(