PlanetUSF

Originally I wanted to use rollover buttons in my menu but did not know how. Creating the buttons was easy as I have done that before several times for other projects. I have found that printing the screen once you get the button right is a good way to have all the size/color/font info hany for the other buttons. Otherwise you can go insane.

I adding three audio files to my site using and embedded “widget” so the file has it’s own player. Only problem is that the visitor can play all three at once which can sound very odd. These are my own songs so I gave myself permission to use them.

I want to work more in these areas if I can manage the time. I will keep the class materials for future reference and try to keep working on my websites to improve them.

I’m writing this during a break at the blended session. I’ve seen lots of great design examples so far. It is amazing how creative we all are if we just would give it a try.

I love typography site has a simple design with a white background and black lettering. It is easy to navigate and has an extensive list of articles about typography.
Typographica is another site with a simple design. The site displays many different fonts that are very unique.
Microsoft Typography is an excellent source of information with the history and development of typographics, links, articles, events and free tools. The variation of color in the banner is interesting.
ABC Typography allows the user the select different types of fonts which gives multiple examples and a history of that font. The different categories in the navigation bar matches the pages in color.
Alistapart: Typography has a simple design and extensive list of articles about code, content, culture, design and user science.
Typographic is divided nicely into categories like evolution, timeline, anatomy, glossary and a bibliography with book and web resources.
Design Snips has a great logo and another simple layout. The site also give an extensive list of design elements with excellent examples. Lots of really advanced designs.
All these site have a very simple but well laid out designs. They highlight the content and not fancy design.

Pricinples of Beautiful Web Design chapter 5 is about imagery. Photographs and illustration act to draw in the user and help them move around the site. It makes the site look more appealing. Photographs can be taken by the site’s creator, obtained from stock photographic sites or purchased from a professional photographer. Photoshop can be used to enhance the look of the photograph by cropping it and adjusting the color.
Chapter 13 in Creating Web Sites talks about how web sites can make money. Instead of creating the physical store, an e-commerce site can be a cheaper alternative. The visitors can view the site products and then purchases whatever they like. Selling products is the best way to make money on the web but sites can also take donations, show advertisements or take part in a affiliate program which refers users to other sites for a commission. Google and Amazon both have affiliated programs for users.
Chapter 14 discusses JavaScript and DHTML. JavaScript enhances HTML pages with all its interactive features. It works well for pop-up windows, marquee style scrolling text and buttons that light up. Google and Amazon use server-side applications. The advanced software that powers these giants search massive databases for the users requested information. Client-side application are less powerful programs that work within normal HTML. Dymanic HTML writes code and controls the look and location of all the HTML elements.

I spend three hours trying to add a RSS news feed to my home page. I tried lots of types but few worked well enough even to consider. I don’t know if I’ll mess with this further but I do want something dynamic on the main page.

The text chapters on Google Adsense and Amazon Associates was a big help to me. I have used eBay/Paypal before and it was not difficult. Both Google and Amazon are good ways to help fund a site and if the content is valuable it will drive more folks to your site.

Okay…
This was mentioned at orientation so I’m trying it out.
Hi. I’m Kat and I’m starting USF this summer.
I’m really nervous and I suck at making friends <3
So please be nice to me ….

I work for Student Government now as the Assistant Comptroller of Travel. It’s a good job and I enjoy it, although it’s a bit complex. More details to come.

Ones I liked;

15 Examples of Excellent Web Typography - This was good in that there was something specific and limited in scope.

Microsoft Typography - Nice clean site. Even though it MS, you ot to keep on top of what they are up to. the Web imbedded fontstool looked interesting.

ABC Typography - Who would not like this site. I got lost in the descriptions of the historical type faces.

A List Apart: Typography - Nice blog format. I found the CSS Ten Year report interesting.

TypoGraphic - I love time lines, they are a great visual concept tool. I also liked how the menus were done at the bottom of each page.

Digital Magazine - Another clean site. Reading it made me think of how the Web and CSS are taking font creation from a printing industry trade secret to a populist art form.

Noupe.com: CSS Tutorials - Seeing this again made me think that even though MicroSoft is the leader in browser installations they are also they leader in web design bugs. I’m liking MS less every day.

DesignSnips - Different focus here in they mention snips of various sites that they like. Shows how there is so much variety on the Internet and so many ways of looking at the pages.

Ones I did not like;

NONE!

Neutral;

I Love Typography - Obviously a great resource of fonts and news but the layout I found “busy”.

Typographica - Would not open.

Turns out I think my flash drive is going buggy. I can get to Dr. Simon’s page without the error if the flash drive is not installed. Time to get another one.

Urban Dirty had a black background with white lettering. This is very dramatic! It had a simple navigation bar that enables the user to view free textured photos of surfaces. An extensive collections of photos. This site linked to Grunge Texture. This site has a great color scheme. It fits well with the site. It is neat how the content part of the site is on what appears to be a piece of paper. Though it’s nicely set-up, Texture King was more commercial looking than the other texture sites. It sells shirts to advertize the site. Deviant Art Textures has a pleasing gray scheme which in a way does not match the dramtic mature of the vast photo collection. Best Texture Flickr Group has a very simple layout with an all white background and blue and pink lettering. The site is filled with incredible photos. Photoshop Tutorial on Creating Textures has a dark brown background a tan colored background for the content area and red and black lettering. The site contains blog designs in various categories. 2007 Web Design Trends has numerous examples of web sites with incredible texture. Some example are minimal design and dark backgrounds.

Chapter 4 in Principles of Beautiful Web Design discusses typography or communication. The site communicates with its users through the use of type or lettering. This means fonts. Much like color, fonts can convey different moods and meanings. Certain fonts go with certain sites. Some fonts are formal and some are not. Some fonts are safe to use and are compatible with various systems, and they are Arial, Arial Black, Comic Sans, Courier New, Georgia, Impact, Times New Roman and Verdana. Anatomy of type describes how letters are place on an imaginery line that we write on. This can be typed or handwritten. Letters made into word can be adjusted both horizontally and vertically to enhance readablity.
Creating Web Sites chapter 11 talks about attacking visitors. The site must be completed first before the creator should start looking for visitors. The creator needs to look for similar or related sites and start up reciprocal link agreement. The site should be connected to internet directories and search engines. To keep visitor coming back, the site should be updated regular and this means weekly or monthly. It is also important to know who’s visiting your site.
Chapter 12 talks about how a site’s visitors can talk to the site/creator and each other. Through discussion boards and chat rooms, visitors can communication their feelings. Updates should be communicated before after any changes are made. Visitor email, forums and groups are all vital links to the site. Feedback from users is an important tool.

This video of Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor speaking is absolutely amazing. [BTW all of the TED talks are great]

I appreciate her honest emotion so much, particularly b/c it helps me understand my best friend Sarah’s recent stroke [chronicled here on NOLA.com] and once again feel completely optimistic that she will recover 100%!

In adding a link to Dr. Simon’s website I noticed an error box pops up. Seems to happen no matter what direction you are comming from. I snagged a picture of it and forwarded it in an email in case it is something with the USF side.

My web project is moving forward as I create content for the pages. Not having much trouble now that I have templates made for the main page and the sub-pages.

I still have lots of work left but it is starting to look like a “Web Site”.

In looking into current use of textures and backgrounds I found a lot of inspiration for other sites I may do in the future. The urban and grunge styles were very interesting in use of color, texture, and balance.

My web project is proceeding better now that I settled on a visual theme. Now I am beginning to work on content, links, and subpages. One hassle is that notepad has no spell checking and if I open an HTML file in Word, it goofs it all up. So I made a temp.txt file to creat paragraphs. Then I can open the txt file in Word, run the spell checker, and it does not modify the text other than corrections.

This information was very helpfull to me. In the past, there was much mystery in my mind as to what to focus on in promoting a web site. I think the concept of investing most of our time in making the site as top notch as possible is valid and next concentrating on community/communication. The sites that I frequent the most are ones with an active discussion board and regular updates.

Colorsontheweb.com was a great site for defining color usage for web sites. The site used color well to define differenet areas on the site. It also had a double menu near the top of the page. It provides lots of information about color on the site as well as many links to outside sources of information. The site and Principles of Beautiful Web Design work well together to provide a wide range of information about color. The Color Contrast Analyer was a handy tool for viewing color combinations and how different color lettering appears on a certain background. Also, I liked the helpful hints about which color ranges will work best on the web.

Texture is the topic of chapter 3, in Principles of Beautiful Web Design. Texture give the design or specific objects on the site a certain “feel or appearance.” Points make up all the graphic items on the site and lines can convey movement. A lines thickness adds character and can separate different areas of the site and create borders with varied colors and patterns like stripes. Light, shadows and where different objects on location all give graphics and text boxes added texture.
Chapter 9 in Creating Web Site discusses invisible tables. These table help align text, pictures and headings. Cell spans allows a specific cell to enlarge to encompass multiple columns or rows. Borders separate content on the site but should not be used for every area and color can also work well to divide up different areas.
Chapter 10 in Creating Web Sites discusses frames. Frames allows the designer to show multiple web pages in the same browser. Frame set lets the designer divide up browser window into specific rows and columns. The scolling feature appears when content of a page is larger than the size of the frame.

My new web project design is really coming together. Last night I worked on it, tweaking one element at a time (sometimes with undesired effects). I also worked with the Glassy Buttons site to create the basis for a new logo. I made a large rectangular button in the same colors as before, but without text. Then in GIMP I added text layers and aligned them to be balanced. I kept my other small logo for now but may try scaling the big one down to see if it looks “better”.

Some of the designs of the template I’m using I think I will drop. For now I just either take out the content, make the section a comment, or remove it altogether because it’s not the last one.

Next I will begin collecting data for the content and links.