Color and texture

The more I read The Principles of Beautiful Web Design, the more I like it. It seems to have a lot of information that is interesting in and of itself, not just the way it relates to web design. The chapter on color is particularly interesting. I liked learning about color psychology and the color wheels. I had heard about such things before, but didn't really understand them. (The Blogger site right here is a good example of color contrast between orange and blue, no less!) Same, with the next chapter on texture, and its discussion of shapes, patterns and light and shadow, all important things to keep in mind when designing anything.

Unfortunately, this text is still limited to what it can offer a web designer. Its content is helpful only when you start the design process, it won't show you how to begin. For that, you'll a technical manual like Creating a Web Site or Learning Web Design. I plan to keep all these texts and use them as I dabble in web design in the future.

Review

I've been looking back over the texts from the class, Creating a Website: the Missing Manual and The Principles of Beautiful Web Design to try and compare them and how they present similar material. In all, I'd say that Principles focuses more the visual elements of web design (how things look in your website), and The Missing Manual focuses on the mechanical aspects.

The first chapter in Principles, "Layout and Design", talks about how to make a web page look aesthetically pleasing by the arrangement of features on the web page. It even references the the Golden Ratio, used by painters and sculptors for centuries, to achieve this end. I thought this was a nice touch. The Missing Manual discusses some of the same things in Chapter 9, such as liquid- versus fixed width formats (or proportionate vs. fixed width, as this text puts it) and columns in web pages, but it talks more about the tags needed to adjust the height and width in tables and other technical issues.

I think this technical aspect is what makes this text somewhat hard to follow. Don't get wrong, I have learned a lot from this book, the chapter on tags was especially helpful when I was first designing my web page, but the dry content makes it difficult to stay focused on reading it.

Speaking of my web page, I'm almost finished. I've decided to add an extra page combining information about me and my commentary to my website and a footer with copyright and contact information. It shouldn't be too hard to get this done by Monday.

Endroad

Well, I've done everything I needed to for my website and it looks about the way I had envisioned it. I just need to add a commentary page before I hand it in. I don't what else, if anything I should add to it. Perhaps there will be suggestions at the meeting tonight.

I've at some of the websites on Blackboard. Some of these advanced topics I'm already familiar with from taking Instructional Media last semester, like mp3 files. I created a short commentary as an mp3 using Audacity. Flash programs I am somewhat familiar with(I have used the Flash player to play videos from the Internet), and scripts are a bit new to me. I shouldn't surprised that there are search engines that can search for both Flash and script file online, there's a site for practically everything out there now!

Participation

I've also come to realize that I may have faltered in this regard in the class. I haven't been posting to the class discussion unless I need help with something. I've never really like discussion boards, so I've been reluctant to use them even in school. I hope I don't end up getting point taken off for this.

I am beginning to think that I misunderstood the purpose of this blog as well. I was thinking I needed to blog about the progress of my web project. I didn't think to blog about the weekly assignments as well.

I have keeping up with them as much as I can. This week, for example, I visited ReadWriteWeb.com, an interesting site with all sorts of information about the world of web devices. I liked their description of the "Internet of Things", which I hadn't heard of before. It's where web apps are being applied to common objects like cars and TV.

I'll keep trying to stay abreast of the assignments in this class, though it's becoming increasingly challenging, with everything else I have to do before the semester ends.

The adventure continues

I'm now realizing just how much I still have to do on my site before I hand it in. I guess that's what'll happen if you leave something alone too long.

It's just seems to be minor things, like including the "alt" tags, copyright information, or even just proof reading my pages. However, this is all moot until I can get Dreamweaver back. My trial subscription to it expired and I am loath to buy it for a hundred dollars or more.

All this may have to wait a little longer anyway. I'll going to need most this coming week to work on my COMPS exam. I am however looking forward to the class meeting on Wednesday, it'll be nice to get some feedback on my work.

My webpage- complete?

I have finally gotten my website looking the way I want to. I have all the text, graphic, color and links that are required for the project. I think it looks pretty good for a first attempt at web design, and considering what I was trying to do with it.

I know I'm going to need to give it a once over before I present it, but I'm not sure what, if anything, else I add to it. I'll have to look over the project directions again, but for all intents and purposes, I'd say that my project is finished.

Current status

I know. I haven't been writing in this blog as much as maybe I should be. I am finding it difficult to keep working on webpage on a regular basis. I work on it a little at a time, then leave it alone for a while. I know there's nothing wrong with that, but I don't want to fall behind on it either.

The good news though is that I'm close to having it the way I had envisioned it. I just need to format the last page on it and insert the hyperlinks to my reading blogs. (I want to put them in the images on those pages, but I haven't figured out yet how to do that.) I also wonder if I can somehow embed the blogs directly into my website. I'll just have to keep trying and see what happens.