11 November 2009

I also worked extensively on my web page today.

Because I had the time, I finished imputing information into the pages I created Saturday, and began to link everything up. I decided that in the making on my pages, I liked having a separated,

tag header for each page, and the idea of information stored in tables. It looks less cluttered, and is easier to use when only looking for certain bits of information.

Here is an example of one of the pages I created.

10 November 2009

Today I began imputing researched data into the pages I made on Saturday. I didn't have too much time today, but I went ahead an completed the page for Meet 1, Event 5. This transfer was not too bad, as all my information was already in a table (the building blocks on which websites are made).

I did, however, have some difficulty transferring over the symbols. I've been using the "equations" tool in Microsoft word, and when I tried to copy and paste the files over, they looked rather weird within the program. (see below) They were added in as images, which was nice; however, they were awkward images

I was able to remedy this by changing the size of these images, and changing the alignment to "absolute middle."

8 November 2009

My general idea is that, because the home page is so similar to the meet pages, save the information given, I will just copy-paste the code for the home page into my other pages. This will make it so I don't have to worry about making a new design for every page. I made all of the meet pages today, and will add links as I add event pages.

The event pages are a little more tricky. I need to have information on the top about the event, and researched info below. This involves pasting information from a word document to the event site.

Slowly but surely, I will create and link up all of the event pages.

7 November 2009

Today, I began the perilous journey of web design by actually opening Dreamweaver and trying to design my page. While I considered using one of the website templates, I did not find one that I really liked. It seems as if those templates, while well deigned, don't have quite what I'm looking for. I'm afraid that if I used one, the regression of links would begin to get too complicated; or I'm terrified that if I accidentally edit one part of that unfamiliar code incorrectly (which is likely), it will come cascading down on my head in a horrible pile of broken links and dead images. So, I'm using my own design. Today, I actually made the home page. Here is my development, as shown in pictures.

I also changed the background color, by going to Modify->page properties

I used the eyedropper so that my background color would be the same as my graphic's color.

So far, things have been going pretty well. However, issues have started to arise. My columns are mismatched, and my information is hard to see. In addition, I don't have nearly as many columns as I need.
I tried to start to fix some of these problems

While admittedly better than before, this site still has some issues. all green will be distracting. I want the cells of my table to be white.
Upon all this messing around with colors and styles, I utilized css- cascading style sheets.
That is the sidebar in the GUI interface; below is the code version of the css sheet I created.
It was more work than I expected, but when I looked at my website with eyes tired from staring at a computer too long, I knew it was good.

6 November 2009

Today in class I was able to finish the planning/storyboarding for my site.

I have decided that I will try to arrange the links in the same way the math team events are structured. Every year, there are seven meets. In each meet, there are six e

vents. So, the pages connect in a similar way. The home page connects to each meet page (and one news page). On each meet page, one can connect to six event pages. In addition, every page, will, at the top, have links which lead to the home page and to other meet pages.

Therefore, the basic navigation will look like this, with the arrows representing links:

There will, then, be three basic layouts: a "Meet" layout, an "Event" Layout, and a "Home" layout. While they all will have the same background color and the same, main table, the inner structure will vary. They are shown here:

Planned Home Page:

Planned Meet Page:

Planned Event Page:

For the spaces labeled "graphic", I will use the graphic I designed earlier (see the entry on Oct. 29)

5 November 2009

We had a blended class today, and our teacher talked to us about Criterion I a bit. We were instructed on how to find information on our software, and about our computer. I also had a little bit of time to work with the program I plan to use, Dreamweaver, during class. I tried to find out some of the program's capabilities.

After much contemplation, I decided to download the free trial version of Dreamweaver (I can now use the software for free for the next 30 days). Still unsure of how exactly I wanted to format my site, I decided I would attempt to fiddle around with the formatting and tools available to me. After about an hour of such fiddling, I was able to figure out the basic workings of the program. In the formal lesson, we talked about making tables and links and such. Today, I went a little deeper. I discovered it was possible to make a table within a table, and how to do things like change the cellpadding and the size of the cell border. It was good for me to mess around with these HTML elements, because it reminded me of the coding that I had learned a couple years ago. I edited the page in "split" mode: I could either look at the GUI, or the coding. When I didn't know how to edit a certain thing in one mode, I could use the other.

I also figured out how to implement CSS (cascading style sheet) elements which would apply to the entire page, and, if I attached a CSS sheet to my sites, would apply to all of the pages on my site. As seen below, there are certain tools for adding CSS.

I found out that certain things, such as font size, color, and background color, could be written into a CSS rule, which would then be applied to whatever I labeled as such.

In my practice, I created a rule called "hopethisworks" in which I tried to change the color of certain cells of my table, and the font color.

I also tried to use the program to work out a general idea of the color scheme I wanted. After experimenting with colors, I decided on a simple white and dark green scheme, using our school colors.

I don't want this website to be too complicated and confusing- too many buttons and flashing lights are distracting, and it would take too much time for me to learn how to implement all of those tools. I do, however, want a certain level of complexity. I want this to be an extensive resource, which will require a lot of pages.

4 Novemeber 2009

We continued to discuss criterion I in class today. We will turn in will be our "visual evidence of design" section next, so our teacher gave us a debrief on what we would do. As we have entered what could be described as "the planning stage" of our projects, he reminded us of the importance of actually using a storyboard to describe what we would do. He suggested that we have, first, a web diagram illustrating the navigation for our sites. It would include all of the titles of pages, and how they would be connected using links. He also suggested showing a word-document type example in which we would illustrate the graphic design of our webpage. We then started working on this in class. Hopefully, I'll be finished by Friday, when I will be able to upload it to this site.