29 October 2009

Realizing that, eventually, I would want my site to have some sort of graphic, I designed a nice banner that I could put at the top of my site. I knew the basics of photoshop- and the tools I used were not that complex. I simply used a large paintbrush with faded edged to make the entire graphic have a color effect with a bit of gradient. I then used the text tool, found two nice fonts, and used those to finish the top.

The entire thing took about ten minutes, and as a result, I have produced this:

I chose the color scheme I did simply because it is the same as our school colors. If I need to change it later, I can. Photoshop is nice in that it allows you to edit layers.

27 October 2009

Today I edited the information I scanned in for Meet 2 yesterday. I rewrote parts of it in a word document, so that everything was easily readable, and made sure the pictures were cropped according to my liking.

26 October 2009

Today, I published my practice iWeb to the schools server, so that it could be viewed at any place on campus.
After looking at the program again today, I have decided to use Dreamweaver for my project. iWeb is too restricted for what I want to do, and would, I think, end up being more of a hindrance than Dreamweaver. In addition, my home computer is a PC, meaning I could not work on my website while at home. Although I do not have the dreamweaver software at this moment, I could theoretically download a trial version, so that I could develop the site while not at school.

On the note of research, I have scanned in the old tests from Meet 4, and plan on writing guides for those within the next two weeks. I also was able to scan the guides I had done for the previous Meets, from Meet 2.

24 October 2009

Today, I finished scanning tests for Meet 2, Event 3 and 4

I have officially finished researching for Meet 2.

22 October 2009

We talked about the "software and harware" portion of Criterion I today in class. Our teacher told us how to find the information on the Macs.
For the hardware information, he said to click on the apple icon, and look at “About this Mac.”

For the software information, we were told to follow this path:
applications folder-> go to chosen ap-> right click-> get info

22 October 2009

Today in class, we began working on Dreamweaver, another web design program. Unlike iWeb, there are no pre-made templates. It is more like Microsoft Word in the respect that one can add text, images, and tables in wherever one pleases, and move these elements around for the desired effect.
We began with a basic introduction into the the various menus and icons. Shown below is a screen shot of the program.

The stage is where the visual, of what the website will look like, is displayed. On the menu, one can choose from options like "add table" and "insert hyperlink." And, once can use the properties box to edit how specific elements look. For example, one can change the color or size of the font, or the size of an image. During this introductory lesson, we used the properties box the most extensively. Here is a close-up.We also worked on page properties. If one wanted to change the background color, or edit other features which would apply to the whole page, one could use this tool. With page properties, one can edit things which determine the appearance of the entire page. Here is the window, shown below:
We also discusses some minor formatting things. In Dreamweaver, when one presses enter, the curser moves down two spaces. To prevent this, one can "shift-enter."
In addition, there is an option to edit the site with the GUI mode (what all the screenshots have depicted), or in a code mode, or using a screen which is split between the two modes.

Reminding all of us students that Dreamweaver was a difficult program, our teacher reccomended using a free template from www.dreamtemplate.com , so that we wouldn't have to spend so much time on design.

21 October 2009

Today I added some finishing touches to my test website, making sure to get rid of all of the iWeb preset text on the video pages, and replace the placeholder photos with pictures of my own, albeit somewhat unrelated ones. I also cleaned up the video pages, making sure the same video wasn't simply posted under different pages.
After my site was ready for publishing, I continued to write up the guides for the remainder of meet two. I have only about a topic and a half left. I have to finish the work I started for the trigonometry packet, and write up a guide for equations. To keep track of what I have completed and what I still have to do, I made up a quick table using microsoft excel 2007. The events I have finished are marked with an X.