Web Design Students
Millikin University

Diana Zaleski

Learning Review

User Knowledge:
Before taking this class I had no knowledge of web design software or how to go about creating a functional, user friendly website. I have now become familiar with Dreamweaver and Photoshop. The software goes hand in hand and learning how to alter pictures and create graphic images in Photoshop was essential to learning how to best utilize my knowledge in Dreamweaver.  Through this class I learned about format, layouts, templates, and interactive elements that help create an efficient web site.

Design Knowledge:
The most essential aspect of design knowledge that I gained through this course was that of simplicity and quality. A website should be easy to navigate and contain useful pertinent information. Information must be presented in an organized, aesthetically pleasing fashion. Learning how to utilize text boxes, tables, and image placeholders allowed me to create organized, user friendly websites.

Project Management Knowledge:
Management of my person project as well as my group projects came very easily to me. Time management and communication skills are necessary when creating any type of product.  When I was working on my personal web design projects I created a project outline before I ever began working on the physical website; deciding on basic content and design before beginning any project is very helpful.

Within the group projects we first created a basic outline of what we wanted to the website to look like, and then divided up the work based on everyone’s personal strengths. For example, on both group projects Elizabeth took charge of the basic design creation of the site. Utilizing her graphic design background she was able to bring to life our ideas through Photoshop; whereas I was much more skilled in organizing and writing content for the web site.

Tutoring Knowledge:
When the course began I had no experience with web design.  Many of my classmates were very helpful whenever I had a question or needed assistance, especially Elizabeth Richardson. Never having used Dreamweaver or Photoshop before, working with someone who has quite a bit of experience with both was a great learning experience. It allowed me to learn at a much quicker rate that I would have working alone.

client project

Diana Zaleski
Elizabeth Richardson
Kendra Brown

Prairie Avenue Christian Church Group Project
http://students.millikin.edu/~DZaleski/christian_church/index.html

We have created a web design for the Prairie Avenue Christian Church that utilizes simplicity of design and ease of use.  We utilized symbols associated with the church and tried to tie in aspects of the church’s history. We strove for an overall aesthetic that not only the church’s patrons could easily identify with, but that the community would feel welcome to utilize. We did not want to detract from the general purpose of the page with too many images or colors. We decided on a consistent theme for each page using the same layout.

We added navigation to the top of the page, adding consistency to the web site. We tried to work within each page so that it would not necessitate scrolling on most monitors, adding to the overall aesthetic within the site. The text and photographs are kept confined within in tables making it very easy to change and update information. The index page shows an upcoming events calendar, however, it would be very easy to add or subtract the information on the site.

The main focus of our web design was to highlight the children’s clothing room that the church houses and runs. We created a separate design theme highlighting children’s clothing themes and tried to make the design playful and inviting. We also created pages outlining the church’s history, contact information, and provided a page to add links and photographs as needed.
We wanted the site to feature only the necessary information in order to keep it as useful and relevant as possible. We strove to create an web site that was not only pleasing to the eye, but easy to navigate and update. We also created a design that would be consistently modern and clean looking.

Hands On Training Tutorial Responses

Chapter 13

Learning how to make forms is a very useful task; however, the chapter does not inform us how to make the forms functional and relay information back to us. But very interesting and useful none the less; some of the information I learned in this chapter I can apply to other aspects of web design as well.

Magazine Case Review

file:///Users/student/Documents/mayfly_groupawesome/index.html (located on FoxTrot2)

Diana Zaleski
Elizabeth Richardson
Kendra Brown

Poetry Magazine Makeover Group Project

The Poetry Magazine Makeover Group Project web page design case provided our group with many opportunities to utilize our previously learned web design knowledge, as well as force us to grow within our own personal capabilities. The project has also provided our team with great creative and artistic opportunities. We were provided with text and graphic files and asked to create a website using these materials. It was a great opportunity to take existing materials and re-invent and re-tool its purpose and reach.

We came up with an overall artistic theme, and created personal and general goals. We decided to organize our web site around the Sumi-e paintings the magazine features on the front cover of each issue. We thought this somewhat minimal interpretation for the site would be fitting for the magazine; considering the basic attributes featured in a haiku poem. We wanted the site to thoroughly reflect the mission of the magazine.

This creative vision posed a few technical challenges our team had to work through. With the guidance of our webmaster, Elizabeth Richardson, we were able conquer these challenges and expand our web design abilities. We achieved all of the technical objectives posed for this case including creating html files with graphics, text and hypertext links within the pages and an overall web site aesthetic. We also succeeded in taking the given information and restructuring it for use in our web site.

We created individual pages for the magazine’s pertinent topics entitled: About, Submit, Subscribe and Contact. These pages each feature a different Sumi-e painting that we thought embodied the topic at hand. We tried to keep the site very clean looking, utilizing the white space to our advantage. The intended audience for this site is English language haiku enthusiasts, however, we tried to make the website accessible to the general public interested in haiku and Mayfly Magazine.

We strove to achieve an overall aesthetic that kept our readers and the magazine’s main concepts in mind. We designed our web site for ease of navigation, maximum information content, and visual appeal. With any group project working with others may commonly pose certain challenges; however, our team worked well together to achieve our desired goal.

Chapter CSS

This chapter was somewhat overwhelming for someone who has very little web design experience. I would really like to incorporate CSS into my designs, but I believe it will take a lot of trial and error to become comfortable with all of the codes and new ideas; it seems like there should almost be a whole class just for learning CSS.

Chapter 10

Chapter ten was very interested and provided a lot of insight into the world of rollover graphics. I did not have any questions when learning the new concepts; however, I think that rollover graphics have a definite time and place within a website.  They seem to be best used for color changes on more business oriented websites, but could be very interesting and fun to use on an educational website, for example.

Web Resume Critique

Kendra Brown's web resume.

The contrast between the background color and the text color is very nice. The page flows very well and it is very easy to navigate from one section of the resume to the next. The one suggestion I would make, however, is perhaps adding bullet points to your lists of experiences. I would also suggest to make it more professional, just puting experience instead of career-related experience. The one thing that would add a lot to the resume would be some links within the resume to maybe the Dec webpage or if the love at first sight animal shelter has a website that would be nice. Overall it is a very clean page and is very pleasing to the eye.

Chapter 8

The most interesting part of chapter eight is the idea of being able to use layering within the website to utilize more inventive layout designs. Everything was very straightforward in the chapter, however, I did not understand the exact purpose of the tracing image. If I wanted something to be slightly less visible in the background it makes sense, but the tutorial had us make the background 100% transparent. Using this layering technique seems like it will be a lot more useful then just the tables by themselves; and tables now, in my mind, have much more of a purpose.

Chapter 7

I found going through the Ch. 7 tutorial very easy and self explanatory; however, utilizing tables within my own website was not as easy. The one big problem I had was getting the text to go where I wanted it within the tables. It seemed like the table had a mind of its own when it came to text placement. Also, the cursor would only go to a certain point within the graph. How can I fix that problem? <keyboard commands help moving in tables>

resume critique

The following are my two web resume reviews:

1.) http://yliu.myweb.uga.edu/cv_home.html
I really enjoyed this web resume. Its layout is very clear and concise. I like the used of the headings and bullet points, along with having that dates along the right instead of the left side. I think this adds to the clarity of the page. She also has separate links for her publications, presentations and awards, this also keeps the web page looking very clean and organized. The addition of the pdf version of the resume is a nice touch; however, she does not have any links within the resume.

2.) http://www.doctorbrunner.com/vitae.html
I do not like the layout of this website. It is not as well organized as it could be, but it does have links to each section which the previous web resume did not have. The links make the resume much more accessible. I really do not like how everything is centered, however, especially the links. It makes it very hard to read. He also does not have any links to outside sources within his resume. Links leading to other sources related to his work would have been a nice touch.

Elizabeth Richardson’s
Bookmarks Critique:

I like the layout of the page so far, I think once it’s finished its going to look really nice. I also really enjoy the artist’s banners as the links. It makes the page very organized and interesting to look at. All of the links and anchors work well. It will be nice to see when it is finished, however, to really see how each of the sections is divided. I like how you have a section for the “latest news.” That’s a really nice touch to let your readers know if you have made any changes to the page or site. I also enjoyed the link to the blog, but perhaps that should be sectioned off in a different way since it’s not really related to the other links.

let me know when you finish it, I am really curious to see how it turns out.
Diana

Chapter 6

I liked the color scheme command within dreamweaver. It really makes designing your first website much easier. I will have to try it on my own website for class. One of the questions I had, however, was on how do we make tables in dreamweaver? The chapter told us how to modify the print within the table, but not how to get the table. The flash text was also very interesting to learn about, and seemed very simple to use.

The website that I have always admired is the Dallas Symphony Orchestra for kids website: http://www.dsokids.com/ It is a truely 100% interactive site. Not only is it a great learning space for kids to explore the ins and outs of an orchestra, but also provides teachers with a wonderful resource.

Diana Zaleski

Website Review: http://www.dsokids.com/

The websites own mission statement is as follows: “DSOKids is the Dallas Symphony Orchestra's magical doorway to a world of musical fun and learning for students, parents and teachers. The site's mission is to provide attractive, accessible and child-friendly resources that introduce symphonic music, the orchestra and its instruments, and to encourage both adults and young people to explore the world of the symphony orchestra.” This website definitely lives up to its mission statement. One would be hard pressed to find a better music related teaching tool on the web.

This is a great site to introduce students to the symphony orchestra. The site is organized into two main areas; one for teachers and one for students. It's user-friendly and easy to navigate by clicking on the image map or by following the navigation menu at the bottom of the pages.

The music room is a kid’s only page that is filled with information about composers, the instrument families, sheet music, coloring sheets, various games and activities, an animated seating chart for different musical periods, and a radio for listening to audio selections. The instrument encyclopedia discusses each of the instruments with a link to the sound that it makes. Additionally there are instructions for making your own instruments such as a xylophone, maracas, drums and more. Everything on the site is interactive. The light switch turns the lights on and off; visitors can write on the chalk board, play the piano and even knock an apple sitting on the desk onto the floor. The designers of this site left nothing untouched. The site is truly one hundred percent interactive.

The teachers' lounge provides a list of twenty-three general music activities to use in the classroom and twenty-two activities students can do at home. It also provides a bookshelf full of useful teaching aids about music theory, helpful music related links and even free sheet music to use in the classroom. The designers of the site, thankfully, did not leave the teachers out of the fun. Everything in the teacher’s lounge is interactive as well. One can make coffee, turn the faucet on and off and even make a phone call.

This website is extremely well designed and exceptionally devoted to its cause. As a music educator I would not hesitate to utilize the site and its resources in my classroom. I would also highly recommend this site for parents wanting their child to have an enriching educational experience online, and to my general education colleagues for use in their own classrooms.

The one question that came to mind when reading Chapter 1 was about the mechanics of publishing online. The fact that anyone can publish anything on the internet is a very freeing idea. Now that writers do not have to go through publishers and publishing houses will the level of quality of our literature go down or will it redefine what good literature can be? —Diana

Chapter 4 & 5

I found that Chapter four and five were fairly straight forward. I’ve never designed a website before and this program seems like it’s going to make the process pretty painless and fun. The one thing that I didn’t quite understand about chapter four was how we are going to make our own images and organize them under our assets. It was very easy to place their pre-made images onto the site, but how do we make our own images and get those ready to be placed onto our site? Also, it was very simple to modify the page properties with the color picker; however, where do we find a list of colors and their corresponding letter number combination? For example, to change the background color we typed in #FFFFFF.

I only had one question about chapter five. The linking was very straight forward. However, the name anchors concept was confusing. I didn’t quite understand the purpose of this type of link as apposed to the other ways to link.