Web Design Students
Millikin University

Meredith Monti

Learning Review

What have I learned as a student?-

At the very begining of all of this I knew little to almost nothing about web design. It was helpful that I already knew some photoshop. I have learned to be more efficient with my sites and then don't have to spend as much time editing design and can work on content.

User Knowledge-

One thing that is very helpful is knowing to always save! There have been a few times that I have been working on somethign and Dreamweaver decides to close down on its own. A thing I have learned to do while editing is to constantly upload changes to see how they are effected in a web browser. That has helped a few times when I didnt have spacing correct in some cells and it looked fine in dreamweaver, but on a browser it was super funky.

Design-

I have learned a lot about design just from trying to use my site and from having group discussions on sites and getting feedback. I have learned that navigation, at least for me, is best in the upper area of your site or along the right side. Although as an internet user I prefer not to have to scroll down the side for navigation. I have learned a lot from seeing other people mistakes and making sure I edit and dont do the same.

Project Management-
I really enjoyed working in groups. It was nice putting your knowledge and ideas together with others and also teaching eachother new things. It was sometimes difficult to schedule time outside of class but we always seemed to manage and make it work. I enjoyed that this class brought in outside clients. It made it feel almost as if we were running a real business, with deadlines and competing for the client to choose one site over another.

Tutoring-

Having knowledge in photoshop it was fun teaching others little tricks. Also in general when we were working outside of class, someone comes up and asks a question about something they forgot or something they never really understood, and its nice to be able to help. It seems like we all understood things better from experience and helping others understand.

Hands On Training Tutorial Responses

Chapter 13

xxxxx

project plan

I was thinking of my site being a place to display my photographic works. Not necessarily a place to sell my work but at least let people know a little bit more about myself as an artist.

Magazine Case Review

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Mayfly Case: Meredith Monti, Galen Broaddus, Jim Butts

URL: http://students.millikin.edu/~jbutts/en301/mayfly/

While designing our website, we decided on a simple layout. Little color and lots of space on each page was a way of mirroring the general way haiku are presented. We did not want to distract from the general purpose of the page with too many images and colors. We decided on a consistent theme for each page using the same layout.

We also tried to do our work efficiently utilizing a common CSS style sheet and layout out elements with that instead of tables. We used some of the artist’s cover work on our pages for accents and backgrounds. We wanted these images to be simple so that they would not distract from the Haiku; therefore, picked one that would act as a sort of border, and we added a bit of color to draw in the viewer a little more.

We added navigation to the left side of the page and labeled things clearly. We tried to work within a page that would not necessitate scrolling on most monitors in order to continue our theme of simplicity. On our recent issues page we are using images from the past three Mayfly magazines so that viewers can see recent covers and cover Haiku.

We decided not to show archives of past work for two reasons. We did not want to give the viewer everything; after all, it would be nice to sell some back issues. Also, we wanted the site to feature only the necessary information in order to keep it short and simple. To showcase the artist Lidia Rozmus, we took her chop and used it as the link to the page with her bio. While “hidden” links like this aren’t always a great idea, since people don’t always find them, we thought it would work in our case since the site’s layout is minimal, and viewers would likely look around for other things to click on. We also created a simple introduction page that we feel balances nicely between simplicity and abstraction.

Chapter 6 CSS

While doing this chapter my goal was to learn how to make duplicate pages without having to type everything out. This was one of the first things I learned to do in this chapter after learning the difference between the types of style sheets. It was pretty easy to export the css files and link them. This is definitely going to be an important factor when it comes to designing my site. For a little while I got lost in the chapter because I wasnt unserstanding what I was doing and what I was changing. But towards the end I thought it was neat how I was changing the links in the sidebar from beaing just a list to having their own lines and boxes. I really would like to leanr more about css but to me, Im best with trial and error if I want to learn something. I have tried writing code before and that was the best way for me to get it. and 2 hours later: css tutorial, finished.
:-)

Chapter 10

I learned how to create rollover images as well as pointer rollovers. Layer i learned how to create rollovers that can do multiple things. While setting it up it was a little confusing because we cant see the end results to see if we have done it right but looking at the pictures in the book at the results its a neat tool which I think I want to use on my site.

Chapter 8

For this chapter we learned how to take an image or layout that we create from anywhere, and adapt it to the web. I learned how to add layers and adjust their size and placement. I learned how to convert layers into tables and adjust them as well. In another section I learned how to draw and adjust the size of a layout cell. Its nice to learn how to do this but it was kind of a boring chapter.

Chapter 7

I enjoyed this chapter. Making tables has made it easy to make my page look more organized. I learned how to edit different parts of the table and how to add or remove columns and rows. I learned how to align text and images within the tables as well as align the table on the page itself. I thought the seamless image assembly was kind of neat, it would be helpful whne piecing together larger images. I really liked the look of the rounded corner tables and will probaby use them in the future, I think it gives a softer look if you want to have your tables in a different color than your background.

resume critique

http://homepage.mac.com/steve/Resume.html

I liked how this one was put into a table, easy to read and to the point. I liked how he seperated it into personal info, objective, etc. If i were hiring someone i wouldnt want to have to play a searching game for what i wanted to know and this is short and sweet.

Unlike....
http://members.aol.com/aleong1631/resume.html

I really did not care for this resume. there was too much going on on the page. To me it was more a biography than a resume. All the images seemed more distracting than helpful. I would have liked it better if he had bulleted major events in his background, I dont need his life story. the employment and education sections were put together a little better, to the point and anough info to let someone know what they need to.

Stacey Randol: I like how everything is neat and easy to read. Straight to the point but I feel like the information should be a little more in depth or mroe complete. Also when I click a link down to another part of her page the words are too close to the top. maybe if she had another space between the words and where her page jumped to.

Nicole Fucinari: I like the repetitionof the background from her main page. I also like how she has used links in her resume. Easy to read, she has files available for download and contact info.

Shanel's Bookmark Case:

Shes got a good start but there are a lot of things I would change. I think adding images to her page would add interest. Also making her linked pages the same as her starting page for her bookmark would make it flow better. She also should create links from each page back to her starting page as well as maybe a link back to her index to make surfing easier. She may want to think about colors more and think about how to change font size and color to make it pop.

Chapter 6

I really didn't find this chapter to be very helpful. Changing fonts is kind of a basic thing that most people know, or could figure out how to do on their own. Font is important, but I usually dont think about font when setting up a page, its one of those things I decide at the end when finalizing and tweaking the appearance. I learned how to change font lists and there was information on color, formatting, and aligning text. One thing that was helpful was learning how to do flash text.

One of my favorite websites is toolband.com. This is the website to one of my favorite bands. I enjoy it for its visual stimulation as well as ease of navigation and depth in content. When you first enter the site, you are greeted by a black page with a blurry image. Options of where to go from there are clearly labeled. You can either view the video and music which are the opening to the page with images by Alex Grey, an artist who is often in collaboration with the band tool. , or you can choose to enter the main page of the site or link to the "collective unconscious" tools fan page. The main page of the site is the news page. There are buttons at the top which link to other information such as tour dates, media, and their online store. Within these options there are grey lines which lead into more detailed red titles of information you might be looking for. I find this site easy to navigate and a good source of all things Tool.

Chapter 5

I had a lot of fun doing the linking. I thought it was pretty cool that you had choices of how you want to do it and that you could just drag from the "point to file" to the actual file you wanted to use. I also liked the link history box, that made things easier. Oh! And I thought the name anchors were cool too. I know this is all basic stuff, but it's neat to learn how to do it all.

The most important thing I learned was to save after I finish with each step as to not lose my work.

Chapter 4

Everything seemed pretty straight forward and common sense for most PC users: setting up the site, learning how to make a new page, inserting images. I already know some HTML code, so looking at the page on code, I know how to do line and paragraph breaks. Centering and changing colors was pretty simple. I didn’t know what Meta tags were but learned how to put those in. Overall, it was a nice review on some basic info.