Shadows In Paradise

Answers, and pictures…

I have worked with lots of graphics programs in the past, including Photoshop, Flash, Fireworks, Poser, Bryce, Carrara, Shade, Corel Painter, GIMP, Paint Tool SAI, and several others I’ve forgotten. Most of these programs give a mix of both bitmap and vector tools (photoshop, flash, GIMP, fireworks). Others, Painter, SAI, are mostly bitmap. The rest, (Poser, Bryce, Carrara, Shade) are not normal graphics programs, being mostly modeling software, and don’t really fall into either of the 2 categories above.

As for noteworthy images…

No. That’s not a photo. Definitely bitmap.

Original found here.

The “blueprint” like drawings in the lower half of the image is what I’m focusing on. Those look like they could be vector images. If they are not, the illustrator was trying to go for a vector look, and I would be all the more impressed.

Original Found Here.

And finally…

Again, a portrait, not a photo of a cat. This is again, squarely in the bitmap category.

Original here.

CSS From Scratch

Turns out I did this assignment wrong, and only edited an existing template, rather than create one from scratch, but I still got the concept I think.

Anyway, I did find that writing CSS is easier after you’ve done it for a while, and so the fact that I did this assignment after doing the assignment on tables and text did make it much easier, as by then I had spent some time working with CSS and was more comfortable with syntax and how to achieve the desired results.

Right now, the most difficult part of using CSS is trying to fix things when they break. Things like trying to make sure an element stays where it’s supposed to when other elements are changed or resized, i.e. the position of the footer when resizing tables are present.

Once I got the concept of classes, I found them easy to create and implement.

Now that I’ve got a foot in the door so to speak, I have a website concept I would like to explore. I’ve got a lot of data I’d like to publish, and I plan to create a website to showcase it.

Table Based Designs

http://store.apple.com/us

This site uses CSS for it’s layout, and does not use tables, this can be determined by use of the web developer plugin, and viewing the page source.This makes sense, as a store site, things will be constantly added and changed, but a consistent look is desired.

bkgordon.tumblr.com

My blog uses CSS for it’s layout, which is a custom theme, (really css). This can be found by using the web developer plugin and looking at the page source (again.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Alaska_Fairbanks

This site uses a combination of tables and CSS, found using web developer. Having not looked at how wikipedia pages are created, I don’t know if this is a template setting for page design, or how pages are edited for content.

www.uaf.edu

No tables here, but lots of lists. Don’t like having to manually expand and collapse the lists though. Were animated roll over states that hard, or resource consuming?

Web developer used to look at page source.

Web developer is a much more useful resource now that I am familiar with looking at code. I can recognize much more code now that I could before taking this class.

I think that tables are still used a lot because of habit, and simplicity. They are easy to create and can be made to look decent without a lot of work. Kind of a set-and-forget mentality I think.

Nokia Changes Font’s, along with many other things…

http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/27/nokia-continues-reinvention-details-new-font-and-branding/

Just in time for our assignment about text and typography!

Reflection 1

So, far the materials and instructions for this class have been pretty good. I’ve never really had any experience with web design or Dreamweaver before this, and so far, I feel that I’ve got a pretty good grasp of the concepts covered so far. The section on CSS was a bit rough, but the same could be said of trying to write raw HTML code in a plain text editor.

So far, Dreamweaver seems easy enough to use. Having the graphical representation of the site right next to the code simplifies things greatly. But, is it too much of a crutch? Does/will it take away some of the need to actually learn the HTML code? Is Dreamweaver the/a standard for web design? Hopefully this will become clear as I spend more time within Dreamweaver, and progress further in the class.

As for the blogging, I’ve had to keep a blog for a few other classes before, so it’s not completely alien to me, I just don’t find it very useful as a form of outward communication. It’s not my nature to link a bunch of things I find interesting to the rest of the world, I’m kind of an introvert when it comes to things like that. If I have something I want to share with someone, I generally target it directly to the person/people I want to share with face to face or via targeted email. I don’t want to tell everyone what I really just want to share with one or two people.This is probably why Facebook, Twitter and all of the other social sites really don’t appeal to me. I don’t want people to know what I’m doing all the time. Nor do I feel that most people care enough about what I am thinking about to share it.

CSS In Action Comparison

I am comparing http://www.csszengarden.com/?cssfile=/211/211.css&page=0 and

http://www.csszengarden.com/?cssfile=/210/210.css&page=0

(Orchid Beauty and Oceanscape)

What’s Different

-Oceanscape uses headers and footers, that contain images.

-Oceanscape uses a gradient background.

-Orchid Beauty adds an image to the front of the paragraph titles, as well as in the title area, and below the link column on the right side.

-The fonts chosen for the site are different on each sheet.

-The link column on the right side has a slightly different look on each sheet.

What’s The Same

-Both sheets keep approximately the same page width.

-The sheets don’t change the location of the link column on the right side.

-The sheets don’t drastically change the alignment of the page. Both sheets have centered alignment.

Dreamweaver - 1st Experience

As my first real experience with Dreamweaver, I would say it’s not bad. I was able to successfully publish a web page, so it’s not so bad. I liked the fact that the interface is somewhat similar to the other Adobe Suite programs - this makes navigation much easier.

I am still confused when dealing with text for now. It seems very difficult to change text in certain classes. I still don’t know how to change the color of the text in the left side navigation links… Also, it’s difficult to change just some of the text using the design editor. Make this word red. No, not all of it, just the highlighted word. Right now, it  seems easier to change colors using html tags.

Other than that, everything I’ve encountered so far makes sense to me. I have questions on aspects we have not gone over yet, but I’ll wait to ask those…

Blog Reflection - Publishing

1. What did you find most difficult about completing the “first published pages” assignment?

1. I found just trying to remember all of my html tags the hardest part of the assignment. It’s been a long time since I’ve done much with html.

2. What has surprised you (in a good or a bad way… or both) about Dreamweaver?

I like not having to type all of the basic html code for the pages. I’m used to writing in notepad++ or even just a standard text editor. It’s also nice to have a visual indication of the file hierarchy. Makes it much easier to organize and layout a website’s design.

3. What has surprised you (in a good or a bad way… or both) about this course?

I’ve never really spent a lot of time with html and web design, and I was a bit worried about taking it as a web course. I wasn’t sure how well it would work out for my learning style. but so far, smooth sailing here. (Taking CITS 221 really helped, I think.)

Introduction…Again. (CITS 222 Web Design)

My name is Ben Gordon, and I am taking this class to try to get a better understanding of web design and HTML coding. It has been a very long time since I have taken any classes on web design, and I thought it would be a good idea to at least have some sort of clue about web design for my future job as an IT Professional.

I am interested in figuring out how to actually code, as that is something I am not really good at, and knowing more about what goes on “behind the scenes” in term of website design.

In my free time I like  to mess with animation and 3d graphic design as a hobby. Wouldn’t want to do it as a job, because I enjoy it. I also like lots of different genres of music, reading fantasy/fiction novels, playing Computer based adventure/role playing games, as well as Dungeons and Dragons .

This blog was previously used for my CITS 221 Graphics and Multimedia for the web class, and contains posts relevant to that class, but I feel that much of the info that has been posted there is relevant to this class as well.

This blog also has some of my previous 3d graphic work that I did last semester in both the web graphics design class, as well as a Photoshop class.