Tiffany Mahaffey's Weblog

This lesson includes some very great websites. Out of all of these web sites, I actually downloaded the audacity site and created my own mp3. However, I do not know how to add it to this blog as of yet but I will continue to work on it. Audacity is great and I will use it in my classroom. It will allow me to record a brief summary of my lesson and I can also include music. Then my students can actually downlowd my lesson because it will be in an mp3 format. This will be a helpful tool, especially when a student misses an assignment.

Also, I looked a the adobe flash site because I actually purchased the software for this class but was unable to use it for the project. This site will help guide me through the learn more about it for the next time I create a web site.

Finally, I scanned the rest of these sites and they can all be used in the web design process.

WEBSITES –

FLASH:

FlashVista http://www.flashvista.com/

Flash Tutorials http://www.lukamaras.com/tutorials/cool-design/hitech-floating-menu.html

SitePal – Flash Avatars http://www.sitepal.com/

FLASH SOFTWARE:

Adobe Flash http://www.adobe.com/products/flash/

Swift http://www.erain.com/Products/swift3d/

Swish http://www.swishzone.com/index.php

SCRIPTS:

HotScripts http://www.hotscripts.com/

MP3S:

Basic info about MP3s http://www.soundstageav.com/mastersonaudio/20050201.htm

How to create .M3U files and streaming audio http://www.selfseo.com/story-13698.php

Audacity – Free audio editor http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

Musicovery Internet Radio http://musicovery.com/

Pandora Internet Radio http://www.pandora.com/

FREE WEB EDITORS -

Amaya http://www.w3.org/Amaya/Amaya.html

Trellian http://www.trellian.com/webpage/

SeaMonkey http://www.seamonkey-project.org/

FREE TEXT EDITORS:

http://www.thefreecountry.com/webmaster/htmleditors.shtml#htmleditors

Websites: These websites all deal with using images. Most of these websites allow you to download free images.

Wiki Public Domain Image Resources – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Public_domain_image_resources

LibrarySpot.com Image Resources – http://www.libraryspot.com/images.htm

Deep Web Resources:

Read Write Web – http://www.readwriteweb.com/

Footnote.com (Historical Image Resources) – http://www.footnote.com/

Tools:

The following websites gives an overview of the different available tool sthat can be used to import photos and other images. I am going to use the Adobe software in my future development adventures because I have already purchased the software as a package.

Adobe Photoshop – http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/index.html

Adobe Fireworks – http://www.adobe.com/products/fireworks/

Gimp – http://www.gimp.org/

GimpShop – http://www.gimpshop.com/

Readings:

Creating Web Sites-

Chapter 15: This chapter covers fancy buttons and menus. I most honestly say that I am unable to accurately create the buttons and menus. My website has a very plain menu bar and does not include buttons. Even though there are some free button makers, I still had problems. I could not get the HTML tag correct in order to add these features to my website. The chapter does go over the process but I need more help on this topic.

Chapter 16: The final chapter in this book deals with audio and video. I think that it is neat to be able to add audio and video into a website. Using the various multimedia methods is not easy when developing a website. It is important that the developer knows how to link and embedd these links into your HTML file. There are a variety of flash programs that can be used but ultimately the developer has to get past the embedding process.

Websites:

All of the following websites gives useful information about typography. Also, I think that a developer can get some great ideas from visiting each of these sites.

I Love Typography (resource site) http://ilovetypography.com/

I Love Typography: 15 Examples of Excellent Web Typography http://ilovetypography.com/2007/09/19/15-excellent-examples-of-web-typography/

Typographica (Typography Journal and News) http://typographica.org/

Microsoft Typography (resource site) http://www.microsoft.com/typography/default.mspx

ABC Typography (virtual museum) http://abc.planet-typography.com/

A List Apart: Typography (tutorials) http://www.alistapart.com/topics/design/typography/

TypoGraphic (history of type) http://www.rsub.com/typographic/

Digital Magazine: CSS Typography (resource) http://www.digital-web.com/articles/css_typography/

Noupe.com: CSS Tutorials http://www.noupe.com/css/using-css-to-fix-anything-20-common-bugs-and-fixes.html

DesignSnips (Examples of Good Web Design) http://designsnips.com/

Readings-

Creating Web Designs-

Chapter 13: This chapter is about making money with your site. I like this idea but your site has to be useful and appeal to many people in order to make a profit. However, it is important for the user to be able to safely and securely make purchases online. Also, it is important to know that advertisement is another way for you to make money. Companies will pay you for advertisement space if you have a popular and successful website that receives many visitors. One girl is a multi millionaire for creating My Space web layouts. Companies have paid her to advertise on her website.

Chapter 14: JavaScript and DHTML is a chapter that is very difficult for me to understand. After reading this chapter, I do realize that JavaScript enhances HTML.

The Principles of Web Design-

Chapter 5: This chapter deals with Imagery. The use of imagery is important when creating a successful web page. This chapter discusses how to appopriately use your images and the importance of cropping, adjustments and how to add borders and using multiple effects. This topic to me will be more useful for advanced web developers.

Websites-

All of the following websites can be useful in some way when learning about using texture in web page development. These sites gave me some ideas for my web page. Furthermore, I found the Vandelay Design website ( http://vandelaydesign.com/blog/design/photoshop-tutorials-textures/) the most informational and useful out of all the sites. This site has 40 photoshop tutorials in order to create excellent textures and backgrounds.

The following are the additional websites viewed:
Urban Dirty http://urbandirty.com/

Best Textures Flickr Group http://www.flickr.com/groups/564994@N20/

Torley Textures http://www.flickr.com/photos/torley/collections/72157594588432564/

Deviant Art Textures http://browse.deviantart.com/resources/textures/

Texture King http://www.textureking.com/

Grunge Textures http://www.grungetextures.com/

Grunge Style http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/01/29/grunge-style-in-modern-web-design/

Photoshop Tutorials on Creating Textures http://vandelaydesign.com/blog/design/photoshop-tutorials-textures/

2007 Web Design Trends http://www.modernlifeisrubbish.co.uk/article/2007-more-web-design-trends-and-cliches

Web 2.0 Tutorials http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/03/10/web-20-tutorials-round-up/

Screen Resolutions Worldwide http://www.modernlifeisrubbish.co.uk/article/screen-resolutions-and-aspect-ratios-

Readings:
Creating Web Sites-

Chapter 11: This chapter is on attracting visitors. Its important for a developer to know how to promote their site in order to get visitors. The process is pretty simple to me. First, you need an appealing site that is attractive, then you need to spread the word about your site. Next, you should submit your site to an internet directory and then to a search engine. Now I left out the most important step, which is to have a great meta tag, which are hidden tags that tells about your website. These tags gives key words that will allow the search engine to find your web site. As a user, I hate searching for sites and find nothing but junk. Finally, a developer can actually track the number of visitors in order to see if they have an successful site.

Chapter 12: This chapter is about letting visitors talk to you and each other. This site is about transforming a website into a community. it is important for the purpose of a site to have a clearly defined purpose. Also, dveloper can allow their users to email them or even create an online chat. This makes the web site more user friendly and will probably make the user visit the site more often especially if it concerns business transactions.

The Principles of Web Design:

Chapter 4: This chapter covers the topic of typography. The typography to me is the most important part of the web page because it communicates the purpose of the site. The type and font should be an appropriate size in order to maintain the integrity of the web page. A cluttered site will distract a user and make them quickly leave a site. Therefore, it is very important to chose your font and style carefully.

WEBSITES –

Colors on the Web http://colorsontheweb.com/

This site is great because it gives a comprehensive review on color tools, schemes, contrast and etc. This site will help a developer better choose their color structure.

Readings-

Creating Web Sites-

Chapter 9: This chapter discusses page layout tools such as tables and styles. Some developers use the invisible table, which allows the text, pictures and headings to be aligned along the lines of an invisible grid. Also a developer can use a style-based layout, which allows items to be placed in specific spots on the web page. Its important for the tables to be positiones properly in order for the design to fit the frameset.

Chapter 10: This chapter discusses frames. Frames is considered to be a controversial topic among web developers. A frame lets you show more than one page in the same browser window. Frames are controversial because they may repeat content. Also many top developers list the following as the topic reasons that frames should be avoided: search engine confusion, frame abuse, future compatibility and accessibility, and less effective URLS. I cannot really critique this topic because I really don’t understand it myself.

The Principles of Beautiful Web Design-

Chapter 3: This chapter covers the topic of texture. Texture helps give a web page a distinctive appearance. it s very important that a developer understand that pixels are important for building any type of graphics. This chapter also goes into details about points, lines, shapes, volumn, depth, and patterns. All of these things are important for the layout of a web page. This chapter will help give a developer ideas on how they want there page to appear.

Websites-

Web Style Guide, 2nd Ed. – http://webstyleguide.com/index.html

This website is taken from the book Web Style Guide in order to help a person learn the fundamentals of web page development.

Universal Usability http://universalusability.com/access_by_design/index.html

This site houses is online version of Access by Design. The purpose of this site is to give information about creating better web designs. This site includes additional web sites and resources.

JJ.net (User-Experience Designer Jesse James Garrett) http://www.jjg.net/ia/

This site basically has all the published work of web designer Jesse James Garrett. Garrett has links to pages that he has developed and the site includes his writings on topics such as information architecture and design.

Smashing Magazine: Top 50 Blog Designs – http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/05/08/now-more-than-ever-50-more-excellent-blog-designs/

This site was awesome because it shows fifty excellent blog designs that have been created. The site also has links to articles on fonts, tutorials, graphics and a variety of other topics.

Readings:

Creating Web Sites-

Chapter 7: This chapter discusses how to add graphics to a web page. To add graphics a developor has use specific file formats such as GIF, JPEG, PNG-8 and PNG-24. These images are not stored in the HTML file but has to be shown by using the tag in the HTML file. This is the image tag. Images are important because they bring life to a web page but it also inportant that the developer accurately size the image in order for itfit the page.

Chapter 8: This chapter discusses linking pages. A web site normally has many sub pages and it is important to link them together in order to have a full operational web site. The technical word for linking pages to tother is hyperlinking. There are two types of links, they are internal and external. Internal links the pages in a specific web site and external links sends a person to resources in other web sites. Links can be challenging because some links are considered rot because they do not take the user to a desired page. This can cause much frustration. Therefore, it is important to use the HTML anchor tage in order to link your pages.

The Principles of Beatuiful Web Design-

Chapter 2: This chapter deals with color . I liked the first part of the chapter because it discusses the phychology of color. Certain colors produce different emotional and behavioral effects. The color scheme of a web page is also important. Colors and the color scheme depicts the mood of the web page. If the page is about love then most likely the developer should use light colors. Dark colors would reflect the negativity of love. This chapters shows the importance of choosing the correct color for a web page.

WEBSITES :

ICANN – http://www.icann.org/

ICANN is an international orgnization that is designed to keep the internet secure and reliable. ICANN coordinates the names or numbers that makes a web address unique. The ICANN website discusses current news and general information. The website also includes information about the structure and includes a variety of resources. Finally in terms of design, this website sucked. Its layout is very confusing.

Web Stats –

Internet Traffic Report – http://www.internettrafficreport.com/main.htm

This website shows the current flow of data around the world.

Internet World Stats – http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm

This website is very colorful and includes very helpful graphs and charts. The purpose of this website is to give the statistics on world internet usage and population statisitcs. The site also include additional internet information sources and usage statistics.

CAIDA Internet Infrastructure – http://www.caida.org/home/

CAIDA stands for Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis. The purpose of this site is to create cooperation between countries in regulating internet traffic.

Pew (non-profit research center) – http://pewresearch.org/

This website was developed to give numbers, facts, stats on all types of world topics such as voting, war and etc. I did find a graph on internet trends such as whether people use broadband or internet penetration. This website had a lot of information and I liked the format of the site. It was easy to navigate.

Nielson Net Ratings (private research center) – http://www.nielsen-netratings.com/

This site allows businesses or other companies to monitor their sites traffic and audience.

USF –

USF Web Style Guidelines http://usfweb2.usf.edu/ur/webadmin/webguide.html

This web page gave an error message that it could not be found. It was either no longer available or had been moved. I would have to contact the webmaster in order to find the location of this page.

Readings:

Creating Web Sites:

Chapter 5: This chapter goes into more detail about HTML text tags. A web developer has to know the basic tags to help structure their web page. There are two basic tags. They are logical tags and physical tags. Logical tags describe the content and physical tags are about formatting. The text tags are important because they help structure your text that will be shown on your web page. This chapter is very useful to me as i am developing my pages.

Chapter 6: This chapters covers the topic on style sheets. Style sheets are complicated because they are filled with rules. There are three types of style sheets; they are external, internal or inline. These three types of style sheets to me varies in levels of difficulty in use. The style sheet is important because it brings the web page to life because it adds the colors, fonts, borders and etc. to the pages. I found this chapter to be very overwhelming.

The Principles of Beautiful Web Design:

Chapter 1- This chapter walks you through the best ways to layout your web page. It inludes a section on composition as well. I liked this chapter because it listed additional websites for reference. Also, it gave me a good idea on how I wanted to design/ layout my web pages.

Websites: Review and Critiques

W3 Consortium http://www.w3.org/

the W3 is an international organization that develops web standards, protocals and guidelines in order to maintain a successful web. This website includes technical reports and publications, discusses activities, W3C news (current events), and links to a variety of other sites. I find this website cluttered and I really have no use in viewing this website.

W3Schools – free web building tutorials and references. The HTML and CSS tutorials are especially helpful http://www.w3schools.com/default.asp

I really liked this website because it offered tutorials in how to use HTML coding and other web developing tools. I actually completed the HTML tutorial and I now feel a little more comfortable using it. I think that this site would help any web developer whether beginning or advanced because it has tutorials and references.

USF specific tutorials at http://www.cas.usf.edu/lis/distance/tutorials/

USF’s tutorials helps USF students learn how to use the different resources that are available to them such as using Blackboard, Oasis and learning about how to create and use the SSH Client system to create a student web page. I wish that knew about this website when I started the program because I had no ida on how to use any of these tools. This website should be included in the acceptance letter for incoming LIS graduate students.

Weekly Readings-

Creating Web Sites:

Chapter 3- This chapter informs the reader on how to put their web page in the web. This chapter is a very infomative because it introduces the whole process on how web hosting works and teaches about URL’s, domain names, and how to actually get a web space and finding a web host. I particularly liked the section on domain names. It really gave good ideas on how to actually pick the right name for your url. I will use this section when I create another web page for my personal business.

Chapter 4- This chapter focuses on the different HTML editors and how to choose the one that best suits each individuals needs. There are a lot of free HTML editors. But the book discusses the professional HTML editors that have to be purchased such as FrontPage and Dreamweaver. I purchased Dreamweaver for this class. It was expensive but so far I find it easy to use. This book helps walk you walk through using these different progams. Ultimately, I know that I certainly like any program with a WYSIWYG editor.

Texts:

http://www.principlesofbeautifulwebdesign.com/index.php

Jason Beaird, the author of the book Principles of Beautiful Web Design gives an overview of the chapters in the book on his website. The focus of his book is to help the web page designer create a good design that will be attractive to the targeted audience. The book is divided into the following five chapters: Layout, Color, Texture, Typography and Imagery.

http://missingmanuals.com/cds/creatingwstmm/

This website gives supporting links for each chapter in the book. Hopefully, these links will be helping in creating my website.

Free Software:

http://nvudev.com/index.php

This website introduces Nvu, which is a web authoring system designed especially for Linux users. But it can also be used by Mac and Windows desk top users. It can be compared to FrontPage and Dreamweaver. Nvu allowes users to use WYSIWYG editing or HTML code.

http://www.kompozer.net/

The KompoZer website introduces their web authoring system as easy to use in comparison to other systems. It also includes WYSIWYG editing, which makes creating web pages a cynch. Therefore, the user does not have to know how to do HTML coding.

http://www.gimp.org/

The GIMP website basically discusses how to use GIMP. GIMP is a free software that can be used on any operating system to do different types of image manipulations.

Tutorials:

I reviewed the following tutorial websites and I hope that they will be useful. I cannot accurately assess them at this point.

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/

http://2advanced.com/

http://www.thefwa.com/

http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/

Blogs:
I looked at all of the following blogging programs/ websites and decided to just use the USF blogger because I did not have to go through the hassle of actually establishing an account. I guess that I just am lazy.

http://blog.usf.edu/

https://www.blogger.com/start

http://wordpress.com/

http://writer.zoho.com/jsp/home.jsp?serviceurl=%2Findex.do

Weekly Readings:

Creating Websites-

Chapter 1: This chapter just introduces the basic information that any web developer would need to know. It discusses what is the WORLD Wide Web and how to choose a browser and briefly discusses web servers. Finally, this chapter reviews how to plan a web site and the key ingredients to creating an excellent web site. After reading this chapter, I am excited about creating a web page but i do not think that it will be easy.

Chapter 2: This chapter is totally confusing to me. I have never knew how web pages were created before starting this class. HTML coding looks to be difficult even thought this book tells you how to use tags and creating an HTML document. I never knew what the purpose of Wordpad was on my computer but now I know it is used to type in HTML code.

Chapter 17: This chapter on creating blogs is pretty detailed. I already knew what a blog was but I had never created one until now. This chapter takes blogging to a whole nother level. The actual process of creating a blog by creating an account in a blogger site is easy. But adding HTML codes?tags and including graphics and pictures does not seem to be easy. For this class, I must say that I am going to stick with the basics.

Principles of Beautiful Web Design and Learning Web Design prefaces gives me an overview of what to expect within the pages of these two books. Also, the preface tells me what was the purpose or goal of the author in writing these books.