Discussion Board Posting

Lesson 2- Planning a website
I thought the W3School was fairly straightforward but it was a little distracting with all the side panel facets. It was a little difficult not to get to distracted by the additional text on the page.
I liked how they broke the tutorials up into individual categories, it not only directed my search but also help me some some associated vocabulary terms in each list.
I also liked the list of references for html programming. These tags are interesting to know should I ever look at web design from a more advanced level. I will know what things mean when I look at a page source.

Lesson 3 - Creating a Publishing a Web page
The Pew Research site I found to be informative but overwhelming. On the Keytrends section of the database http://pewresearch.org/databank/keytrends/ a study is presented over the number of adults who have begun to go online in the U.S. It was amazing to see the numbers have jumped from a mere 20% in 1995 to 75% in 2008. It's only a matter of time before this number rises even more.

The Internet Traffic report was easy to read and very visual. It does not provide the same extent of information compared to some of the others like the Internet World Stats but it's a quick guide. I wish that it presented more information about the Middle East and Africa.

The Internet World Stats was easy to read and provided a good spectrum of information but should have used more side facets. The scrolling was a little bit excessive. However I did like the extra resources section at the bottom of the page.

Nielson was a bit difficult to navigate. There was a lot of information just like Pew but a little less overwhelming. When I went to places like measurement--> online, I expected to find more measurements but http://en-us.nielsen.com/main/measurement/online was frustrated that the site was leading me around a site maze.

Caida was distracting with all the blue links on the homepage. Too much small blue font to shuffle through for any kind of meaning. The online data statistics was difficult to find. I did not get far with the research, data, or tools tab.

Lesson 4- Elements of Design- Layout
As I was reading through the web style guide, I liked how Patrick Lynch mentioned the importance of a user-centered approach. He said that design tends to be measured in qualitative terms so there is no exactness to it but the designer should keep the users in mind. It is best to keep it in a way that is understandable and clear. So often, it seems that people get distracted by add-ons, this is not always the best approach. Sometimes it may be best to be simple.

Lesson 5- Elements of Design -Color
I've always tried to have an eye for color but I never thought about all the factors involved. This website really brought out all the scientific elements with the physics and the color wheel. With so many different color combination I liked the section about color contrast. The color contrast analyzer was sited as a helpful tool http://www.colorsontheweb.com/colorcontrast.asp which I liked and the explanations were even more helpful. I liked the advice of high contrast colors for text but the advice that green is hard to read on red, red is hard to read on blue and yellow is hard on blue. This website can help me as I select some of the best colors for my site.

Lesson 6- Elements of Design- Texture
I liked a lot of the website this week, they supplied many good ideas and downloads. The delay design had a good example of texture as its own background. It was nice that they put a solid color overlay over the middle of the frame for the text. I think this helped to calm down the busy-ness of the texture. I'm a little bit weary about textures for my site just because it can make or break a site. It really is going to take some time to pick out textures and appropriate colors to match.

Lesson 7- Elements of Design- Typography
I was scanning through a lot of the sites for week 7 and it made me think of word art. I really enjoy the presentations where font is varied to attract the attention of the viewer. In the same way, websites can affect the user who sees the different fonts. It is better to stick to a limited amount of fonts but good to make certain items stick out by using a certain kind of font.
Comic sans has always reminded me of a font an elementary teacher would use for announcements.
Typewritter font always seems like a detective type of font.
Cursive fonts usually remind me of fonts that are attached to something fancy, like a menu to a fancy restaurant.

For anyone who is interested in learning more about word art I've found this website:
www.wordle.net check it out for guidance on making word art.

Lesson 8- Elements of Design- Imagery
The Gimp freeware is a good thing to know, I've been avoiding the photoshop download because I don't want to slow up my computer, Ive resorted to paint.net and simple other paint programs but the gimp program will really be helpful as I continue my design especially for the banner. I had found some banner sites, but not really satisfied. I'll have to see if this works any better with the design aspect.

Lesson 9- Advanced Topics
I have already seen the video Dreamweaver tutorials that were released by Adobe. I think its helpful hearing instruction from the horses mouth. They have released similar videos for Flash. There is a trained Flash expert who leads through basic lessons. It can be a very helpful tool.

I also wanted to comment on the free web editors. These are helpful sites to know, but I wanted to know whether we should just steer toward Dreamweaver. I know that it is nice to list Dreamweaver skills on a professional resume but how useful is it to list these other editors?
I had been working with the school website as my domain name but I think I'm going to finally cave in and buy a domain from a host website. Once I do this I'll have a couple domains that I can play around with, so maybe I can play around with some of the free web editors in the future.

Lesson 10--Comic Relief
Comic Relief has been a constant theme for my blog, I viewed the ok/cancel site and plan to use an image for one of more recent postings. I think humor is an important element in any project and I've enjoyed looking through the various comic strips online.

Lesson 11- CSS Remix
I liked the CSS Remix site because it was direct and went straight to the point. If I liked the visuals of one site i could just click on the link and see the site and then look at the code. This is a good site for brainstorming design ideas. This will be helpful for future sites and I would recommend this site be used in earlier weeks. It was good for me to see the final product so that I could get an idea of how I wanted to design my own site.
When I designed my own site I looked at a youtube layout background that someone had used for their page. It used various shades of blue and I liked the look so I decided to incorporate the same look in my own site.

Lesson 12- Smart Webby
The smart webby link was helpful but I would share this earlier on in the semester. I think its helpful that it provides tutorials to dreamweaver and provides templates, I could definitely use this in the future. In class I said I used Tutvid and this really helped me, it's a similar site, I wished that I would have been exposed to tutvid even earlier, it helped ease my mind and provide me with a starting place.