MP 18, MP 19, MP 24 scans from notebooks

I found the stuff for MP 18, 19, and 24, but not 22 like I had expected. I am including them as JPGs here in this post.

Chapter 4 - Site Seeing 5 golden rings point presentation

Visual organization is achieved on the web through coordination of color, shapes, and text based hierarchy, as well as simple, clear cut navigational tools.

Sound takes up a lot of bandwidth, and is hard to use on a 2D field, so almost all organizing on the web is done visually.

Giving the graphics of your webpage variable weight between them helps to create your page's organizational structure. Visual weight sets how much an object on the site will jump out at the users, or how much it WON'T as is the case with disclaimers and EULA's. You wouldn't want the user to know you were buying their soul from them by making it bright red and placing shimmering, in 72 point font.

Templates, or a basic design which stays the same from page to page, can help the user feel that the site is professional and well organized, as well as give the impression that all the pages are related, even in the case of wikipedia, where you could have a thousand different subjects all on pages that look nearly identical.

A planned hierachy can make or break your site. What is it that your want the user to see first? Is it the logo, or that moving gif of the mouse and his cheese in the bottom corner? Don't lead your audience astray by giving too much weight to the wrong thing.

Chapter 3 - Um... noticing a trend 5 points

The site must be able to be browsed quickly and efficiently. No hunting or searching all over the place. No one wants to spend an hour looking for a piece of information, and they probably won't return if they have to.

Maintain established web standards. If people expect a nav bar on top or on the left side, then by golly, you better give it to them! The vast majority of people HATE surprises.

When using External Links, try and make it so that your page stays in one browser window or tab, and the external link, opens, well... externally. That way the user is not whisked away from your site entirely.

I reiterate, don't dispose of the nav bar! It's what people want!

The site should run relatively quickly, even on older machines. CSS allows us to dispose of byte heavy graphics, and replace them with what is essentially a scalable block of color.

Chapter 2 - Better Late than Never 5 points

Make sure you have an awesome battle plan before going in and trying to tackle a site. Think things through, down to the smallest detail, such as "Where should I put the recipies pages? Should I link them by author, or category? Should measurements be in metric or standard (in the recipies AND on the site). What colors will show up on an RGB screen well with this shade of red?"

Organization is KEY. If you cant remember where you placed a link or a page, it's as good as lost to the end user.

The Nav bar should help your viewer know where in the site they are, which is why you often find secondary menues along the site, with a clearly labeled section marker.

Keep in mind that the vast majority of users are not using the best software or computers, so make it useable for lower end users. High enders might not OOOOH and AAAAH as much, but at least you wont lose a vast portion of your audience.

Keep in mind that there may be various other limitations with things like plugins. Does the user need a flash or java plugin to view the site properly? Then perhaps a splash page explaining that is necessary.

woodhall mockup

Proposal for Major Project 3

The new headmaster from my high school asked me at the wedding of an alumnus, to help them out by donating my services and building them a new website. Nothing fancy, but it has to look professional, use the school colors, contain some photos, and make information relavent to prospective students and parents easily avaliable and accessable (no more than 2 links deep). They provided me with some copy and photographs (more to be recieved tomorrow at our meeting), and a schedule of events they wish to be posted on the site. Server side technologies can not be used, so this site must be done in basic HTML and CSS.