A Farewell of Sorts

Now that I have finished my degree, I will not be updating this blog on a regular basis. I will leave all the posts up so that they are available as reference. If you'd like to see what I'm up to, please visit my style blog, Simple Elegance.

Website Reviews: Lesson 9

• Flash Vista - I don't particularly like the layout of this site, and I'm not a big fan of Flash, so this isn't really for me. I guess there's some interesting links, if you're into Flash.
• Flash tutorials - again, useful if you like Flash. This site is at least easier to navigate and better designed than the previous one.
• Site Pal - well, since I don't like Flash, it seems obvious that I would never want a Flash avatar. The examples they show are creepy.
• Adobe Flash - a very expensive animation software. Great, if you want your webpage to annoy people.
• Swift - A much more affordable way to annoy people.
• Swish - yet another way to create annoying animations. Do you get the impression that I hate animation in websites?
• Hot Scripts - much more useful. Provides lot of free script options, including Javascript. Seems easy to navigate.
• Basic Info About Mp3s - it is what it sounds like (no pun intended): a useful article explaining what an Mp3 is. Nicely designed site as well.
• How to create streaming audio - this site is really useful if you want to podcast regularly on your website.
• Audacity - Free audio editing software. I used it on a previous class project.
• Musicovery Internet Radio - I've tried this site before - it's a great way to discover new music.
• Pandora - I love me some Pandora. This site changes the radio play to fit your preferences, creating a dynamic, non-repeating playlist for you.
• Amaya - Free web editor, pleasant site. Can work on Macs. Not bad.
• Trellian - Another free web editor, but it isn't supported on Macs. Oh well.
• Sea Monkey - I tried Sea Monkey and hated it. I'm hoping to buy Dreamweaver, if I can find someone who has it at a reasonable price.
  

Résumé Website: Final draft?

I've been working on my website, adding a textured background, tweaking the CSS to get it to look right, and I think I'm finally happy with the results. Now I have a website that looks professional enough to show it off to future employers. It looks so much better than what I originally started with.

Creating a Website: Chapter 16 Reflections

Chapter 16 was all about how to add audio and video to your website. This is not something I'll be doing with my resume site, but it's useful to know.

I'm glad that they make it very clear that having music automatically play when someone enters your site is a very bad idea. For me, this is a bigger turn-off than pop up adds - unless I really, really want what the site has to offer, I will close it almost immediately.

The ability to use Flash mp3 players may come in useful for me later on - I think that having an optional playlist might be a nice feature for a future website.

Incorporating YouTube video clips could be very good for creating tutorials. I might try this out, even though I hate how I sound on video.

Resume Website: Newest look

I've updated my résumé website with a tweaked color theme, navigation buttons made through Button Generator, and the customized headers I mentioned earlier. While I still don't think it's perfect, I'm happy enough with my website now to start including a link to it on my actual résumé.

Creating a Website: Chapter 15 Reflections

Yay for fancy buttons!  My website menu had been looking pretty boring, since it was basically just a collection of links.  This chapter explained how to use Button Generator to make beautiful mouseover buttons.  I followed the steps explained in the chapter, and now my website has nice, attractive navigation buttons.

Since my menu for my resume site isn't very complicated, I didn't use the fancy menu section of this chapter.  That's something I will probably come back to, if I ever get around to making a style website.

Honestly, I almost wish this chapter had come sooner.  I love having a nice looking set of nav buttons.  I'm glad that Dreamweaver handles the Javascript for you, because that is one tough language to learn.

Website Reviews: Lesson 8

• Wiki Public Domain Image Resources is a very useful list of websites that have public domain images available.  The links are organized by category, so you know where to go for historical images, art images, etc.
• Library Spot Image Resources is another site with a list of links to images that can be used for free.  The design and layout of this site is pretty bad, but the resources are useful.
• Read Write Web  is a web technology blog.  It has lots of articles on Web 2.0.  While this is interesting, I'm not sure what relevance it has to the class.
• Footnote is a very useful resource for historical images.  The site is well designed and easy to use.  All the images are organized by historical period, ie. Civil War, Great Depression, etc.
• Adobe Photoshop is a very useful and very expensive image editing software.  Definitely the industry standard, but pretty high priced for a web design hobby-ist.  Their scaled down version, Elements, is a better price for your average Jane.
• Adobe Fireworks is a graphics editor.  Again, very high powered, very expensive.  Great if you're a hard core graphic designer.
• GIMP is a free image editing software.  This site has all the information pertaining to GIMP, including download links.
• GIMP shop is a modification of the GIMP program that makes it feel more like Photoshop.  The increased similarity means that some Photoshop tutorials will work for GIMP shop.