Final Post

Hello, This blog contains an archive of my readings and thoughts for an Instructional Technology Studio (Design) Class (6190). I will not be updating this blog again, but will leave it online as an archive of my writings. At some point, if blogger decides to offer categories, I will collapse all of my IT blogs into one large blog, with the classes creating the categories. If you would like to contact me about anything that you read on my blogs, please email me at robinsartnest@yahoo.com

To catch up on my latest news & projects, check out
http://robin-news.blogspot.com/

Reflection10: Project Management Journal in Blogger

Dr. Orey and others,
I am interested in your response to a project management journal done using some sort of journaling/blogging tool. I chose to use blogger because it was free and I didn't have to setup anything (so it is something that any student could use). I could have easily set up a journal utilizing a different software.

One thing that I was hoping was that people would give me deskcrits via the commenting feature of blogger. Only one person did, everyone else emailed me, although the give a desk crit goes to blogger. I'm not sure if that was because it was different from everyone else, people just preferred email, or something else.

Reflection 9: After the showcase

I think one of the things that seemed to cause some confusion with my project is that people expected it to be instructional. I also sensed this with some of the other projects, too.

In general the response to my project was very positive, but I also think that people do not realize how hard it is to work with CSS or what my site really did. Some of the problems that I encountered (getting the flash to work properly in firefox, formatting without tables...etc.) involved code trickery of one sort or another. I spent alot of time on 'code junkie' sites reading about the various problems and solutions.

I think there are few people in studio (at least in 6190) that even realize why CSS is important or what it does, which is troubling to me as I see CSS as an important part of the future of the web. It is also the reason why I developed the alternate style sheet so that people could see CSS in action. CSS is also, to a certain point, part of the whole drive towards web based standards. Of course, I could have perhaps explained this better in either my project info or in the showcase.

To sum up, I really learned alot with my project. I'm glad I got to use Flash and learn it, but to be honest the accessibility and compliancy issues bother me alot. Yes, Flash is cool and definitely seems to be the 'hot' development tool at the moment.

Although I think all of the Blue Socks winners definitely deserved their awards, it did bother me that all of the winners were entirely Flash, with the only exception a hybrid html/Flash site ('walk to rhythm'). I do not know if that is typical or exactly the criteria used to judge the Blue Sock awards, but it would seem to me that accessibility should be part of the discussion. It has bothered me off and on (sometimes more, sometimes less) than UGA seems to be moving away from web compliancy and standards -- or at least, it seems some parts of the website would be of little use to those with disabilities or even very slow modems .

Michael's timely post to the listserv about accessibility and providing written transcription of audio components of websites was certainly relevant, but there is also the other side of it: text reading/audio web transcription of websites for the site impaired.

Perhaps categories for the Blue Sock award would be useful, because a site that is completely ADA and W3C Compliant is probably not going to be the prettiest.

Reflection 8: A few changes

I'm trying a new thing: creating a separate style sheet so that folks can see what CSS does. To be honest, I'm not sure anyone cares..... ;)

I also made the links outside my project open a new window. Is that a good thing? I don't know. maybe. In theory it should be.

I feel like my project is as polished as it is going to be. Is it a good web project? Not really... audience wise, it is kind of limited.

Things left to do:
Finish up my service hours
Finish my digitization
Write a final project reflection & course reflection

I think my digitization project may not be completed until after Thurs. I might even stay Thurs night to work on it. Basically, I have the video... I just need to add in a title, strip out the audio, and perhaps, add in music... I'm not sure about that part. Maybe I will work on it tonight.

My service hours are finishing Drek's website or at least, continuing to work on it. I will load the two prototypes tonight for Drek to review. In all honesty, that will finish up my service hours committment. However, I will continue to work with Drek over the next month to get his website where it needs to be.


Robin

Reflection 7: I can't believe it validates!

Somehow I managed to write CSS well enough so that it would validate via the W3C checker. I am kind of amazed. It's definitely not the prettiest CSS (I didn't use class enough or condense the code as much as I could) but it does work fairly well.

The thing that I most happy with is that it is a tableless website (unless Dreamweaver sneaked in a table here or there!) All of the formatting is with CSS, including the embedded Flash.

The only real problem that I have had is the flash scale problem with firefox. As firefox is much more strict about coding (which is a good thing) it does weird things with the flash. If you set it to 100% or no scale, it doesn't really work properly, especially, if you're already using another style sheet.

All in all, I've learned alot about CSS and much more about using it for layout. I'm not quite to the point of submitting something to csszengarden...

If I have time before the dress rehearsal, I will put a second style sheet, so that people can apply a different style sheet in order to see how powerful CSS really is.

whew... now, I've got to finish up my service hours project and make sure that I've uploaded all of my desk crits!

Reflection 6: What have I learned/Where have I been

What I have learned?
the good:
--wrap text around a path in fireworks
--create flash animation using dreamweaver
--create multiple effects in flash
--create css in dreamweaver

the bad:
--I hate flash. It's too 'flashy' and is quirky depending upon browser used.
--css in dreamweaver. A mixed blessing. The wysiwyg editor seems to do weird things with a css and at times, seems to override it.
--macromedia radically changes products from one version to the next. tutorials and help in flash mx do not always apply to flash mx2004.
---does it validate? oh, I'm not even looking!

Reflection 5: What I've learned and What I still need to figure out

Well, I now have a project with a name: SPIRALISM and I have my service hours taken care of. Well, at least planned for! YAY!


Regarding my project:
-It will be spiral based although I am still trying to figure out layout...
-I have the color schemes: blues, purples, white and light orange for accent colors


What I need to figure out or learn:
Can a spiral navigation path work within a website? Thinking beyond the box of the screen, how can I make it both organic, yet logical?
How do I create a short organic flash movie that opens and closes without input from the user? The open part is easy, what I am having a little trouble figuring out is the closing...
How can I utilize CSS to do all of this? Flash movie/html but the rest using CSS/HTML?
Do I have enough spiral images?