Final Project Research

This week in class we were asked to look over some sites that we could use for design ideas, etc & to choose which of our ideas we wanted to concentrate on for the final project. It seemed I really had to do some hunting to find sites that were coded the proper way. Many of them used tables & all of the ones I looked at had their css style sheets linked rather than embedded. I probably should have looked at more general sites but chose instead to research ones pertaining specific to the topic I would be designing for this quarter.

My top two ideas for this project were either a revamp of the Dallas Holocaust Museum or a site pertaining to emergency preparedness. Since I usually choose history related topics, I chose this time to broaden my horizons & choose the topic of emergency preparedness for my project. Pretty broad, huh? I’m not sure how I can make this unique, because the problem I am addressing is that what you run into if you google search this subject is that most sites either are one of four things; one page on a specific aspect of emergency preparedness, a site selling the latest & greatest expensive hi-tech gear & supplies, a site sponsored by a specific locale’s community organizations or a more overall comprehensive educational site about this subject. I see my project as being more educational & informative rather than commercial & rather than have to search the entire internet for all the different components of what it is to be prepared for an emergency, it’s nice to run across a site that’s all inclusive about all the different points of emergency preparedness.

The sites I found that used css standard coding were:

1. ready.gov
This site is affiliated with Homeland Security & was the absolute best site I found. It’s simple with a 3 column set up & clean organization that doesn’t overwhelm. I could see myself using alot of their design in my project. I would like to incorporate some “how-to” stuff in my project & this site handles this with a side bar of tip of the day links.

2. families.com
What I liked about this site was that it had a different take on the nav & drop down menu system similar to ljworld.com. I’d like to try incorporate this style of nav in my project some way if possible but we’ll have to see if I can find a way to work it out or not.

3. dhs.gov
The Department of Homeland Security’s site has a three column system with alot of info packed neatly into a tight grid system. It was somewhat overwhelming to me but not too bad after you got used to it. Who knew they were capable of a website design like this but incapable of finding Bin Laden?

4. fema.gov
FEMA’s 2 column site has both top & left sided nav. The simple overall design is pretty straight forward & clean in terms of presentation. So how come they can’t handle public safety things like what to do before, during & after a storm we had advance warning of?

5. bt.cdc.gov
The CDC’s site dispenses with the normal topsided nav we are all used to seeing by dividing different preparedness categories up mid page & throwing some bottom side navigation in below it.

Sites I found that used tables instead of divs were:

1. areyouprepared.org
This 1 column site had its top sided nav located just beneath the header with additional nav at the bottom. What I like about it was how the breadcrumb trail was incorporated into the whole header/nav part of the design.

2. makeaplan.org
This site has a similar feel to the ready.gov site. What was unique about this site with is simple & clean design, is that even though it was designed using a table, the user is not inundated with alot of information. Information on a variety of topics is divided into a list of steps with links to info, providing the user with clarification on subjects like how to purify water, etc. This might be a good way to present some info to users. People like you to spell things out for them sometimes, don’t they?

3. oep.berkeley.edu
The Office of Emergency Preparedness Berkeley site’s only unique feature was that it had a drop down listbox in addition to its topside nav & left sided search feature. Doubtful as to whether I will use it to model from however.

One other site I saw that is not listed here had some tips for the “poor man’s” system of emergency preparedness.  I believe in being prepared for the big one as well as life’s minor disasters (like the odd power outage) & that it doesn’t/shouldn’t have to necessarily break the bank or mean having a huge bank roll if it’s done over a period of time.  Over the last eleven & a half years of my & Chris’ marriage, there have been many times we have relied on having an extra store of supplies to get us through some strapped financial times & lots of times when we hardly had much to have a reserve with.  But for better or worse, we have at least attempted to try to have a plan in place, which is the main thing being prepared is all about.  Every part of our country has its own reputation for the various types of disaster that occur there; regardless of where you live or situation you’re in, there’s always that chance that something castastrophic will happen & being prepared for it saves time, money & lives.

Semantics & a new project to concentrate on

This week in class, we were thrown the challenge of designing according to content rather than designing a site around the content, i. e. just making the site aesthetically pleasing without worrying about content since it’s often not til the last minute that we actually get the content from our client which consequently creates more work when we have to change parts of the design that don’t wind up working out. Designing according to content should/would actually save time which is a good thing, since time is money in this industry & getting things out quickly is an added bonus to strive towards. Something of a challenge from the way I am used to creating my webpages since I don’t have much client work under my belt & most of what I have done to date was either dictated to me or something I did for a class project or for myself in my spare time. For homework, we were assigned researching & reading about semantic markup which I had never heard of before.

Most of what I read had to do with using the correct markup for the appropriate pieces of content rather than getting lazy & using whatever tag we decide to use just because we can. Semantic markup makes it easier for search engines to find your page, which is what it’s all about anyway, because why would we take the time to create a site if no one would ever look at? The main problem with semantics seems to be the thousands of web designers who have their own style & way of doing things getting with the program. Semantics can not only make it easier to find what you’re looking for through the search engines, but also makes it easier to understand the code you’ve written.

In addition, we were also asked to blog about what we thought we might like to work on for our final project for the quarter. I had two ideas.

1) Revamp the website for the Dallas Holocaust Museum.
I researched this Dallas area attraction while working on last quarter’s project. I guess maybe I’m used to the more sophisticated sites I see these days, but their site is pretty plain jane, no flash & not a whole lot to really draw you into why this piece of history is so important to be remembered. While trying to find relative information about them for that part of my project, I hated going to their site & thought how great a revamp might be for them since they don’t seem to be as well publicized in terms of things to do in Dallas as so many other venues are. This would be something I would like to donate to their organization.

2) Create a site about emergency preparedness.
In the last few years, we have been hit by several natural disasters in the way of hurricanes, etc., in addition to layoffs & our current national financial problems. The church Chris & I have attended since our marriage in 1997 has consistently counseled its members to try to be self-sufficient in terms of saving not only money, but food, for a rainy day. When a hurricane is on its way, people flood the stores to buy everything in sight in order to try to ride out the storms, but the point that seemed to be made apparent to me when Ike recently hit us, was not only survival, but the fact that afterwards people were without food, water, electricity or even someplace to lay their heads. (It didn’t seem to me like we learned a whole lot after Katrina, but I guess Ike was something of an improvement). I’ve been really interested in learning more about things like purifying water lately, but I’ve found that information about this subject & other topics concerning emergency preparedness are scattered across the web. With multiple aspects of preparedness to cover, I think this idea of the two would give me more in the way of avenues to explore in my project for this quarter.

Top 6 things for the quarter

I’ve read lots of people’s posts on various subjects the last few months or so while researching this subject or that on the internet & while I’ve enjoyed their views & even kept coming back for more in some cases like Ms. Uhlmeyer’s blog or the blog of a former composition teacher of mine from my ITT days, I never quite got what it was all about. I’m not really the kind of person who goes in for the whole social networking thing, even though I do have a facebook page & a listing on the reunion & linkedin sites. I only have them because friends at school e-mailed requests for me to join their networks. And while I might be religious about e-mail, I’m not about social networking. I’m either too busy or more interested in less exciting things.

That said, I’ve wondered & thought about setting up my own blog after weeks of keeping up with Ms. Uhlmeyer’s & Ms. Bankhead’s (former ITT composition teacher) blogs. Ms. Bankhead particularly has a life that’s more interesting than mine. Then began my seventh quarter at AiD after a week long break from the previous quarter of insanity that wasn’t nearly quite long enough. Some teachers are reknown among us students for little things like locking doors promptly at 6 pm (which only encourages punctuality) & automatic zeros for late homework. Mr. Batchelder is known, among other things, for his love of wordpress & thus became the impetus for starting my own blog (albeit for the sake of getting a passing grade in his class) in my own little corner of cyberspace.

Our first assignment is to blog about the top 5 things we want to get out of the intermediate scripting class this quarter. After thinking about it, I came up with 6 things I’d like to get out of it. I’ll expound a little bit about each one as I go along. Here goes.

#1 Refresh my knowledge & build on what I already know

I took the intro to scripting class about four quarters ago. Prior to that, I had taken an HTML/Dreamweaver class while attending ITT. (We were taught to build websites using tables & that was only a couple of years back). Dr. Parker has been trying to get me into more web related classes for a while now, saying if I put it off, I would forget everything I learned in Scripting 1 & he might be right about that to a point. Scripting 1 taught us to hand code (I’m pretty good at reading HTML, but still prefer dreamweaver to create a site rather than handcoding one by a country mile) & use divisions which was a rude awakening for me. No matter what Ms. Glass taught us, I could rarely get it to work exactly the way she taught in class & that particular quarter was one of many sleepless nights trying to finish homework or worrying over homework. Either way, to date, I have never quite completely picked up on the AiD way of creating a website.

#2 Learn more

Maybe this kinda goes with #1, but I always feel like there’s always something to be got out of a class even if it’s something you already know about & this has been true for me particularly at AiD. When I attended ITT, I was pretty much a blank slate in some regards of the graphics industry. When I graduated in 2006 & decided to attend AiD in 2007, I got credit for some things & no credit for other things. I’ve had to retake some courses & I may not have learned much that was new in them, but I did pick up on a few things I’d been yearning to know how to do that I didn’t know. Plus, it keeps me both humble & awed to know that at a school like AiD where everyone is at some stage a creative genius, that I need to strive to be the best I can be & learn as much as possible. Just because I was the best in my tiny class at ITT doesn’t mean I’ll be the best once I’m out in the real world without putting forth alot of effort.

#3 Understand the CSS concept better

I understand the major concept of what CSS is used for, but seem to have missed the finer points of what makes it so great. The process I use for when I create a site is to get one page designed just the way I want it & then copy it multiple times for each successive page. Maybe this is the wrong way to go about it, but that’s just the way it works for me. I do use CSS to an extent in all my web design, but once you have it like you want it, my train of thought is to just add a new css rule for all the pages later on if something ends up needing to be revised. Again, maybe that’s the wrong way to think & I’m hoping to learn more about it from Mr. Batchelder, because if Monday’s class was any indication, I still have much to learn (o.k. maybe that’s from all the sleep deprivation-but I kinda wondered what planet I was on some of the time).

#4 Learn not to rely on Dreamweaver as heavily

As stated before, I’m big into Dreamweaver. However, most of the teachers at AiD are not & I’m thinking that even if I’ve never had any of the problems the teachers have been using for examples of not using it, there must be a reason for their attitudes. Maybe once we are kicked out into the real world, we’ll be expected to do it the AiD way, rather than our own way, for whoever hires us, which makes it all the more important that I pick up the AiD way better this quarter than I did four quarters ago when I was busy gnashing my teeth & pulling my hair out.

#5 Stay on top of things

I’ve never been one to come to class unprepared (atleast not once I started attending college in 2004-High School twenty-one years ago was another matter). It’s important to me to get things done in all my classes on time even though lately it’s been down to the wire in some instances. I’ve never had Mr. Batchelder for a class before, but from what I’ve known & seen about him in my year & a half at AiD, he’s a great source of knowledge I intend to get my money’s worth out of.

#6 Stay awake

Up til now, I’ve had all night classes. Beginning in mid February of this year, I was laid off from my job as video editor for a local videographer. I started working there about 6 months before graduation & had been there for almost two years at that time. My focus since then, besides trying to freelance (which hasn’t gotten me far, believe you me), has been school so consequently I’ve been on a totally different schedule entirely than most of my classmates who have to work at anything more than some rinky dink part time job. My “day” has been my classmates’ “night” for some time now. I was spoiled in my last job in that I pretty much set my own hours & could ask off any time I wanted if I had something that needed doing or a school project I was running behind on. Now I’ve gotten to where I’m running out of gen ed classes which I can take at night & the fact that most of the core classes for my degree are only offered during the day. Which means my days of closet vampirism are coming to a close. I tried reading my notes from class on Monday & couldn’t figure out some of what I had written which means one or both of two things. 1) I was a major zombie & the lecture flew through one ear & out the other (which could be true since I was having major difficulties just staying awake which doesn’t mean the lecture was boring, just that I was tired) or 2) that I have miles to go in the learning department when it comes to css & the web. (I vote that it’s both!)

Anyway, that’s my list of goals for the quarter. I hope it made for an entertaining first post.