Fall 2010: Update 6

It's taken me half the week, but I think I've finally figured out why I can't get my email forms to work properly. After a good bit of Internet research, I found out that the files have to be uploaded to the Internet for them to work, not just opened in the browser. That was an easy enough problem to solve; I uploaded the files to my I-drive. And they still didn't work. Back to researching. I have the final answer. The server has to be set up to handle php, which is what I was using to handle the email part of the form. I know what the problem is, but I have no way to fix it (at least not that I know of yet, and providing this is the right answer to the problem).
While I wasn't obsessing over getting contact forms to work, I made a good bit of progress on dropdown menus. Last week I built one using only html and css that worked on only a select few browsers (none of the popular ones). This week, I found some great tutorials that show how to build two different types of dropdown menus. One is what I would call a collapsible menu. If the user clicks on a heading, the heading opens to show everything that was under it. Clicking again closes the heading. The other type of dropdown menu I found was what I was originally thinking of. When the mouse moves over the headings, a list of subheadings appears underneath. Moving the mouse down onto the new list lets you choose one of those things, or moving the mouse over another heading closes the first list and opens the new one.
I know all of this is more about technique and how to do things without any regard as to how they look, but I'd rather have the knowledge of how to do things first. I can worry about making them look good later. Actually, I think I'll build a sample site (or rework my portfolio) using these techniques as a sort of practice project.

Fall 2010: Update 5

There's been a lot of reading this week. I never thought I'd say that I'd read most of a text book in only a week, but I can say it now. There's just a few chapters of the HTML book left to finish reading. The book started with really basic things like how to code a page with and tags. The higher chapters are where things get interesting. Some of the things in the higher chapters are things that a program like Dreamweaver will do for you, but I think it's better to be able to do them on your own. For example, one chapter explains how to embed video and other media in pages. There's also a chapter on forms that I'm really interested in; I just can't figure out how to get the scripts for the form to work right. Lots of great stuff left to look into, though.

Fall 2010: Update 4

I got a little sidetracked this week. Joseph gave me some great books about Dreamweaver and CSS. I'm really interested in the book about CSS because the things in it can be used with any html editor and not just specifically Dreamweaver. There are even tricks to build things like drop-down menus that would usually require JavaScript using CSS and only CSS. On the other hand, there were some really cool tricks with Dreamweaver in that book, like building and working with templates to make large websites easier to manage. I've let the Panhandle Pump website and brochure go for now so I can concentrate on these books. Hopefully that means I'll be better equipped to work on those things when I pick them back up.

Fall 2010: Update 3

If you check out the SCAD Industrial Design Brochure link here, you see a great web brochure with simple intuitive navigation. The pages turn just like the pages in a real magazine would. I've been trying to figure out how to recreate that action for use in my own online brochures. The simplest thing I've been able to come up with is designing a brochure in InDesign and exporting it as an SWF. That automatically gives that great page turning action. The problem with doing it this way is that not every computer can play SWFs.
Now, as I see it, there are two options from here: make two brochures (one that's an SWF and one that's not), or using some other way to get an animated transition. InDesign offers the ability to export the file as an interactive PDF; but the only way to see the page tranistions is to view it in full screen mode, which complicates the process of viewing an online brochure.
After a little research, I found out exactly how SCAD made their brochure. They used an online digital pubishing service at yudu.com. It offers free software that lets you upload PDFs to create the sort of document like the SCAD brochure. So, I'm going to check yudu.com out to see if it a better option for online brochures.

Fall 2010: Update 2

So, I was pretty sick the beginning of the week, and I didn't make it to any classes or free lab times then. I was able to work on moving the contents of the page without moving the background. It wasn't as hard as I had thought it would be: the css to do it was so simple even I could understand it. Tying the image size to the size of the window wasn't as easy. I found a few tutorials that involved JavaScripting to find the size of the window and calculate how to fit the image; but it eventually dawned on me that you can just set the image width and height to be one hundred percent of the window width and height, which solves the problem without a lot of complicated JavaScript. The only problem with keeping the background image tied to the window width and height is that the image gets moved out of proportion, and I don't think there is anyway to keep that from happening. On a different note, I was also able to come up with a way to keep part of the page, a separate column off to one side from moving with the rest of the content.

Fall 2010: Update 1

Joseph suggested turning the brochure for Panhandle Pump Company that I was working on last semester into a website and an online brochure. That way I have the information more or less collected and organized already, and all I really have to do is figure out how best to put that information into an electronic format. So far, I've been working on a website. It's more technical at the moment than good looking. I've been more concerned with making the css work than anything else so far. I was able to find a tutorial for positioning a footer at the very bottom of the page, and I was able to add to that to make a content box that filled the page and didn't shrink if the content was smaller than the page. I recently realized, though, that a static background with a moving content area might be a better choice. That's what I'll have to look at next.
I do have what there is of the site up on the Internet on my I drive if anyone wants to have a look.

Fall 2010 Semester Plans

This semester I want to focus on the technical side of web design. I want to learn more about using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to develop websites and solve the problems and challenges that come with the Internet. At the same time, I want to continue working on what makes good web design, and I'll also be looking at how to turn regular printed brochures in to effective online brochures.