Web Space for Projects

If you don't already have webspace somewhere then I can provide you with, once sorted out, 15MB of space via the college webserver. I'll be setting up and checking FTP accounts on my web server to see if I can offer you a more spacious alternative.

Database Software Module

The database software module will commence from the 15/11. This unit will cover db theory and practical application using Dreamweaver CS3 and MySQL.

Anthony Hay will be delivering this.

Assignments

Please ensure that you complete your Research Skills assignment if you have not already done so ASAP. I will expect the Flash assignment handed in this coming Saturday or next Wednesday at the latest.

Flash

I've asked you all to create a Flash piece for your website. This can either take the form of a showcase type thingy that uses getURL() to navigate to the relevant page on your site or an external site. You could make a flash banner that uses getURL() instead of a showcase. Any banner that you would create should be sufficiently rich to cover the majority of stuff we did in Flash.

Photoshop

We will be introducing the Photoshop programme covering the basics of the interface and image manipulation for the web. If you can? Bring some images you have taken with your own camera or mobile  phone. 

Have you thought about what images you are going to use for your projects?

XHTML files with CSS layout

Nick asked me to let you know that the XHTML files

with CSS layout used in his last session, have now been 

uploaded on the server in the practice folder.

Wednesday 5/11 and Saturday 8/11

I hope you've all had a peaceful half term week filled with lots of CSS practice. The coming week will see you doing Photoshop on the Wednesday and on the Saturday you will be doing a recap and extension of Flash culminating in the creation of a Flash assignment.

Adobe CS3

If you haven't done so yet, you could look at Emily’s post on Adobe video tutorials, read my comment there and use the link to access the Adobe’s site tutorials for any CS3 product.

Half Term

The college will be closed for half term.

There are no lectures on:

Wednesday - 29.10.08

Saturday - 01.11.08.

We will be doing Photoshop on Wednesday - 05.11.08.

Research Skills Assignment

Just a quick note to remind you about the asssignment. While the assignment content is about whether Google is living up to their mission statement or not, the goal is to demonstrate your ability to research and evaluate information.

Research Skills Assignment

You will need to do an assignment today. The details will be discussed in class and this post will then be updated.

Fiona's post on Accessibility

Hi all, can you please check Fiona's post "Bad Coding can be Unlawful" 

You could also visit the Web Access Centre on the RNIB website

at the top see what you can find about Text Size.

Try to find out about any similar organisations that have accessibility 

initiatives or campaigns. Check also the Disability Discrimination Act 2005 and how it affects web design. 

If you can post a couple of paragraphs on your findings.

Impressive!

I've noticed that there has been a clear increase in the standards of your posts. Well done. As the course progresses there's no doubt that the quality of your posts will also progress.

There are still some of you that are not posting. Please ensure that you do post twice a week on your blogs.

Mission Statement a Definition

A general statement of a vision in word form. It is important to have a rich representation of the vision in all the senses. Then the mission statement can be written in language which allows all parties to it to derive meaning from it, yet be precise enough to guide them towards achieving it. It is a general statement of intent, normally restricted to five or six lines of type.

The above Definiton was trasncripted from the website below.

Source: http://www.ericksonianhypnosis.com.au/glossary.htm#M

File Size and Binary 10011000

So what does bits and bytes have to do with grains of rice??? 

To put file size into a visual context, I found this very helpful blog post.

"Let’s relate a grain of rice to a byte. A byte is normally eight binary bits, eg ‘10011000’. It can also be written as a two digit hexadecimal number.In terms of data, a byte is generally used to store a letter. One byte = one letter = one grain of rice." 

Source: http://blog.managednetworks.co.uk/it-support/googles-20-petabytes/

Counting in Binary for Beginners

Further insight into file size, have a look at this article that explains how binary works in a simple way.

Source: http://knol.google.com/k/zach-bacon/counting-in-binary-for-beginners/11ezkn0ytzmdj/3#

I am aware of my Google centered posts. I will soon post something from Yahoo and Microsoft.

File Size Optimization

This post is a reply to James's post asking about optimazation of images and pages for web. Instead of commneting on his post I have decided to post it here as it is helpfull to everyone. I could not put it any better in my own words than what Google has just given me in the top rank searching for "file size for web" so there it is the link. File Size Optimization

Rooming Sorted

Great News! We have fixed the rooming for the course and it is as follows:

Wednesday: Room 18 RBS
Saturday: Room 11 RBS

End transmission...

Wednesday Session 08/10

We'll be looking at how CSS works and then letting you loose on Dreamweaver CS3.

Don't got too excited, it's just a program. What you should be aiming for is to be able to swap Dreamweaver CS3, for Dreamweaver MX or HTML-Kit or GoLive! or any other product and still do a great job. The only way you'll be able to do that is by having a great understanding of the principles of how xhtml and CSS work. That's right, not the code you can quickly look that up, but the principles.

I'll be uploading the presentation to the server tonight. Breaktime's over so that's all from me for now I'm working from home today so better get back on it.

Take Aways From 04/10/08

Using the different search terms we covered in class can greatly reduce the amount of time it takes to find meaningful results from search engines.

We should be better evaluators of information and PROMPT, the tool developed by the Open University is very useful at quickly assessing information we find.
Presentation - How the message is being communicated, is it easy to navigate and understand
Relevance - Are the results we are getting relevant to our information need (and what can we do)
Objectivity - Is any argument balanced or bias? Is it giving us a chance to decide
Method - How did they go about getting data/info for their information
Provenance - What are the credentials of the information's authors
Timeliness - Is the information up to date? Does it need to be? In IT the answer is normally yes.

We also looked at the < span > and < div > tags for structuring and partitioning our document as a precursor to CSS formatting.

Take Aways From 01/10/08

All your xhtml docs need to have a < !DOCTYPE > which can be strict, transitional or frameset. We'll stick with transitional for the time being.

You need to provide the namespace attribute in the < html > tag. A namespace specifies the tags that can be used in the document.

Replace special characters like angular brackets, ampersands, currencies and spaces with their equivalent entity. Here's the w3schools list

You should validate each and every page you create (even and especially if you use a WYSIWYG tool) using the W3 Validator. Therefore, you have no excuse for not providing us with valid web pages (in the structural sense).

end transmission....

Website Planning 2

We will recap the main points on last Saturday's session. Topics to think about and ideally you should bring something done on these for your project, if that's not achievable you can bring some questions.

• Purpose - Mission Statement
• Log Book
• Storyboard
• Timeline (9 weeks to go)
• Site Structure

Managing The Blog(s)

I have talked about managing the blog(s) with Nick. We got to the conclusion that some of you might not be posting or commenting, because you are not familiar with the interface. On Wednesday, we will spend some time talking about it and showing you some of the features.
If you haven't made your first post and know how to do it and are not sure what to write? You could start by writing just that, it will grow on you.

Error in presentation yesterday

There was an error in the presentation yesterday that we did resolve but I thought it best to put a reminder up here. The mistake was to do with the colspan and rowspan attributes that acutally belong to the <td> tag as opposed to belonging to the table.

Website Planning

Hi everyone, Congrats on your first blog.

I will be covering website planning with you this Saturday. A presentation and storyboard template will be made available on Nick's server afterwards.

Blog, Comment, Share, Dream, Create!

XHTML/CSS editors

What You See Is (Not) What You Get - WYSIWYG Editors



Kompozer - http://www.kompozer.net/
Kompozer Portable - http://www.portableapps.com/
Amaya - www.w3.org/Amaya/Amaya.html
SeaMonkey - http://www.seamonkey-project.org/


If you want to be a real nerd - Old School code editors


HTML-Kit - www.chami.com/htmlkit
Bluefish - bluefish.openoffice.nl (Linux or Mac)
Notepad++ - notepad-plus.sourceforge.net
Arachnophilia - www.arachnoid.com/arachnophilia



I would recommend HTML-Kit or Notepad++ as I've used these recently. Haven't tried any WYSISWYG freebies yet. This post will be updated in the comments as I come across more stuff. A separate post will be made for image manipulators (the digital version of women ;) so please don't comment about them in this post. Please do comment on XHTML/CSS editors that are free here.

Course Books

I will be discussing this matter and making some recommendations on Saturday. Please bring your memory sticks with you.

Welcome to the Programme

Please check this blog at least once a week. We will be uploading course materials and making posts related to the class, activities, assignments and course project here.

You will need to comment on the topics posted here in a meaningful way. Evidence that you are collating should be posted on your blog and you should leave a comment on ours to notify us that you have made a post.