Happy Birthday Madonna

You rock! I'll have to watch a Madonna movie to celebrate.

Blog: Course Reflection

What did you think of the course? The materials? The text books? Did you learn what you hoped to? What was missing? What was your favorite part of the course? How about your least favorite?

I did enjoy the content of the course. The projects were useful and helped to get the new material to sink in a little bit more. I can tell that I have a lot more practice to do, but feel that I have a solid start. The texts were good. My favorite part about the class is that it was "hands-on" and there was a lot of practice involved. My least favorite part about the class was the lack of discussion.

Blog: Exporting, Hotspots, Slices

Hotspots and slices only work if they are exported correctly... and images won't look good if they aren't exported and optimized properly. What part of this lesson made the least sense? What part was too obvious?

I could not get "Quick Export" to work correctly with FireWorks 9.0. It was trying to find additional HTML files in a default location and I was not able to fix it (I will try again later). Therefore I was not able to view my linked HTML with my browsers using "Quick Export". That seems like a nice feature, so I'm going to work on getting it going.

Another surprise was that FireFox and IE displayed the HTML files differently if they were stored on my PC. FireFox was picking up the links for my home_page_l8.htm that IE was not able to find. Once I put uploaded all the files onto the server, I was able to view the linked HTML files in both IE and FireFox.

I guess the obvious part of this lesson is that if you are going to shrink your file size, you are going to lose out on quality. The parts that made the least sense are the ones that I mentioned previous paragraphs.

Quinn and Her Fish

I walked out and found Quinn with her fish. Ty informed her that her fish needed water. This is what she came up with.

Blog: Image Maps and Slices

I wanted to have an idea of what I was looking for, so I decided to research navigation. I did a google on "navigation using slices" and found this tutorial. I really wanted to try it, but will do so later.

I found this explanation at Adobe that was helpful in regards to using Fireworks to create slices. It also had a good explanation of the difference between hotspots and slices.

Here are the three sites that I visited that use graphics for navigation.

1. Family Fun It appears that Family Fun is using slices to create their navigation. I am finding tables that contain graphics when I view the source code. This is an indicator of slices, according to the Adobe reference that I listed above.

2. The Fifty States Finally. I found a sight that I am pretty sure uses hotspots, since they have broken up a US map into various links. When I view the source code, I found a huge list of the polygon coordinates that broke up the original gif.

3. Barnes and Noble I did find a table that included images, which is an indication of slices. While searching the code, I discovered that B&N had a hotspots for "This Hour's Best Sellers" and a "MemberMap". I have a feeling that B&N is using slices without tables in some areas, since I am seeing rollovers occurring without tables. I don't know enough about this. So if you know, tell me!

Summer

I can't believe tomorrow is August 1st! I have been waiting for summer weather and I don't know what to think. My sister told me that she saw geese coming back to Creamer's Field. Here she told me how warm Fairbanks is in the summer and I was so excited! I missed the hot days of summer. At least we had a few.

A plus is that I discovered a new book. This one is called "The Spellman Files" and is by Lisa Lutz. It is a pretty good book. I make myself leave my books upstairs, otherwise I never put them down. Lisa is compared to Carl Hiassen (another fav of mine) and I've even heard someone say Janet Evanovich (she is the best).

Now...off to Fireworks! How many others had to try out buttons--I did. I couldn't just couldn't skip that chapter....

Cuil

Cuil is a new search engine that was developed by former Google employees. It is easy to use and is providing okay search results. I'm taking away my recommendation to try it out and am now saying the search results aren't excellent. I'm bad, I know.

My Reason:
I do like the wide variety of search results and many of them seem relevant to my search. However, it does seem to have a few issues.

Some of the pages are dated (which isn't always a bad thing), I got a page of repeated words (since this engine does content based search and not just meta tags) and I pulled up a nasty site that must have had embedded text or meta tags that made it seem relevant. So, I wouldn't let your kids use this search engine (or demonstrate this engine in front of a group of people!) until the kinks are worked out. Argh! Gross!

Important note: you may think that the site is safe to go to based on the picture that is displayed by the link--it is not!!! Yuck! Double gross!! I can't believe I saw that stuff and good thing my kids weren't watching.

mootools

Something I want to look into. http://mootools.net/

Redskins Football

Michael and Darrin played their first football game today. Here are the shots that we managed to get. Did you know football games last TWO hours each?

Scott's New Bike

Scott won a bike yesterday at the Goldpanner's game! He is still very excited. It was Kid's Day and my brother gave us tickets to go to the ballgame. At first I said, "No!" but then I thought it would be nice for the kids to experience a game. And why did I say no so quickly? I used to watch the Cincinnati Reds play and those games lasted a long time and that sun was hot!

Goldpanner games are much cheaper too--$2 for adults and $1 a kid =) We are definitely going to keep going to the ballpark!

Blog: Bitmap vs Vector Tools

1) Have you worked with other graphics tools? If so, what were they? Were you working with bitmap or vector tools (or both?).

I have only played around with PSE 4.0 and that was only to modify my pictures for scrapbooking.

2) Point us to three images on the web that have caught your attention or that you feel are noteworthy. Since they are being displayed on the web, you are seeing a bitmap version, but what kind of tools do you think were used to create each image (bitmap or vector or both?) and why?

I did a google on vector images, since I wanted to see what could be done. Here is one that does look very cool and is by "Cris Vector". http://www.vectorvault.com/2008/07/20/incredible-vector-art-portfolio-cristiano-siqueira/

If I was guessing if it was vector or not...the amounts of different textures that he is using and colors.

Here is a cool picture from flickr. I know it is a bitmap, otherwise known as raster image, since it is most likely a digital picture. http://www.flickr.com/photos/97968921@N00/2677899048/

Just because I think these would make cool rubber stamps. I wonder...are rubber stamps made from vector images? Hmmm....http://www.vecteezy.com/vf/453-Ornaments-Vector-pack

She Rides!

Jill finally started riding her bike. She knew how to balance, but just didn't have the courage to take off. Yay Jill!

Blog: Fireworks Thoughts

Make a post to your blog answering the following questions: what do you think of Fireworks so far? What are the most interesting uses you can think of for it? How do you plan to put it to use for your "real" site(s)?

Fireworks is frustrating! I worked on my other class this week, since I thought this assignment in Fireworks looked similar to what I have been doing in Adobe Photoshop. Moosetake! I had issues getting Fireworks to work properly and couldn't save my selection. I still can't do it and receive an error when I try. I spent a lot of time messing around with that.

Fireworks seems like a very useful tool for altering free Dreamweaver templates, resizing images and altering digital pictures. I plan on using Fireworks to alter and resize my images for my "real" site. It seems like there is a lot more to Fireworks than what we have done so far, so I'm sure I'll have a better answer for this question soon.

Blog: Table-Based Design

Take a look back at each of the sites you chose as examples of good design. Is their design based on tables? Styles? Both? How about your blog itself?

Why do you think so many sites still use tables for layout even today?

I can't wait to learn more about CSS for page layout! I guess so many sites still use tables for layout because the work is done and they don't want to redo everything that already works. Maybe they already have determined how they are going to layout pages and it would be hard to make/convince everyone switch to a new format. Perhaps there will be more motivation to get rid of tables as more people invest in iphones and such. And that time seems to be coming rather quickly.

I changed my blog layout after a previous lesson and it looks like it doesn't use tables! Very cool. I noticed that the Web Design Library site that I liked uses tables and CSS. QVC uses only CSS and no tables (at least their index page doesn't). I don't know why I liked the Web Design Library. Today it looks too blue.

color management

Someone recommended this tool for color management. I'm going to look into it later, but am using this blog to remember the link. Huey

TV Converter Box Coupon

My kiddos have been asking all the time about the TV converter box. They are very concerned that PBS will go away in February 2009. In Juneau, we weren't able to pick up any stations, so I guess they are having a flashback. Today is a wonderful day for them. The TV Converter Box Coupon as arrived.

Update: Still cost me $14.99 with $40 off coupon BUT the converter box rocks!!

Flickr

I checked out Flickr and discovered a ton of stuff. Being a member of Yahoo groups, I decided there had to be a "web design" group. Here is one link that someone recommended off of the graphics design group Blue Vertigo.

More on CSS

After completing the table chapter, I had a better understanding of how to find out where the code related to CSS. I realized that I could look through the XHTML and find "clean" looking code and that would most likely have a CSS applied. If it was "messy" looking, then either the CSS was embedded or not used at all!

4th of July

What a day! I was planning on having a lazy day and it was much more than that. We went to the North Pole parade and that was interesting. I thought watching tons of farm equipment go down the road was bad, but it turns out motorcycles can also have the same effect. Ty got a free box of sparklers, so the kids all tried them out. We did get to see Mary and gang yesterday and boy do they go all out for fireworks!

Dragonfly Days

We went fishing yesterday and enjoyed the sun and warm weather. Of course, we caught no fish. We did manage to catch this dragonfly. Creamer's Field had dragonfly day and we had to chance to go on a dragonfly hunt with John Hudson and Bob Armstrong. They have a book out called Dragonflies of Alaska that is fantastic for learning about dragonflies.

Advanced CSS

Your blog task is to find two sites that implement a design using XHTML and CSS for design and layout. Post links to the sites along with your commentary on how the CSS is being used, what you like (and don't like) about them, and any questions you might have about their construction. These don't have to be sites about web design nor do they even have to be exceptional sites. A good place to start might be taking a look at the source of some of the sites you've become used to visiting. Are any of them using Style Sheets? My site, http://www.chrislott.org/ is CSS based. It uses no tables at all, but instead uses CSS to create the columns and to style the text and links. You can tell because there are no TABLE tag, no FONT tags, and there are links in the HEAD of the document to the CSS stylesheet.

1. http://www.webdesign.org/

I see a stylesheet for the column and a general stylesheet. I wouldn't be surprised if there are more CSS stylesheets that I am not catching. I think they did a good job of organizing a lot of information. I like how they kept the main text short and utilized the space on both sides of the text.

2. http://www.qvc.com/
QVC has a lot of embedded CSS defined and it is a total bear to read this. Perhaps because it constantly has to be updated. I can't stand the glaring white buttons and background. Geesh.

I just realized why I was having such a hard time with this blog post--we haven't really learned about using CSS for creating layouts. We have been working with using CSS to redefine existing tags, create classes and ID selectors. That is not the same as the creating the layout of a page. In this light, I still like the two sites that I found--they do have good layouts that were created with CSS stylesheets and XHTML. I cannot tell how to critique their use, but I am able to notice that they are being used.

Going shampoo free

No, it's not for free shampoo!

Shampoo free

It has to do with not using regular shampoo for washing your hair. Instead use baking soda and Apple Cider Vinegar (ACV). I wonder if it works, but I'm almost too afraid to try. I'll have to go back and read it again later and see if I'm willing to attempt it. Perhaps I'll try it first on one of the kiddos...perhaps one named Mikey....

Blog: Class Projects

I did my projects for Typography and Linking and didn't make it relevant. I feel that I am still learning many of Dreamweaver's basics and am not fast enough to make my projects look nice with the knowledge I currently have about web design. Instead I've been working on a design document that I hope to implement.

Blog: Typography

Cruise the web for sites that model good and/or bad use of text and typography. Make a post to your blog pointing out at least two sites and specifically what aspects of the sites show good and/or bad use of type and typography.

I feel totally unqualified to do this! I decided to search scrapbooking/rubber stamping sites, since that is a topic I'm interested in.

The Good:

1. Scrap Jazz
I like this site, because it is easy to read! They are utilizing the short line length recommendation by having a navigation bar on the right hand side and on the top of the page. Their font is not squished; with good padding and margins. They even break their text into smaller segments by placing boxes around different topics and using images to draw the eye around the page.

2. Hero Arts Tutorial
I really like how easy it is to follow their instructions. They are following the short line of text, nice font, good padding and margins. Hero Arts is also using a blue background color behind the instruction title to highlight the start of important text. Plus having all their example images on the left hand side really works to balance their heavy text side. I also like the way that they contained their text. Notice how they put their "More Resoures" with a blue background. I like their color consistancy for the important text backgrounds.

The Bad:

1. Club Scrap
One of my favorite places to go, but it is a bear to read through their list! I think it is because: it seems like everything is pushed over to the right hand side of the screen; the text all looks the same; and it is hard to figure out what is the more important information is, since it is all presented at the same type size and color. They also do not seem to be utilizing padding (which I know a little about after doing Chapter 7) and I think padding would help to break things up and create focus on different parts of information being provided.

2. RubberStampMadness Stamping Tips
Okay. It seems like the sites that I do not like have all the text bunched together in long lengths. This site also has a font that is harder for me to read. I do see the advantages now in breaking the text up into shorter line lengths, with nice padding and margins. I am not seing any of the tips given to break of the text and make the important information stand out. They are using color, but doing a brief scan of the colored words on this page does not make any specific tips jump out to me. This page has some good info and I most likely would have ignored it if I wasn't trying to figure out the typography on it.

Posting digital pictures on the web...

I ran my site through QuickScan (which I found off of the "GifWizard" link that I mentioned in my previous post. I discovered how slow my site will load on a 56k modem! And I discovered that I really need to optimize my images...sigh, more work. Of course, they wanted to charge me to do that. I being the total cheapskate that I am, found a different place.

Free Image Optimizer

Very easy to use and I'll have to work on getting my images updated. It probably won't be done until tonight, since the kiddos are trashing the house as I type.

I also discovered a good image optimization explanation here.

On Like Donkey Kong

I just read this and liked it--therefore my post title.

I've been googling and here are a few links I plan on checking out (not now, since I'm busy). Decided to post them on my blog for others to see. Let me know if you've found better ones!

http://www.how-to-build-websites.com/
http://www.entheosweb.com/website_design/default.asp
http://www.w3schools.com/
http://www.freecsstemplates.org/
http://www.oswd.org/
http://www.daniweb.com/
http://www.gifwizard.com/
http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/

My trip to the used bookstore...

I found a book called "Web Pages That Suck" that was written in 1996. I almost bought it, but the publish date made me hesitate. $2 you know--lots of money!

The main reason I didn't buy the book was that I saw it was based on a website http://webpagesthatsuck.com/ and I figured that maybe I could find a lot of the information for free.

I haven't had time to check it out, but I will!

Puppy Sitting

Mary called me and told me she brought her puppy to work. I thought "How dumb is that." Then she told me that Cocoa was not behaving when her clients were there, so could I watch him? So here is a picture of Jill, Quinn and Cocoa.

Blog: Reflection #1

Take a few minutes to reflect on what you have learned and done in this class so far. Where could the materials or directions be improved?

If you are new to web publishing, what was harder than expected? What was easier? If you've done this kind of thing before, what do you differently? Include both your first experiences with Dreamweaver and blogging.

I am new to web publishing and I must say that working with Dreamweaver isn't as difficult as getting the material that I need to make my pages sorta like the way I want to. I spent most of my time working with Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0! I also spent a great deal of time trying to figure out how to layout my pages using my current Dreamweaver knowledge.

In regards to class, I am seeing how being a classroom setting might be better. I find that I tend to wait for a grade before I move onto my next assignment. Now I am making myself continue on without grade feedback, otherwise I would not keep on track with the due dates.

In regards to blogging, my reason to use a blog is for CIOS256. For fun, I do share pictures with family. This does not mean that I do not read information online and keep up to date on topics that I'm interested in. I will note that I should check out the other CIOS256 blogs and make extra blog entries that relate to this class.

I can see why business or individual would want to keep a blog. It is a great tool to encourage readers to leave feedback and engage them. My best friend (Kert the Artist) says she uses blogs in her high school classes with success.

I normally do not need to communicate via blog to reach an audience. I use forums. This enables me to browse a variety of topics quickly and also see what people have to say. I am also able to ask questions and receive a wide variety of response fairly quick.

Dreamweaver Thoughts

This may be your first experience with Dreamweaver. If not, do your best to reflect on the following questions anyway. What did you find most confusing or puzzling about Dreamweaver? What surprised you? What irritated you? If you have used other web editing programs, how does Dreamweaver initially compare?

My big puzzle circles around the remote host. There are a lot of prompts coming up about what to do with file transfers. Mainly dealing with dependent files. Should I just deal with it or turn off the prompts?

I was irate when I uploaded a file different than the one I had just been editing. If a different file is selected in the File Panel, Dreamweaver uploaded that file and not the file being edited in the document window.

I have not really used other web editing programs in depth, so I don't have a good comparison.

Soccer Cheerleaders

We had soccer again for the third night in a row! The kids are getting pretty good at entertaining themselves at the games. I like to sit down and enjoy the sun (hint to the sun...come on out and shine). This soccer business is taking up most of my time. I am finding there is too much to do in Fairbanks! I really need to do laundry, dishes, cleaning and more cleaning...and read my new Janet Evanovich!!!

Reflection #1 - Publishing

1) What did you find most difficult about completing the "first published pages" assignment?
My most shocking thing was that it was due today! For some reason I thought I had until Friday. I also wanted to tweak the pages and play around with it--stay focused Amy. Soccer is going on and we were almost late! Lesson learned: Have to be sure to watch the due dates and not play around with other things....

2) What has surprised you (in a good or a bad way... or both) about Dreamweaver?
Dreamweaver has an interface that is quite similar to Eclipse. That has made it pretty easy for me *so far*. No reason to jinx myself here and have everything go downhill.

3) What has surprised you (in a good or a bad way... or both) about this course?
I cannot find out exactly where my "web space support area/help pages" are! Geesh. I'm wondering if I even have it, since I'm using the class web server. However, there should be documentation somewhere.... Okay. Realizing that I need a "surprise" here and I can't think of one. I was happily surprised with the broken XHTML code--it was fun to figure that out. Another thing is the web development vocabulary. That will take some practice.

Fishing

We have been trying to figure out Fairbanks fishing! So far Grandpa has caught one small rainbow trout at Ballaine Lake and nothing at Chatanika River.

Now, to make this slightly interesting, I will now tell how to catch at fish in Fairbanks...don't go to Ballaine Lake! Joking...we saw someone else catching fish and I did get to fall into the lake there. In my defense, I wasn't the only one in the lake. There are also appears to be a few number of dogs that go swimming there. In fact, one dog was swimming after a beaver for quite a long time yesterday. If you are wondering, beaver are smarter than dogs....

Advice from Grandpa
If you are new to Fairbanks fishing areas, ask for a proof from people that give you information (pictures required). After covering over fifty miles and sampling lakes and rivers, what you see in the picture is the lone result of a rainbow that bit in Fairbanks.

Elton John--May 29th

We went to see Elton John in Fairbanks. The concert lasted 2.5 hours and the traffic was a mess afterwards! We decided to hang-out and watch the traffic (and watch and watch the traffic.) We had to really watch Phil, because he kept standing up to dance. We finally got him quieted down!

Introduction

This is the reason my blog even exists. I am enrolled in CDE CIOS 256 and my teacher is forcing me to enter into what I perceived to be a teenage "thing". However, when reading my "Good Housekeeping" from my Mom tonight, I noticed that at the back there was a blog written by an adult male. He wrote about rollerskating with his son and told us what a hot wife he had. He also talked about touching boobs. I wondered why was this even in my magazine!!!

Therefore, back to the subject. I do not have any web design experience since 1998. Yes, you read that right. I had my first child then. I made him a snazzy web site--with a slide show to show off how cute he was. Then I had more children and no longer cared about playing around with the web for a long, long time...

...fast forward to 2008....

I am taking this class because I went to work last year for five months as an analyst/programmer for the State of Alaska. I was assigned nasty MS Access Visual Basic (Barfic) programming across multiple versions of Windows. Nobody should have to be put through that torture. My babysitter quit and now I am a stay at home mom who would like to play around with web programming.

Before my babysitter quit, I was allowed to venture into Java for brief periods of time. I was given Eclipse to use and had to write HTML code by hand! I knew something was wrong. I found NetBeans and life seemed better.

That is why I am taking this class today, so I can check out the cool new web development tools (and get a new computer in the process). I have no formal web development training, so I'm hoping this will be a good introduction.

Rain

And cold. However Grandpa arrived today! We did try out something from my list...we met Senator Ted Stevens at Pioneer Park.

May 27th, 2008

Wowsers. I am going to have to tell EVERYBODY that I now blog.

I would like to learn more about what to do around Fairbanks, Alaska. Hence, my blog name.


My Fairbanks list:

1. I can go plant flowers at UAF from 9-noon and bum a free lunch.
2. And if I'm feeling extra cheap I can head to Pioneer Park to celebrate Alaska's 50th anniversary of statehood and bum a free dinner too from 5:30-8:30! Dermot is a great guy and I highly recommend reading his articles in the paper.
3. Library times: Tuesdays (day programs) and Thursdays (evening programs.

My List list:

1. I have four kids, so I should pay a bit of attention to them too. Don't worry. They aren't neglected. Daddy's home while I'm playing on the computer.
2. Tell everybody that I now have a blog.
3. Make Grandma and Grandpa happy.
4. Oh, and I signed up for two classes at UAF's CDE. Perhaps I should work on those classes a bit too...wait, that's what I'm doing right now!