WEB JOURNAL
Week 1
This first week has been an introduction to the course and to what we are going to work on. We have started to use Netscape Composer.. This week we had to get a web space to publish our work, so most of the people went to www.geocities.com. I alreaday have my web space from the University of Valencia and also I have an account in UT. The first thing to do is to create a web page, the index page of our web page and start a Web Journal, a concept that is completely new for me.
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Week 2
This week whe have been talking about the goal and the possible audience of our web apge. I guess I don't really think about an audience right now because my main goal is to improve my skills in developing web sites. I have been working for a long time with Netscape Composer in my University in a working group but it was for a concrete academic purpose and not my personal one. I want to improve my skills when dealing with web pages and aslo how to analyse the content they have. I think this course will provide me all the relevant and basic inforamtion we need and from that point start to develop our own web pages with our own content for a sepecific goal.
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Week 3
This week we have started to work with Adobe Photoshop. I don't have any picture here because my creations are the background of this web page and some of the buttons. The background was white and had some pictures, so what I did is an inversion of colors and I erased the pictures that it had. I have a little experience with Adobe but for example I didn't know how to create buttons and also many options that I hadn't even seen before. One reason is because I am used to "play" with all those programs, that is, I didn't take a course about Adobe or Netscape Composer. All I know, which is not much, is from my own curiosity with designing. Last semester I read a book really interesting called "Don't Make Me Think" and I think that kind of books, like "Understanding Comics", are very useful when you are not a proffesional in web design because they explain the complex stuff in an very understandable way.
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Week 4
People have been presenting the Skunworks part 1. From what I have seen on the Internet each web page is completely different from the rest. I think the main point I would like to talk about is us, as the people who read and download those web pages. From what I have seen many of the web pages and mainly the most important web pages don't realise about the problems we have with internet speed connection. For example, in my University we have a pretty good connection but when I go to my friend's house to show him some weg page I found it is impossible to see them because of the amount of innecessary information they have like too images or other web pages with stuff to buy that open every time you click on the web page you are really interested in.
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Week 5
This week we have been desinging some navigation buttons with Adobe Photoshop. I was used to navigate looking for cool images, buttons and all the easy and cool stuff I could find but now that I know this useful tool with Adobe I think I will start designing my own and unique buttons. Maybe they won't be that impressive but they will be mine. We have also started with frames and how they work. I like them personally, but you ahve always to give the option with and without frames.
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Week 6
This week we have been discussing about the audience and the design of our web sites. We have learn how to make frames. I like frames because you don't know if the person who is navigating through your web page is going to follow everything the way you expect so if you have frames, but not so many, you can give the reader the option to navigate your web site as he wants, without following any predesign navigation pattern.
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Week 7
This week we discussed about the combination of colors in our web sites. We have to be very careful with that, because we must think in the kind of content we are putting in our web sites. If we have large pages with plane text and we plan the reader to seat in front of hi/her computer and read for 2 or 3 hours we have to take care that the colors are easy to read and will not hurt their eyes. We can see that example in the Project Guttemberg web page where you can find entire books and they just use black and white. We have also seen some logos but I am not pretty sure about a logo in my web site, at least now. I don't have either and idea for a logo.
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Week 8
We haven't had class on Tuesday and on Thursday people presentedSkunkworks 2
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Week 9
Spring Break
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Week 10
No class.
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Week 11
This week we have been working with a new program called Dreamweaver. I kwew this program a little bit but I didn't really know how it worked. On Tuesday we had an introduction to this program and its basics functions, like how to make web pages, links, tables, how to insert images and basically all the basic stuff to create a common web page. I discovered that it is a lot easier to make frames with this programs because you can define the properties and also the link properties. Another thing is the layer option. With that option you can move your stuff and put it wherever you want but some browsers can not work with them. On thursday we have been working with the navigation bars, the frames and the web photo album, which is basically a way to do a lot of different pages just with one click, because the program generates all the thumbnails and the different pages for each image. Pretty cool.
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Week 12
This week we have been working on our web sites and redesigning them with Dreamweaver. I haven't redesgined anything because I have been sick for so long that I am going to start from the beginning. As I will explain at the end my aim in this course was not to design a web site, which I know hoe to do it more or less, but to improve my skills whern dealing with them.
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Week 13
Now we have started with the stuff I really love, Macromedia Flash 5.0. I think this program is really cool and you can make more than just some funny animations. At this point I only know how to make some stuff, like easy animations with sounds, no big deal if you have worked before with it but my idea is keep working with this program and design a really good Flash web page, but always having in mind the problem of speed connection, of course. Talking about Flash web pages, check this one about "music", but be careful, these guys make music with the Flash sounds, really cool: http://www.futurewebsonics.com/.
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Week 14
This week I have been working hard on my flash project. I didn't really know what to do because I wanted to make an intro for my web page. However, before starting with the relevant stuff concerning my web page I decided to... let's say play a little with this program. I started to create my own version of Dragon Ball Z series, which I am going to call Dragon Fool CO2. So, what I am thinking to do is a kind of irony of these cartoons, but I love them, I am sorry!!
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Week 15
We presented our Flash Projects on Thursday. I couldn't present it because I had some problems the night before in the UGL and it didn't allow to test the movie. At the same time and by some strange thing the computer decided to break and stop and as a reslut it screwed my last scene. I had a copy of it but not of the complete scene so I had to finish it again. Now it is done and I think is quite funny. This is just the first chapter!!
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Sergio Ligero Gonzalez