flash....sigh

Flash is very aggravating. Sometimes it seems to throw a hissy fit for no good reason. I wish there was more time to learn it.

Alas, it is the last day of class and I am glad I got the opportunity to learn about creating websites. I think this will be very useful knowledge in the future.

Finale

Being the last day of class, I can say I have learned a lot during the quarter. All I've really used is Flash, with some small dabblings in HTML. Now, I want to learn Java Script and get a little more advanced with HTML. Flash, while something I know and am fairly comfortable with, is limited right now and probably wouldn't be the best alternative for a portfolio site. If I did do a Flash site for portfolio, I would surely include an HTML version as well so I can be found easier on Google.

CMS is something I didn't know even existed. The project was a good first step into CMS, but I don't think I have any idea of what power it has. On the surface, its editing the contents of a template, but to make it truly your own would require a little more work. I will definitely revisit CMS in the future.

This has been a great class to taste-test various formats for designing web pages and served as a springboard into CMS, CSS, HTML and Flash.

Flash is evil...

I'm having a great deal of trouble getting the image gallery and video to work on my flash page. Is anyone having similar troubles, and if you overcame them, how did you do it?

DesignerCoaster (Post #8)

I think that I've had more ups and downs in this class than maybe any other class that I've taken here at SCAD. Each of the four projects has seen my psyche go on a roller coaster ride, from frustration to understanding and then from meltdown to epiphany...every two weeks. But looking back, it's kind of amazing how much I was able to learn and produce in the matter of ten short weeks.

BOOYAH

BooYah. I almost have four sites to show.

I have to say I like the variety of techniques we used to make sites. From Photoshop, to Dreamweaver to CMS to Flash... it's an interesting progression.

My impression of web design, though, is that it is hard to learn unless you just sit down and fail (over and over again) at whatever you are trying to attempt. It's a lot of clicking and trying. The easiest thing is when you have a sample site with code to look at. I like picking out the stuff in the HTML that I want to keep and getting rid of what I want to get rid of. The Joomla template mods I made were facilitated by copying the entire images folder and then modifying everything I wanted to in PSD.

Anyway. I'm excited to be close to finished. I'll bet you guys are too.

Joomla Based Spaceship Gallery Update

I finally got a chance to talk to the administrators of the site I redesigned for the Joomla project, and they seemed excited about the idea. A previous attempt at a revamp had stalled in the coding phase due to the sheer volume of work, and the fact that this is a volunteer-run endeavor. Joomla's CMS seems to accomplish everything they wanted to with a lot less muss and fuss. I'm going to be in contact with the tech-guys to has out a final design.

The original site is here.

My redesign is here.

Flash isn't bad, it's just misguided

Like a kid with a bad homelife, Flash's problems stem from improper support and foundations by Adobe. It's hard to argue that Flash gives sites a dynamic kick in the ass to make the look and design more appealing, from an eye-candy standpoint anyway. Like all programs, tweaks and additions to Flash could make it more sensible to use from a promotional standpoint and ease of use. Here's my suggestions to Adobe:

1. Get SEO going now. This should have been done a long time ago when it was discovered Google wouldn't search in the trenches of Flash's code to get relevant information. For most people, a site is only as good as its ability to be found. Combining knowledge on how exactly Google works with a Flash file that can be read by Google properly would make Flash much more of a go-to program.

2. Have jump to pages within Flash. One of my biggest beefs with Flash is you have to enter the site from the home page. What if a potential emplyer wants to see a particular video on your site? They then have to navigate precisely. What if someone saw a great photo on your site, told a friend about it, but then the friend got frustrated trying to find the photogaphic needle in the haystack? You could potentially lose freelance work or even just the attention of someone you want because of lack of web page honing. You could make a Flash subsite (www.mysupersite.com/animation) and have a seperate Flash file for each page. This could be a chopped version of your site, by having multiple minisites like that, but then have the normal url (www.mysupersite.com) direct to a Flash file of the entire site. Until Adobe throw us a bone, its up to us to be creative and work around Flash's shortcomings.

hey everyone!

So this flash thing seems to be a bit difficult, but it also seems like it has a lot of possibilities as well. I wish there was more time to explore all the different capabilities and functions of flash.

Also, it seems that the monitors in the grad lab are calibrated very different from the rest of the world. I was working on my layout in there only to find that it was incredibly dark upon bringing it up here in the cintique lab. I thought the values looked a little fishy. So be aware of the grad lab and double check things. It's a headache having to change all my color brightnesses. And unfortunately on a website you really can't be sure of how people are going to view it on their own computers.... *sigh... why can't all monitors just be the same!!!!

Interactive Flash Videos

This is absolutely amazing. More of this could and we could start seeing music videos becoming cool again:

http://www.neonbible.com/readme.html

Be sure you click around a whole bunch.

Ryan

Examples of Flash Websites

Hello all

Since we are int he process of creating great flash websites I've decided to post some examples of some sites.

http://www.jasonryananimation.com/main.html

http://www.beckitower.com/

http://www.neilhelm.com/

Check these out might give you some ideas
JP

Finished Joomla Site

I'm posting my finished Joomla site here for everyone to get a look at. It's based around this Joomla template, and is a revamp of the Star Wars Design Alliance Gallery. I'm going to be presenting it to the Design Alliance webmasters sometime this weekend for some final tweaks and possible implementation as the new gallery.

You are going to LOVE this

It is incredibly on-topic for today's Flash lecture. ENJOY.

http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/animator

The President-Elect

Well here we are again. Another presidential election, and the country can continue to thrive in the same way it always has. Now we have President Barack Obama in office and I wish him well and hope that he does this country justice by spreading around all of the change that he has been talking up throughout this election process. It is also worth noting that the color barrier for the president has been broken, showing that America is ready to grow up, and finally put some of the race issue to rest....in some small facet. I just wanted to write and say that I am looking forward to our country going in a new, and hopefully positive, direction. And even though my presidential candidate did not win, I wish our new President all the best, as I continue to give my undying support for the country that I love so much. Go America.

- D

Joomla ups and downs

I struggle, and will probably continue to do so until the assignment is due tonight, with the "simplicity" of Joomla. The overall look is fairly easy to achieve, but the layout seems a little all over the place. There's more than one way to get to an area you want to edit, but because of that, I have some trouble remembering how to get there. I do better with a one route way, it's easier to memorize.

Before I began designing through Joomla, I had difficulty installing the templates. Although I downloaded free ones, some weren't compatible with Joomla 1.5. After installing 1.0, some templates weren't completely unlocked, making it impossible to edit all areas of the template. Eventually, I found one that was compatible, fully editable, and had a more interesting layout than some of the others.

Though I won't abandon CMS, I didn't find it as easy or as intuitive as I hoped. This may be corrected with more practice as I want to see exactly how much customization I can do with templates.