Write-ups

Web Hosting and Domain

Write-up is on the links page!

CSS

CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheet. It describes the layout and styling of one page or multiple pages all at once. HTML was never intended to contain the tags that format a web page. CSS is usually stored in an external file called .css and can change the look of a whole website by changing just one file. CSS is important because it allows you to easily add your own personal design to your HTML website. To use it, you first have to link the style sheet to your HTML page. Then you have to tell the sheet what you want to change. For example, if you want to change the font colour of heading 1, you put <h1><font color="red"> Chapter 1. </font></h1> in the style sheet. You can change the text size, colour, font, you can format tables, add backgrounds, and lots more.

Emerging Technologies

I think that emerging technologies will be helpful to lots of people. Virtual environments, for example, showed that they could be helpful to us in our website design class. It helps people work together who aren't physically around to do so. Augmented reality could be helpful in so many different fields like archaeology, architecture, education, emergency management, medical, military, translation, and music. Virtual reality is also be useful in many different fields. It provides fun to video game enthusiasts, it can be used in education and training, it can be used in cinema and entertainment, allowing the audience to have a 360 degree view of the film, and it can be used in other things like engineering, music and concerts, archaeology, architecture, and marketing.

Design Considerations

The first thing you want to do is gather information. You need to consider the purpose of the site. Do you want to provide information, promote services, etc? You also need to figure out what the goal of your site is. What are you trying to accomplish? Decide who your target audience will be. Is there a specific group pf people you will try to reach? And finally you need to pick the kind of content you want to include on your site. The next thing you need to do is plan. Create a site map of all the main topic areas of your site. Also decide what technologies you want to use to make your website. Next decide the look and feel of your website. Experiment and see what looks best. Pick a theme that best suits the type of site you're going for. Now you create your website. Start by developing a home page, then the "shell" for the other pages. Add the content and any forms or other interactive content. Make sure you test your site. Make sure all of the interactive elements are functional and cross test your site for compatibility. Once you make your site, make sure you maintain it. Constantly add and update information to keep people coming back. Consider the four principles of design while creating your website. The first principle is contrast. Make unique elements stand apart from each other. Use dark and light colours, different sizes, directions, and tones. Use repetition to make your website cohesive. Once you establish a design pattern make sure to repeat it throughout your site. Proper alignment is important. All elements should be visually connected and cohesive with one another. And finally proximity. Related elements should be placed in close proximity to one another. Don't space things out too much, but don't squish everything together as well.

Website Development Tools

Out of the website development tools that we used, Wix was my favourite. I think it was the easiest to use. Its very user friendly and can be figured out pretty quickly. It has templates that you can use, but its also pretty easy to start from scratch if you chose that option. The buttons on the side of the editor screen have pretty much everything you need to build your website. Customization is fairly simple to do as well if you want to change something you add. A downside is that the site can be rather slow sometimes, maybe its just the school computers making it slow, but it makes it difficult to edit the site. It has nice interactive functions like contact pages, booking services, maps, and lots of other cool stuff. I suppose i will talk about HTML in this write-up as well since we didn't use Joomla so I have no idea how it works and this has to be at least 500 words. HTML is really annoying. You have to know all of the tags and what they do and how to use them. Then once you have your list of tags on your screen it takes forever to type out what you want and make sure the right tags are in the right places otherwise things just don't show up or end up in weird places. Using a CSS is a pain as well. You have to know all of the tags for that and what they do and how to change them to make the page look the way you want it to. Its a very boring and time consuming process, and the outcome is rather disappointing. I would not recommend using HTML to anyone. The last tool we used was Wordpress. Being a beginner with Wordpress, I found it difficult to use at first. Things were hard to find, it seemed like they were hidden in weird places and there was little help getting started. Once I figured it out, it became a little easier to use but I still don't understand a lot about Wordpress. I don't like how the menus work. It's confusing with the different types of menus you can make and how they have to link or something. I don't understand it. I like how you can add editors, authors, and contributors. It makes it easy for others to add their own posts, but you can control how much they get to edit the site. It also had nice interactive functions. Overall, Wordpress is confusing and a little difficult to work with if you aren't an expert. I probably wouldn't use it again unless I had to.