Sunday, September 21, 2008

Testng and adjusting

September 21, 2008
So the lingering thoughts about layout and navigability woke me up this morning. I test ran the site and found some things tat may be redundant. I enlisted a real user, my wife, who although may not be familiar with the content is an avid surfer and knows what she likes in a web page.
Her thoughts echoed mine in some areas and she also pointed out some other areas for fixing.
Like a flu shot, the initial sting is much shorter than the reaction afterwards. Trying to use a template was more of a curse than a blessing. It seems I have just enough knowledge to get started but a few early errors were costly in terms of time and frustration. Perhaps making my own page and tailoring it to my needs would have been a bit more time consuming in the front end but later on possibly easier to control things like layout or font.
Other things like editable regions and their applications caused some severe frustration and the question "Why?" was uttered more than enough times.
Eventually I found a way around the limitations and made what I believe to be an improvement.

Learning moments even came with this blog. Save, then publish. Just saving, saves this entry into cyberspace, never to be found again.
Swear count - 12
Pound Count - 3

Let the Learning Begin

This Blog is in reaction to the learning I have encountered while starting to create the website for my EDER 679 Portfolio.
September 19, 2008
I knew I needed some help setting up my web page so I contacted a friend to give me a quick refresher on website design and development. He showed me a couple of tricks when I remembered that I could search for a predetermined layout. I found one that i thought would serve my purposes and went ahead in creating a simple plan, a prototype on paper with flowcharts to developing my site. I was able to create a home page and pages for each of my main topics as well as my sub topics. I left thinking I had a pretty good start. Still some ideas and concerns lingered in my mind about layout and navigability.
Swear Count - 5
Pound Count - 0