Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Final Thoughts on Dreamweaver Course...

Hello All!

What a long, strange trip its been on this course; on the whole, I found it quite a challenging course to pick up at first, but in no time at all, I quickly found myself truly enjoying the lessons - and truly felt satisfaction that came with earning my grades through hard work and perseverence.

Despite the difficulties that I encountered along the way which impeded my progress, I can honestly say that this class has been anything but tame... it was exactly what I wanted to study with.

Until next time...

- Enyal

Overall Toughts on Hotspots, Splicing Lessons

In the end, I found that understanding how hotspots and splicing works is quite easy... as long as you always study the procedures closely, and always check your work! There are too many "mistakes" which are the result of poor planning and design; the best way to address this is to always watch what you're doing, especially how you set up the exports.

-Enyal

Sites that use Hotspots and/or Slices

In this entry, I'll examine 3 sites to see if they use any hotspots or Slices in their design.

Gamesradar (http://www.gamesradar.com/) :
This site uses both hotspots and slices, as apparent from the way they designed the top menu and lists.

PlanetQuake (http://planetquake.gamespy.com/):

Lot of info, but little use of hotspots and splices.

wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org/):

Sadly, Wikipedia seems to follow the same tact as above - so much knowledge there, but in need of streamlining the interface.

- Enyal

Previous Workings

In the past, I've worked with Adobe Photoshop; I must say it was quite an enyoyable program. To build your own art, with just your imagination as a limit... its quite the thrill.

Also, working with that program also gave me an early insight in bitmap and vector tools, as well as how they are used - such an experience has enabled me to view pictures in a much more learned light as to how they were composed. Personally, I like vector art: if used the right way, you can create highly stylized pieces of art.

For example, these three particular images show what one can do:

http://mart-art.deviantart.com/art/vector-art-house-m-d-83107486?offset=0

Vector art, possible photo reference for finer details...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ton3vita/474067883/

Combination Vector/Bitmap - very good blending of both...

http://hachidaime.deviantart.com/art/flower-vector-art-78796839

Again, vector with possible photo ref.

- Enyal

Fireworks Thoughts

After working with Fireworks and its tools, I have noticed a marked similarity in most of the tools when compared to what I worked with in Photoshop. Due to my familiarity with these tools, it will be easy to learn the nuances, despite the slight nuances that came with each program.

Especially the Rubber Stamp tool; I'll have fun messing with that. ;D

In this way, using Fireworks will enable me to enhance my future works in a way that I earlier never could; pages will be made that will be better than my works in years past, and I will greatly enjoy people reactions of them later when they appear online.

- Enyal

Monday, May 11, 2009

Table Travesty

After learning of the bloated and cumbersome nature of tables, I've looked at two of my previously discussed sites - my Blog and WoWwiki - to examine whether they are efficiently CSS, or treacherously table-based in their design. Here's what I've seen:

My blog appears to run on a combo of CSS and HTML, judging from the HTML editor included in changing posts. Due to the CSS structure, it is a fast and streamlined little site whose speed continues to amaze.

WoWwiki, on the other hand, does suffer from tables, bit not to the extent that one might believe - its more like a medium dependencies, based on my observations. Thus it can be ponderous in its use, but not so much to be unreliable.

- Enyal

CSS Analysis

For this time, we will now examine a few sites that use either XHTML or CSS in their design, and examine how well their structure is planned out in relation as to what they wish to accomplish.

The Ancient Gaming Noob (http://tagn.wordpress.com/)

Still one of my favorite sites, it is also seems to be built with an XHTML framework. His blog is formatted in a fashion that is pleasing to the eye, with adequate spacing and lists created with CSS in order to present his past blog postings in an easy-to-find archive on the right of the page.

The Daily Victim (http://archive.gamespy.com/DailyVictim/hov.asp)

Though no longer updated, The Daily Victim is a hilarious tribute to online gaming dementia that's well worth the time to peruse through the IMMENSE archive. However, despite its hilarity, it comes with an unfortunate flaw in its design: the way that the archive itself was made, you are unable to browse through an entire listing of the articles - you must go through them manually. Considering the sheer volume of work done on this site, that is a tall order for any reader to do.

- Enyal