Tuesday 22 January 2008

No rest for the wicked!

[Before I get into this post, I have been playing and have come across a very useful bit of HTML. Where the font is Dark Purple if you hover your mouse over it and see what happens - Let me know what you think].

Good points

Monday

This week saw our formal introduction to CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). Even though I have what I would now call basic knowledge and understanding of CSS, I found myself to be very impressed with its capabilities; almost immediately the proverbial cogs of my mind were turning with ideas for future projects.
Along with the introduction to CSS, we also had a lecture regarding Adobe Dreamweaver. Dreamweaver is an application that I consider myself to be reasonably competent with; however the lecture and ‘creative play’ benefited me greatly and will have a baring on how I do things in the future.

Feedback forms have always been somewhat of a mystery to me. I have heard a lot about them but I have never actually used one nor seen the results returned from one. Following the lectures we’ve had and from talking to other people I feel that my curiosity has now gotten the best of me and during this weeks self study I aim to create and successfully implement a working (test) feedback form.

Big thanks to Torro who instigated the creation of a pre-submission checklist. This is a fantastic idea which will hopefully avoid any still omissions for the A5 – Builder project.


Tuesday

I loved the timed design task! The more we do tasks like this, the more comfortable I am with them (kind of practice makes perfect). My design work still leaves much to be desired and is possibly the area in which I stand to make the biggest improvements.

I am really enjoying the A6 - Revert to Type. Once again it is showing me just how little I knew about design and the principles behind it before I started this course.

The seminar groups this time have been decided by putting people with similar grades together. Today’s seminar session, I feel worked very well. Everyone in the group contributed well. Lets keep it up; great work.


Bits that could have been better.

It was a real shame to have missed out on the submission of our first timed task by merely seconds. I suppose that the strictness of the submission time was to give us an indication of how serious we have to take these things.

Based upon the seminar groups today, I realise that there is still much work to do bring the A1 project up to scratch.


Conclusion

In closing, I would once again thank Steve for organising the visit next week to the Design Mechanics. Whilst I am a little bit apprehensive to show the work I have done so far, I am really looking forward to the opportunity to visit a working design studio (however small it may be).

--
Quote of the week
“Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I'll understand”. – Chinese Proverb

8 comments:

Craig Burgess said...

Just a quicky; you're only meant to use the abbr tag for abbreviations, hence the name.

When you are specifying extra details such as your group and things like that, it would make much more sense to put them in brackets at the end of the word.

Shaun Bellis said...

Hi Craig

Thanks for the tip, however, the majority of where I have used the tag is in fact for abbreviations, i.e. CSS and Torro.

I agree that it shouldn't be used for larger amounts of text, for example as I have used for the word group.

I do feel that this use of the tag will prove very useful during for the A5 assignment not only as a way of complying with the Web Acessibility Guidelines (4.2) but also to give clarity to definitions of words without coming across as patronising nor wasting the word count.

The use of brackets would be my normal approach, but that can often to have an adverse affect on word counts / text length.

--
Thanks

Shaun Bellis

Suzanne Hullah said...

By missing that deadline by seconds you've learnt a valuable lesson in time planning. In future, to ensure that you get your work in on time and make sure that all your effort hasn't been wasted, you could time plan to hand it in early. That way if anything untoward happens, you're prepared for it and can solve the problem and still manage to hand it in on time.

This week's seminar was very productive, it's nice to have all the members in a group talking rather than just one or two.

Craig Allington said...

Shaun, guideline 4.2 also says that the text should be expanded in the main body of the text too. Not everyone will think to hover over the coloured text, especially new users.

Good luck with the form, there are various ways in which you can get them working as I'm sure Steve has explained, do you know which method you are going to try and implement?

Webomatic said...

Hi Shaun

I think Craig is rite there should be text under the display so that users know what to do ie hold the mouse over. I think the seminar group was good, I still feel we all need more work in A1.

The quick test was very fun I agree. Also as you said “Practice makes perfect”, shame you missed the hand in but it can only get better at least know you no that the time line is very strict. I planned time ok I thought at first giving my self leeway for things; however I still only just made the hand in.

Thanks, Martyn

Rebecca Bradley said...

Its good to see that you have enjoyed the task, I did to I didnt think that I would as its some times hard to just think of design ideas. But a think thats where the sketch book assignment comes in handy because where able to look at the design ideas we have put in to are sketch books.

Shaun Bellis said...

Hi Everyone,

My interpretation of 4.2 of the Web Accessibility Guidelines is that the expansion of the abbreviation in the body text is in the first instance only.

The use of the 'Abbv' and 'acronym' tags are to be used in the other instances.

Thanks for the comments everyone, the advice has been very useful.

--
Thanks

Shaun Bellis

John Browne said...

Firstly I would like to sa "Show Off", with your new found ccs knowledge. Coding isn't one of my strong points but I wish to as much as possible over the next couple of weeks.

I too am fluent in dreamweaver as I have used it countless times in the past. But this new method shown in the dreamweaver presentation on monday, has some how got me puzzled. This is because my text is not lining up right in a web browser. Some harcore research is needed in order to come up with a solution.