Flash

When reading Gone in a Flash written by Keith Collins, flash became more then just a plug-in to me. It was just something that I needed in order to listen to pandora at the time. Reading this article, it gives a clear, detailed explanation of what flash has been through. From roaring success all the way down to being replaced, Flash has been through it all. The author concludes that HTML will be a suitable replacement for Flash, with multiple versions and enough complexity to to have long-term suitability.

Flash brought together the web community in ways that didn't seem possible at the time. It made the possibility of being able to access websites on all different browsers and still work properly a reality. The plugin guaranteed videos, animation, and interactivity onto every single computer. In 2007, Steve Jobs made the executive decision to not support flash in the latest updated iPhone. This prompted others to move away from flash as well and use HTML5. Facebook and Youtube used flash to build their games and videos, but eventually did make videos available in HTML5 as well so iPhone users could participate. In 2011, Adobe released Edge Animate - a new way to create HTML content, which was universally supported on most devices. "This makes HTML5 the best solution for creating a deploying content in the browser across mobile platforms" said Adobe. The major company that uses flash is Facebook. All of their games are based on flash and it's needed to play. Then, Google came out with the announcement that Chrome will block flash by default. You're still able to access it with an optional button, but for the most popular browser in the world to get rid of it, I don't see a bright future for flash.

As a web designer, I use HTML 10x more then I ever did Flash. It's the base of all my websites, while flash is more of an optional tag on. I don't understand how Flash could've been the base of anything. Even before iPhones wouldn't allow flash, there wouldn't of been a great use of it. All together, Flash is something that is just there, and I don't think it would make much of a difference if they got rid of it all together (unless Pandora doesn't upgrade).

Here's the link to the article: Gone in a Flash

Hop Aboard the Christmas Express!

For Christmas this year, I've decided to make a Christmas Express page. In the beginning, I had a really hard time coming up with a topic and took many many polls to see what people were most interested in. Some ideas that didn't make the cut were millennial santa, christmas memories, and best wacky christmas foods. Finally, I decided to just make a general Christmas website. I'm an avid watcher of movies and TV shows, so I thought why not name of the best ones I've seen. My teacher, Mr. Olson, said another cool idea would be to name the weather throughout different cities. I had a really fun time researching all of that, and I found that none of the cities I researched are having snow on Christmas, which is just plain sad.

Since we upgraded to Dreamweaver CC this year, this project let me explore some of the new aspects of Dreamweaver. Last year, I always used the automatic way to insert CSS, this year I find myself manually inserting things into the code, and that helped me learn so much more that goes on the background of my website and what exactly is in it.

Although this is one of my favorite websites I've done, I would change my homepage as well as my pictures. I need to spend more time fixing them and making them more responsive. For my homepage, I need to find more things to fill it up. I was thinking of making a pie chart to show everyone's favorite Christmas memory, but couldn't find one that looked right, especially since I had such little content. One of my favorite things I learned this semester was the depth backgrounds. I think it adds really great color. I did candy canes for this website, and have heard nothing but great feedback. I also made the container transparent so you could see the candy canes through the text, which makes it look more professional.

For my next project, I'll keep manually entering the code in because I think it helps me learn a lot and makes the website better, don't know how, but it does. believe me. This is overall one of my favorite websites because Christmas is my favorite holiday and it got me in such a big Christmas mood.

Happy Holidays!

Beware the Jabberwocky!

I love Alice in Wonderland. It's just a simple fact. It ties back to the fact that I love typography. I had never heard  of Google Fonts before this project, and I'm happy to say it was so easy to use my great great grandma could use it. I started my Jabberwocky site with a completely different idea in mind. I didn't have a left border on my poem, I didn't have a right border on my sidebar, and it was a mess. I don't recommend, it looks as if they're going farther and farther away and it's not even apart of the same website. Not sure what I was thinking, but I got my gears working and fixed some of those issues.

I had no clue that I could imbed fonts into my website, and I find that the coolest thing I've ever learned in my history of website learning. I will defiantly use this tool for most, if not all, of my future websites. I think it makes things so much easier and makes the website come to life compared to the generic fonts that Dreamweaver gives you.

Melody Baker: The College Experience

Former Olathe Northwest student Melody Baker came in and we asked her some philosophical questions to see if college is really what it sounds to be.

1. How is dorm life?
Throughout the 30 or so minutes I got to talk to Melody, I surely did not expect what she was to say next. "Don't have floor sex". While I wasn't exactly associating college with that, I guess it's good advice. She also stated to get along with your roommates, because the last thing you want to do is get in a fight with the people you're living with for the rest of the year, and possibly more upcoming years.

2. How does web design apply to your major?
Melody unfortunately didn't major in web design, but she said the experience really did help her deal with the idiots around campus.

3. What is the overall college atmosphere like?
Melody stated that the classes at Washburn University were overall really small (about 15 people), and you have a lot more freedom but don't try and overuse it because you'll end up regretting it. You also end up having really great one-on-one time with your professors.

4. An average Monday, Wednesday, and Friday looks like this: 9-9:50 class, 10-10:45 nap, 11-1 class, and then she has track practice for the rest of the day.

And repeat!

Krug Ch3

Penny Juice - This website has very extensive background noise because they changed the color every inch of the website and I don't know where my attention is supposed to go.

Being Wicked - This website shows a very low amount of competing noise because they pretty much just chose one color and went through with it for the whole website.

Web Pages That Suck - Okay so I went to this website to find a website that wasn't clickable but it turns out this is one. There's ads in the middle of sentences and the content was all over the place, and there's some images that look like they might be apart of the page but they're actually not and you couldn't click on them at all.

Club Penguin - This is one of my favorite websites design wise because they make it easy to see what's clickable. They put borders around it and it's a bigger font than some of the other text.

Belle De Soto - This site might be the scariest thing ever. I can't even describe it, but I KNOW there is no defined areas whatsoever.

Vanderbilt University - This website does a really good job of dividing up the information that's offered and it's easy to read and find what you need quickly.

Forever 21 - When shopping on this site, it's very easy to just click on the logo (which happens to be in the top left corner!!!) and it'll take you back to your homepage.

What is Blick - This website straight up showed me what it was as soon as the page loaded. It's clear with it's claims and it has great visual hierarchy.

Don't Make Me Think!

My question is what my eye should go to first. In some cases, it's okay to add a picture at the top of the page but only if it's a slideshow, and it had padding at the top. It also makes me question whether my screen is frozen or not. The information and links at the bottom should be bolder or bigger, but I don't really notice them when I first look at the site, even though that's very serious information that needs to be seen by everyone. Also, toward the bottom of the page, there's a live twitter feed and the images are blank and makes me question once again if my computer is frozen.

Is that advertisement? Where's the navigation bar? Can I search for something? I'm gonna be honest, it took a couple of minutes looking at this to find the play button because everything was so big and colorful and it's small compared to the rest of the page. There isn't any information of what Webkinz is, and only thanks to my childhood do I know what to do. Also, my eyes saw the advertisements before anything else. They're in the way of the home page, and if you're going to do advertisements, don't do them in front of everything else.

This picture doesn't serve justice. The cat is actually actively typing on the computer. I'm questioning whether is website is ACTUALLY affiated with Yale University and who let them do this. I don't know what to do when I look at this. My eyes just kinda look into blank space, which is the worst possible sign that this website sucks. Apparently there's links on the sidebar, and I'm kind of scared to click them to we're going to leave that a mystery and do what question marks are known for, leave the website.

19 Anteater's Logo

For this project, I created a business called 19 Anteaters, and it's a family owned farm that breeds anteaters. For this project, we had to create a logo and record our progress. First, I tried just a simple logo that had a solid background and had the words 19 Anteaters tracing around the edges of the shape. It's much like what you see on the bottom on top of the letterhead, just without the name of the business. Eventually I tried creating outlines of different anteaters and replicated them to make them seem like they're dancing, and I thought that was a fun way to show our different anteaters, and that not all anteaters are boring animals that eat ants all day (but I guess that's what people assume from the name?). Finally, I love light rustic wood. So I searched an image and created a clipping mask with my original anteater, and tested out a few different fonts, and I got my logo! My peers agreed that it was in fact the best one I had created. Now that I've decided on my logo, my teacher assigned to put your logo on different types of objects such as storefronts, business cards, letterheads, a phone app, an envelope, and a billboard. I got to use different forms of my logo and put them on all of the different types of objects, even though I may use my wooden logo for my website.