The Finishing Touches

Its the final week before hand in, I’m feeling very confident this time, if I push myself this week I will be able to have everything done by Friday.

Monday morning was basically “Get on with it” time, I used this time to re-compress the website images, this is because it was stated in usability forms that the content was ether squashed or blurry. I managed to get a lot done within the first hour then after break I decided to take some more screen shots of my beta site, after this I removed it so it wasn’t taking any space up on the web server.

In the afternoon I continued with the image compression for the website, once I had done this I uploaded it, ready for Steve to test it.

Steve gave a lot of useful feedback, he told me to use CSS to animate the buttons, he also told me to center the site, to see if it gave it a better look, but by far the biggest task was to redo the banner, ill admit it was a pretty terrible banner.

Steve showed me a few tricks in Photoshop that I could use to blend the keyboard image into the background, I used this and I can honestly say my site looks a lot better now that it did last week.

There are still a few things to sort out, for instance validation, I have found it very difficult to validate the site in XHTML 1.0 Strict, and so I may change it to transitional. I also have to change the layout of the text to make it look neater and I still have a few images to compress and replace on the website.

Today began with more “Get on with it” time, which I used to edit my presentation, I change the background colour and the image I was using, and I also edited the page layout.

The second half of the morning was a timed task, this one was to create a newspaper tabloid about Jonathan Gee, and I found this task was by far the easiest, so I took my time with it, made sure I got everything right. I handed it in 5 minutes before the deadline.

In seminar groups Steve went over what was needed for next weeks hand in, and gave a brief insight to what was in store for the last assignment.

The rest of the afternoon has consisted of changing the presentation and adding the Type anatomy slides.

Note: I will be uploading my presentation in a PDF, I would appreciate feedback please.

Task for this week:

• A5: Validation test, Evaluation
• A6: Finish Presentation and practice

Usability and Productivity

Before I begin with what has happened this week, Ill explain what happened last week, I spent at least 16 just doing the CGI script for the website, that’s on top of A4 referral and the A6 presentation.

Monday morning began with the website usability tests, basically the entire class went round testing everybody’s website, we spent roughly 5 minutes on each website, than moved around the room to test another, so everybody’s site got tested by everyone.

I knew that there was at least one problem with mine, which was obviously my feedback form, last week I didn’t managed to get it working and became very stressed, like you do.

After this we has a short break, when I got back, I went over the feedback that I had obtained and began implementing it, this included placing a link to the homepage on some of the pages, getting rid on the space between the banner and the navigation bar and trying to sort my CGI script.

I still had no luck in sorting out FormMail, to I tried a different one that was placed on the HND site. I had no luck with this ether, Luckily help was at hand.

I decided to ask James for help, he shows me an alternative method that he had used, something called “cgimail” all he did was created a text file and typed in the names of the objects in the form, and edited one of the hidden fields and uploaded it.

It worked first time, I was utterly astounded, and he did in 5 minutes what I had been trying to do for 16 hours in the previous week.
I was pretty upbeat for the rest of the day, and managed to tidy up the site a bit.

Today began with a lecture on newspaper layout, after that we had a timed task which was to create a newspaper job advertisement for a graphic designer at Vodafone.

I must admit I found the measurements rather confusing and unfortunately wasted half an hour trying to fathom it out. But I managed to sort it and design the banner and have it finished 15 minuets before the deadline; I feel that I am getting more confident with these tasks.

This afternoon was the first practice of my Zuzana Licko presentation, luckily the group I was in were last, so I had plenty of time to prepare myself.

I feel that the practice could have gone better, I was nervous and did stutter a bit, I have to develop on certain areas of the presentation, but I should have the final draft done for next Tuesday.

My tasks for this week are as follows:

• A5 – Continue to implement feedback into the website
• A6 – Complete a final draft of the Zuzana Licko presentation
• Create a homepage for my ePortfolio
• Obtain and comment on types of inspiration

CGI Hell

First of all, I would like to apologies for not placing a post up on tuesday, its mainly because I wanted to place the link on for the website up here, unfortunately I am still having problems with it.

Its mainly the CGI Script, it keeps coming up with "500 internal error", if anyone can shed some light on how to get it to work, please feel free to comment or email me, also, I intend to have my completed image restoration up on here later on, so you can comment that If possible.

Thanks in Advance

Gettin' on With it.

As the title suggests, this week has just been a “get on with it” week. Monday morning began with Steve telling us to just get on with A5; I must see that I was very relieved with this as I had only just begun A5.

Unfortunately, things didn’t go to plan, there were many obstacles to get around. The first was getting the sites content inline on Firefox, every other browser works fine with the site.

I didn’t have a clue how to sort it out, so I sought out James for advice. He managed to get it all lined up by inserting something called a spacer GIF, which is basically an image, about 1 pixel by 1 pixel in size, and he shows me how to insert them into my site.

In Dreamweaver, they are evident, but when viewed in a browser, they are invisible. The second problem I had was a space between the banner and the navigation bar.

I seeked out James yet again, and he managed to sort it, but It has popped up once again, so I will have to sort it out myself.

The site is now going well, I have 2 more pages of content to create, and index page, and the form. I will have the site complete and uploaded by the end of this week, postponed I know but I've had to juggle A4 and A6 as well.

The rest of the day consisted of continuing A5 and I also had a meeting with John Munday, he asked me last week to re-write and complete the image compression task for A4, he went over it with me, just to make sure that everything was ok, it was apart form a few errors.


Today we began with a timed task, the first of our “Real” task. It consisted of making a Paint tube package, strange I know.

The task was due in at 11.00 but I found it really enjoyable, I decided not to do 5 designs, I only did three concepts and one realistic design, I managed to get the assignment done by 10.55 so I was quite pleased with myself.


Today’s seminar group involved looking over the Website questionnaire and the presentation hand out. I have to design the handout; all I have at the moment is notes.


My tasks for this week, and the half term are:

• Complete website and upload it – By Saturday Evening
• Complete handout
• Complete questionnaire
• Complete presentation and practice it