CSS Zen Garden

The use of CSS Zen Garden allowed me to better understand how much CSS influences HTML pages. I mainly played around and edited an existing CSS Style sheet for Zen garden. I kind of made a bit of a mess of it and in the end it looked a bit ugly. But i mainly edited the code to help me better understand what can be acheived by using CCS style sheets. This has helped me learn where i will use CSS style sheets within my own site.

ASSIGNMENT 2 - Development

Concept Development and Research

I begun with a mind map of all the things that came to my head when i though of paper. After that i went with a paper pop up/paper snow flake theme. So i started looking into images of theses and also into websites that i liked. I created a mood board of the images and sites that inspired me and how i would like my final web site to look like.

Mind Map

Mood Board

Colour Palette

After creating my 4 colour palettes i decided to go with a monochromatic colour scheme for my web site. I felt this would create the smoothest and cleanest looking site and stick with my over all concept.

Typography Studies

After researching four typographies, i felt that Helventica and Alien league would be best suited for my website. Helventica would be used for information within the site and Alien League would be used for the Logo and also links on the site

Logo Development

I chose this logo to go with my site because i feel that i keep with the over all clean and simplistic theme that i want for my site. I feel that this logo give a strong and professional look to JP paper.

Interactive Design

This shows the layout of my website and also how all the links will work, it shows how users can navigate around my web page.

WEEK 4: CONCEPT DEVELOPMENT

Research

The research I undertook on paper companies was mainly just reviewing their websites and brochures in class. Whilst looking at these companies many things inspired me, my main inspiration came from the different uses of paper.

From undertaking this research I was able to develop ideas as to the many uses for paper and how I could use this to reflect a new paper company.

After looking at the many paper companies on the web I felt that majority of them had plain and boring websites. They were very standard and only focuses on selling products. None of the websites focuses on the design of the site itself.

Brainstorming

When it came to brain storming an idea for this project I used a mind map of all the different uses and things associated with paper. Then I search some of these idea on the net. Finally deciding on paper pop ups, quiet like the ones in children’s books. After searching this I came across an image of a very unique pop up. I felt this would be the perfect frame work for my website. This would fit perfectly with what the client wants. It will portray a new hip and vibrant paper company with an emphasis on design.

Imagery

Because for this call we will mainly be working in HTML, I’ve decided to go with using an illustration of a paper pop up. This will be the base for my web site with links placed on the the corners of the paper pop up. This links will change colour when rolled over and will take you to other parts of the site, such as paper styles, company profile etc.

The images will be created in adobe illustrator. This will be easiest for me because I work well in illustrator, it will also give a clean finish and this reflects the company and style of web page I want to achieve.

HOMEWORK - Timeline of history of the web

In 1980 Tim Berners-Lee built ENQUIRE as a personal database of people and software models, but also as a way to play with hypertext.

In March 1989 Berners-Lee wrote a proposa for "a large hypertext database with typed links", but it generated little interest

By Christmas 1990, Berners-Lee had built all the tools necessary for a working Web

On August 6, 1991, Berners-Lee posted a short summary of the World Wide Web project on the alt.hypertext newsgroup.

From 1992-1995 the world wide web was mainly used by university-based scientific departments or physics laboratories

In April 1992 the release of Erwise, a graphical browser

In 1993 Mosaic graphical browser was introduced

In May 1994 the first International WWW Conference, organized by Robert Cailliau, was held at CERN

In September 1994, Berners-Lee founded the World Wide Web Consortium

1996-98 the Web became more Commercialised

1999-2001 there was a large increase in dot-com sites, but most of these went bust after they burnt through their venture capital.

In the aftermath of the dot-com bubble, telecommunications companies had a great deal of overcapacity as many Internet business clients went bust. That, plus ongoing investment in local cell infrastructure kept connectivity charges low, and helping to make high-speed Internet connectivity more affordable.

With advancements in coding more sites aimed at providing the user with a more enjoyable experience, such sites as Google, Ebay and Amazon sprung up giving people the chance to buy and sell products and easily find thing via the web.

And over the past few years such sites as Myspace and Facebook have poped up allowing people to stay connected via the web

HOMEWORK: Web Standards.

I was able to find two different answers for web standards. First was The web standards project and the second was the Web Standards Checklist. So i have decided to critque the web standards checklist because i feel it is more suited to this course.

The Web Standards Project

Web standards are standards that reduce the cost and complexity of development while increasing the accessibility and long-term viability of any site published on the Web.

Web standards are set by the Web Standards Project, they work with browser companies, authoring marker tools, and their peers to deliver the true power of standards to this medium.

Web standards are very important, they ensure that a website is clean, user friendly and sticks to the technologies that are available to everyone.

Some of the advantages of web standards are accessibility, accessibility is a large idea behind web standards. Web standards ensures that your site is easily accessed by anyone. Also stability is an important idea behind web standards, because Most web standards are generally designed with forward- and backward-compatibility in mind — so that data using old versions of the standards will continue to work in new browsers, and data using new versions of the standards will “gracefully degrade” to produce an acceptable result in older browsers.

Some of the disadvantages are that is takes more time of developers to code to comply with these standards, they must ensure that their site can work in several browsers and even sometimes do doulbe/multiple coding.

The current standards are

W3C Standards

- HyperText Markup Language

-Extensible Markup Language

-XHTML 1.0, 1.1, and Modularization

-CSS – Cascading Style Sheets

-DOM 1 – Document Object Model Level

ECMA Standards

-ECMAScript (standardized JavaScript)

The best way for you to ensure that your design meets the standards is to go through a web standards check list and see that you have complied with all the standards listed for a website.

Its been a while

Its been a good 3 months since ive even bothered to update this thing.

So here we go. Pretty much have done nothing much surfing wise over the past months. I got stuck in the beaches vortex which is Uni, Pub and surfing filty waves. Pretty sad to be honesty

That was up until the 22nd of december. Chris James asked me if i wanted to go chase waves with him tomorrow. I was super keen, i asked where? and he said the Park. Didnt occur until he told me to book ticket where we wre actually going. So we flew out that night. Got to Avalon airport in Vico and met up with photog Matt Ryan who drove us to Lunas.

The next day was followed by a hell of a lot surfing. We scored lunas pretty sick 6ft with a few bigger ones. With just me grizz and maxie.

Here a little pic from the trip

I flew home on christmas even day. Ended up fucking around most of the day because i left my wallet at matt ryans place. Idiot!! Then it was sctraight to the Arms where i got excessivly pissed with only 4 hours sleep.

2 days later Both me and grizz headed off again with local boys Simon legrand and Battos.

This time it was to south oz. We drove there, never again!! Clock up 5200+ km in a week. We scored all the usual waves with no one for miles. Plus a few other little secrets.

I think im going to update this blog a lot more now. But with funny shit. Like i intended to do in the first place.

This year im frothing heavily for a lot more traveling. So hopefully i get more photos and some vid time.

Rant

"I do not tell stories! I don't have a good or bad experience anywhere and go on to bitch to anyone about it. I know other people do and thats fine! But I am not pathetic like other people I am not a little chicken sitting on the ground squabbling (You should look up the meaning of that word in the dictionary) about this or about that. I am more like an eagle soaring in the sky all by myself achieving great heights and laughing at all the little squabbling chickens wasting there time on trivial matters!"

Funniest email ever