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.