October: Diversity

This months school topic was diversity.  Diversity brings several different aspects into any sort of career, including that of web design and development.  For example, it takes a diverse team of people to create a great web page.  You would need a designer, for color scheming, page layout, the “feng shui” of it all;  a developer to take all of those clever designs and code them into a page to make them usable and accessible to others;  a database administrator to include any form of database-driven applications (for example: the “Login” part at the home page of Facebook or Twitter, or any other site that requires a login…);  and also many other diverse skills, depending on how complicated you’re wanting to get!

Now, with that said, that doesn’t mean each person can only do one thing.  I know several people who have a good knowledge of multiple sides of the web!  Web design, development, application, mobile programming, etc.  Each person is different.  However, it is our diversity and our differences in knowledge that allow us to come together and create one beautiful site.  My development skills wouldn’t mean anything without a designer by my side to give me the visual look and feel of the site I need to create!

We are all different.  It’s what makes each day a new day to learn from!

Website Comparisons

5-Second Review with a Peer:

This part was done with my classmate, Sabrina Atkinson.  The first thing I noticed was the color scheme used.  It could definitely use something that’s appealing to any normal human being, rather than it’s purple and yellow collage.  Also, the entire page is aligned to the left with zero margin, padding or border.  The least that could have been done was a center alignment!  Sabrina was quick to point out how the image links at the top of the main content were very clustered and hard to see or even know they were links!  (294 images confined to a small, shared space is not a good idea…)  Also, she was able to spot some images that overflowed from their content area.  All-in-all, a total work-over needs to be done on this site.

http://www.screamingenergy.com/

Review of 2 Successful Homepages:

For this task, I chose to use 2 major competitors in the retail-sales world: Target and Wal-Mart.  At first glance on both websites, it is easy to see that the navigation is very user-friendly and intuitive.  Although, on both accounts, it can be a bit overwhelming, but I don’t blame this purely on the navigation.  I really blame that on the amount of products that each store offers.

Both pages have advertisements based on the approaching holiday of Halloween, which immediately tells me they keep their sites up-to-date.  Both have the latest gadgets readily available to be viewed from the home page and are very easy to understand what one is looking at.

Really, the only thing you have to worry about is which store do you like the most?  For myself, Target holds a special place in my heart, but don’t let that cloud your judgment.  Visit the websites for yourself and decide which is easiest to navigate, find what you’re looking for, or even just looks better!

http://www.target.com

http://www.walmart.com

Review of 2 Unsuccessful Homepages:

This part of my comparisons is definitely the most interesting.  The first site I stumble upon, when Google searching “terrible websites”, is VideoSonic Labs.  Oh my goodness…  Right off the bat, the page’s aesthetic appeal makes you wish you would have just shot yourself in the foot instead of visiting this site.  The navigation bar across the top has a hover-class on it, but is not done correctly as the change produced by the hover is not in-line like it should be.  Many of the links don’t work at all.  The page was clearly built using a table layout with a terrible color scheme.  All in all, this web site should just be put out of its misery.

The second page I found is a page for “A Virginia DMV Approved Provider of Classroom and Online Driver Improvement Program Courses” called 5 Safe Points Driving School.  The very first thing noticed is the lack of clear navigation.  At the bottom of the page are 8 different hyperlinks, but none of them were done with an anchor tag. The page appears to have a four-column layout with all the content centered within each column.  One good thing I will point out is that it is far more aesthetically pleasing than the previous website, but that’s about all it has going for it.  I must warn you, do not click on the image of the guy sitting at the desk in the classroom setting.  Once I did, it rendered my statement of aesthetics moot.

http://www.videosoniclab.com/

http://www.5safepoints.com/

Review of www.francistuttle.edu using Wave and AChecker

Today I did a review over my school’s website, http://www.francistuttle.edu.  More specifically, my school’s home page.  Even more specifically, the coding structure and possible errors in the coding of my school’s home page.  In order to do this, I used two separate tools as an aid to check the coding and to see if there were any errors, warnings, or little missing things.  The tools I used are Wave (wave.webaim.org) and AChecker (www.achecker.ca/checker).  Here are the problems that were found:

Both web sites (Wave and AChecker) spotted that the image links on the left side of the main content lacked alt=”” tags.  For those of you who don’t know what alt tags are, they are short descriptions of a particular image that appear when the image itself is unable to load.  In this example, the image link of the “Blackboard Login” on the school home page would just show a blank square with a little red “x” symbol if the image couldn’t load.  However, if there were an alt tag, it would still show the little red x, but would provide a description of what the image is or where the link goes.  Example: alt=”Blackboard Login”.

Another problem spotted by both web sites is that there are several areas with input tags, but no label in which to contain the input tags.  Now for those of you who don’t know what this means, it probably doesn’t matter.  However, to someone who wants their web site to validate, it’s a big deal… or, at least, a deal deal…

After using the W3C’s (World Wide Web Consortium)  code validator to get a better look at what validates and what needs to be changed, I found a lot more problems.  However, most of the problems found would actually not be problems if the document type wasn’t “strict”.  So, because those aren’t exactly the kind of errors I’m looking for, I’m deciding to ignore those.  The biggest problem the validator truly had was the alt tag.  So, I decide to look at the source code and see what is happening.  Here’s a copy of the line of code, dealing with the Blackboard image link I mentioned before.

<a target=”_blank” href=”http://bb9.francistuttle.edu/” alt=”Login to Blackboard”><img src=”http://www.francistuttle.edu/Media/Website Resources/images/banners/bblogin.png” border=”0″ alt=”” /></a>

If you’ll notice, there is an alt tag within the anchor element, however, not in the img element.  That’s where the problem lies.  All that needs to be done is the alt tag that says:  alt=”Login to Blackboard”, needs to be copied to the empty alt tag (alt=””) in the img element.  Blam!  Problem solved!

Well, that’s my review of the Francis Tuttle home page.  Using Wave, AChecker, and just a dash of code validation, I was able to find some key errors and specific locations in the code for those errors, and was able to figure out how to fix them!  All-in-all, the school’s home page is pretty well built.  A few things could be added, and it wouldn’t hurt for someone to change the document type… (Changing the document type to transitional from strict then revalidating it shows 4 warnings and 1 error, as opposed to 18 errors and 2 warnings.)

Tyler Shipe, out!

September: Goal Setting

Goal setting is a good practice for everyone!  It is something to help get us from point A to point B, and often gives people a good sense of accomplishment!  There are many ways in which goal setting is very beneficial to someone in web design and development.

One way would be simply getting the job done.  There are always deadlines for projects, and setting up short-term goals for coding and designing really helps make the overall goal of making that deadline.  Setting goals for getting certain sections of a site done each day will equal out to timely and well worked site.

Another way setting goals is important for web designers and developers, and many others in any business, is where you are and where you want to be.  We can all start off as a designer or developer, or regular ol’ business person, but we all want to get to the top!  Set your goals high!  My personal dream for the career path is to work with a web company for a couple of years or so, then have my own business!  That way I can be the boss one day!  Now, I don’t expect to meet this goal tomorrow, and no one should expect to reach such a goal so quickly.  This kind of goal is long-term and is a good overall look at where you want your life to be in the next few years.

Just keep in mind the difference between short-term goals and long-term goals.  Take google for example, Larry Page and Sergey Brin met at Stanford in 1995, created a search engine for the school called “BackRub” in 1996, this outgrew the school in bandwidth so they decided to make it public and change the name to “Google.”  They started with three employees in a garage, and now, they are the single most popular web group in the world!  The name “Google” is now synonymous with “search.”  Their goals started with the helping of a university, and have now grown to be one of the greatest, most sought after company’s in the world!

August: Choices

Choices are things we all have to face, each and every day… Whether it be which clothes to wear, if I can get gas on the way to work or wait until after, Or even deciding whether or not to show up to work at all! Each and every person is faced with choices. Where choices come in to Web Development and Design, things can be easy or hard choices to make… not unlike most everything else.

Several choices are made when creating a website.  For example, one has to decide what the content of the site will be, the way one wants it structured, who one wants their page directed towards (kids, adults, pre-teens, etc.), or even which basic colors for the page would be most aesthetically pleasing.  Granted, some decisions are much hard to make than others, like does one want to use an <h1> attribute, or an <h3> attribute.  I actually had to make that decision when making the “August:  Choices” heading. (I went with <h3>)

The point is, all decision, whether about the web or life in general, require thought and planning.  If you need gas, go get some gas, if you need a bolder heading, make it an <h1>!  Always use your head and don’t do things just because you can.  If things are better thought out, the more likely you will have good turnaround’s from your decisions.

Which aspects of the web interest me most?

This, to me, is a rather broad question.  There are several things, nay, most everything interests me about the web!  A few would include…

• Web functionality across multiple platforms
• Ease of use on one’s web site
• Every bit of coding required to all the web site to run
• Designing and receiving constructive criticism to make me a better designer/developer
• The fun and pride of showing others the work you’ve done

I have found that there are actually several web sites that help feed this nonreciprocating love betwixt the internet and myself.  Lynda.com is an excellent knowledge base for those wanting to learn more about the web, or pretty much anything computer related!  Social Networking sites, such as everyone’s favorite’s: Facebook and Twitter, are excellent ways of finding information!  One may not realize it at first, but these are excellent sites for networking with people with like interests, such as web development and design, asking for honest opinions, finding out news about other people or things happening around you, and these sites can even help with finding a job or help employers get to know you better to see if you’ll fit the job!  With that last part said, keep in mind that this can also effect you negatively when it comes to finding a job, so be careful what you do and what you say…

With that said, I’m going to finish up this blog post.  I know, I know, it’s rather short and kind of ends abruptly, but hey!  What’s a guy to do when he’s on a time schedule and has to get this post turned in for a class?!  I promise, to all my adoring fans, more will be posted later when there is free time.  You have my word!

ShipeHappens, out!