(Almost) final version of my portfolio now uploaded.
I am still not happy with the header but due to restricted fonts at college will experiment with more soon.
Also not sure about the colours and may come back to these dependant on feedback from others.
My second screen design for my portfolio is now uploaded*.
I have tried to incorporate the feedback I was given and remove the large black border and text. I have incorporated a smaller grey border around my design (as was suggested by Scott) however I am still not sure about it. I am also not sure about my navigation it seems a little lost and out of place.
I have yet to have chance to experiment with some more colour/logo ideas, though I will hopefully be posting a mid-week blog with these ideas included.
My initial design for my portfolio is also available for comparison.
*Note: The 'Crigglestone Nursery' image is only temporary and will be changed on my final design to one more suitable.
My initial design for my portfolio is now uploaded.
I've gone for a very simple idea with a high contrast border around the outside to hopefully draw the users attention directly into the centre of my site with my content.
Any feedback is as always appreciated.
The first site I looked at was a student site - www.lynde.net/ found through www.sessions.edu/
Upon first entering the site I was a little shocked to see a very small containing box. This made me think almost instantly that it severely limited the amount of work which could be displayed at any one time. I then noticed the picture on the front page with the 'tagline' for the site, 'Great design. Great business.' Although this is quite an adequate tagline I do not think there is a need for it to take up the whole of the front page when it could easily have being some of his work.
The colour scheme I feel could also do with some work. The page background has stripes which are very close together which begin to hurt your eyes after a while and the main body of text is black and a bright orange background. This doesn't give the best contrast and also begins to hurt your eyes after a little while.
Clicking through to the portfolio section of the site what immediately hits me is the navigation. Only one piece of work is shown at a time on the site yet there are 25 pages worth of work. The reason I know there is 25 pages is because the navigation is purely page numbers. This I feel is a very bad way of making the user navigate the site as it is difficult to remember what page has what on it and if there is anything of interest on that page without clicking on it.
As well as this, when hovering over a page number it is actually a different page number which changes to the hover state. (I.e. Hover over 9 and page 8 will change to '9' and be bold but if you try and click on it, it will then change back to 8 - very confusing). The site is also will not validate despite being only HTML 4.01 Transitional and with very little on it. For a prospective employer this could be very important and shows a more in depth knowledge of the industry.
The second site I looked at was a professional portfolio - http://www.cagedfish.co.uk/
This site is very bold and in your face as soon as you enter. The colour scheme is bright pink and could be too bright for some users. The main body of text however uses a white background with black text which gives good contrast between the two and makes the text easy to read.
The navigation is a little awkward from the homepage as it is at the bottom of the site and you must hover over different fish before you can tell what the link is. The navigation is also at text at the bottom of the screen also but to me this would just confuse the user more as it appears that there is navigation all over and new users may not know where to click.
Once on to the portfolio section however the navigation is much better as a list of recent projects are down the right hand side and clearly labelled.
The portfolio is also divided into an ecommerce section and a print section. I personally think this is quite a good idea as it stops the navigation becoming too long and also allows people looking for more specialist services to see them more easily than looking through everything.
Perhaps the biggest shock for a professional design portfolio is that it doesn't validate. In fact it doesn't even have a doc type. This seems like quite a basic mistake to make and would severely affect my views about the company. On top of this the site is created using table and cells due to what appears to be a site created from a template. Although to most clients this would probably not be an issue as they would not know such things, to people with even a little bit of experience it must be very off putting for them.
Filezilla - FTP (File Transfer Protocol)
This will be used to upload all my files to the web server for viewing on the Internet. It will be used for uploading files for testing as well as uploading completed files.
XHTML (eXtensive Hyper Text Markup Language) Strict 1.0
This will be used to create the skeleton of the site in which all the content will be placed. It will be used on every page of the site, no matter what the extension. It will contain code which calls upon my CSS (see below) such as < div id= "___" > etc.
CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) Level 2.1
This will be used to style my pages. It will be linked to my site externally so it can be used for numerous pages not just one. I will use aspects of both level 1 and level 2.1 but will try and not use level 3 features as these are not as widely supported as earlier versions.
PHP (Hypertext Protocol) 5.2.4
PHP will be used to make my pages dynamic. It will be used on various pages throughout my site such as my feedback form page (to allow users to send me feedback more securely than a mailto: link). It will also be combined with MySQL (see below) to allow me to create a login form for my site which will allow certain individuals to see other areas of my site with more work on which I do not want to show to the general public.
MySQL 5
MySQL will be combined with PHP to allow for the creation of dynamic pages. MySQL will be the database which will contain the user names and passwords of individuals who have permission to view the secure area of my site containing other parts of my work.
Coming from the AVCE at Wakefield College we were told to create a website to do with anything of our choosing. We were also told we could use either Notepad or FrontPage to create our site. Of course with these two amazing options to chose from, I chose FrontPage.
The site I created was on The Subways and I got an A grade for it. I'm hoping that if I can create a site like that with no real planning or use of any tables/cells AND using FrontPage, that I can create an even better site using Dreamweaver using the correct ways of going about it. Already I notice so many thing I could change about the site (Not centering my text for a start).
Time shall tell.
It is a day before the deadline. I feel I should be worried, yet surprisingly I'm not. No nerves. No mad state of panic. Nothing. This is why I am writing my blog entry for the week less than 24 hours before the deadline.
Saying this however, the weeks not been all calm. Tuesday was quite a hectic day, making sure that all my work was printed, putting everything into plastic wallets, making sure that everything was filled in etc. This was probably the worst day in the whole of the assignment, which is why I chose to do it at home, where I may not get distracted as easily, and might find it calmer than panicking at college. I've also began to design and create my own portfolio website which gave me a welcome break from worrying about the assignment.
The best thing about the week so far has been the satisfaction of knowing that my assignment is pretty much done and knowing that Thursday will not be a blind panic for me, arriving at college at around 8am. I have based my thoughts around a quote that Steve gave to us a few weeks ago in a lecture. This being:
"Time only seems to matter when it's running out" - Peter Strup
Which is why I have tried to get my work finished slightly early, so that instead I feel confident enough that I can arrive at college at around 10.30am and spend half an hour just double checking over my work before dropping it in at around 11am.
The worst thing about the week so far has had to be the amount of tedious checking over of work that I've had to do as well though. However, saying this, I realise that this is a necessary part of the course and that without checking over my work many times I would never pass the course. I'm also quite glad that I did check my work over a few times as every time I found something that was wrong, even tiny things such as a double space or a missing capital letter.
All in all, I've had a very positive week. Probably my most positive yet. I don't feel like anything extremely negative has happened this week for me to worry about, and I am looking forward to the weeks break of half term where I can continue to develop and create my portfolio website and not have to worry about an imminent deadline looming.
For once I do not think that there is much I could have done differently this week. Perhaps if I had taken a little more time and care over some parts of my assignment then I would not be sat here typing up a blog, but it all comes down to my results of the assignment. If when I get my results back from Steve, and I have failed my course then I will wish that I had spent today adapting my assignment further, however, if I get my assignment results back and I have passed (or even received a merit or distinction) then I will be happy knowing that I have put extra hours in throughout the week into my self study time so that my final week before the deadline was not spent rushing the assignment to get it finished on time in a flurry of nerves.
Hours until deadline: 23
