I came up with a new idea for the site yesterday, for my projects page I'd like to make it more of a scrolling page, where the user can scroll down the page to view each of the projects. 

First though, I need to find a way to use anchors and link the thumbnails on the front page to a different section of the projects page.  I know there are anchor tags you can use but I'll need to do some research into how to do that.

My unspoken idea of a scrollable gallery something like iTunes has for album art went through well without a hitch.  It has arrows now that are white so the user can chose to scroll via arrows, or by clicking the individual picture of the website.  

My next move is going to be getting the site to look a little more interactive, I may change the color of the arrows to something that will fit the site's current color scheme a little better.  Tomorrow I'll be working on the sub pages of the site, and hopefully will get all of them done by the end of class.  That will give me plenty of time to be able to work out the last few kinks.

I need to start focusing on the secondary pages of the site now that I've worked out what the main page will look like.  I've run into a bit of a snag with the projects page in that I've already presented my projects on the main page.  Perhaps it'd be interesting to simply give a short, brief description of the project on the main page, then on the "Projects" page, I can have a larger shot and a secondary area in which you could read more about the project.

The About page will be relatively simple.  It should most likely be a short chunk of information about myself, and a bit of a resume as to whom I've worked for, how long I've been working, etc.  I might bring in a few pictures of myself on that page, perhaps using the same fashion as on the front page, a smaller picture with a bit of a description under it.  

The Contact page will be simpler yet, I'll have a picture of my phone on there, with a screenshot of the dial pad.  Nexto to it can be my phone number and email address with a bit of information for people to consider when contacting me.  I dont think I want to run any information/graphics outside of the black border on this page.

*Sigh*  Why must the Peeps always be stale?

I've been thinking more about the final site lately and have decided that for the bottom portion where my scrolling bar might be, I will leave the background transparent so the gradient is visible through it.  Also I will expand the edges of the page by moving the scrolling bar out further on the right side, and will have something else on the left side to balance it out.  

In the top portion I'm still worried about the actual presentation of the work which would be selected from below.  Since they're in rectangular orientation, I'll have to deal with trying to find a happy medium for the size of the picture and still have enough room to put some text beside it describing the project. 


I may look into trying to do something like putting the text under the picture.  The picture could be smaller and have description directly below it.  The only issue there is that unless I put a LOT of text in there, it might just look like a picture with captions below, whereas I'd rather it be the centerpoint of the page with plenty of stuff to read about it.

I've been contemplating some of the filler to add into the website under the about section.  I think I've organized it well enough that it will look good.

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Thinking about some ideas as to how to actually BUILD my final website.  The abnormality of the layout makes the site really cool and fun to look at but I need to make sure I leave it as function as it is good looking.  As far as the graphics on the right hand side of the page, I am likely going to just leave them as a picture, that makes things easy, but spacing for the DivTags can really be a pain.  

The right hand side of the site can be a full picture, on the left side, I need to think about presenting the work that i've done.  I can have an area of text to go with the picture of the project sites, but I really dont want to put the navigation there also.

If I leave the navigation for the different sites down below in a scrolling format but compact it, make it a bit smaller and move it to the right of the page.  On the bottom lefthand side, I'll put a bit of information on the site itself, a sort of intro.  Where the actual picture of the site is going to need to be cut down, maybe 75%.  I can put the explanation of the screenshot underneath it.  

I was working on thumbnails today and looking over ideas for formats.  I checked a few of my favorite websites for ideas and was looking over the newegg website.  I noticed how cramped the entire site seemed.  It almost looked like some type of popup ad with all the pictures and logos everywhere.  I feel that if the site were cleaned up drastically it would make a big difference in the appeal to the actual site.  Thing should be more easy to access and the nav bar should be horizontal instead of vertical because typically, a vertical nav bar reduces the size of the body on a page and makes the whole page more cramped to begin with.

First website is completely finished now.  Im very happy with my outcome, but I wish I'd taken more time to work on my gallery.  I can still take some time here and there to improve it before the final, but now I need to focus on photography for my next few websites. 

I think Im going to take a drive down to baltimore to get some pictures of the inner harbor, I think its a good enough place that I can get a lot of good shots. 

Been thinking over the gallery page of my site again, its going to have to be a LOT more simple than I originally thought it would be.  I think Im going to keep the gallery limited to four photos wide and N long, N being however many photos fit on the page after four in each row.  I took a few more pictures of the car today to use, and I was working in photo shop to try and clean them up a bit.  I really need a photography class.. 

Learning the basics of dreamweaver on tuesday was pretty awesome, there was a lot to take in but I think I absorbed everything pretty well.  I really thought it was pretty easy, but creating the CSS rules for the div tags kinda felt like a drill through my skull, seemed like so many things to remember for just a simple little thing.  Although it was kinda tough to figure out how to do it right the repetitiveness helped to reinforce it. I think I need to read up a bit more on dividing the sections on the page.  I think it might be kinda hard to get the actual lines on my page to show up if I'm going to be copying image sections from the actual layout that I created.  Im wondering if its not possible to create actual lines, objects, on the page itself.  I'll have to look into this.

I was thinking through ideas for a gallery on my web page.  I'd really like to do a sort of 'scrolling' look where if you hover the mouse, the picture will get larger.  I know there are ways of doing this in HTML, but Im not sure how it would work.   I think the algorithm would be something along the lines of 'mouse hover - picture.size --> *2 or something like that, just to give a better preview of the photo.  It would really help in terms of enhancing my site's graphic appeal.   Other ideas are a simple grid of photos, clicking one will take you to a seprate page where you'd see just the photo.  Kinda like if you were to right click a picture and hit 'view image'.  This idea is a much less apealing to me because of the fact that I think most people will chose this as their option.

My parents bought an Adobe Suite for my little brothers today.  Got everything installed and it looks like now I have photoshop and illustrator here at home.  I worked a bit on my SMTC website, changed a few of the headers and played with the navigation font size.  I think I like those fonts all where they are now.  It gives me a strong primary font for the title of the site, a secondary for the headers/nav, and a tertiary for regular text.  

Yesterday I took a few pictures of my most recent modification, my S Tech lowering springs and the drop amount they gave me.  I'm very pleased with the look now and I can use the photos I took for my website.

 

First project was much more successful than I'd originally hoped.  I really really loved the look of the scion website that I made and just the way that it seemed to fit the theme.  I think I'll most likely be using that website to continue off of.  My commercial website was a success in most ways I think except that I felt it was a bit too cluttered.  Perhaps if I was to make all the lines a bit thinner, it might work better. The music website was meh.  I didn't like it at all.  

I really think the scion website needs a lot more work on the content and the arrangement of said content on the front page but once I get a general form going for it, I think it'll be a lot better. 

I worked a bit more on the sketch for my commercial site tonight, I'm really liking the way that its coming out so far.  It has a formal look, but not intimidating like some other websites are.  The home page layout is going to provide a brief idea of what the be expected from the site; new phones, plans, and recycling old phones.  

There will be small Sections on the front page, I may divide it into three columns actually.  The left section would be to introduce the page for new phones, middle would introduce information on cellular plans, and the right would be to promote the eco-friendly disposal of old cell phones (may or may not include a small green version of the company's logo).  I may go to the college tomorrow to try and work on said logo as I've got a few ideas on paper but really want to see them drawn up online.

Took a few photos of the car today for my hobby website, Im going to do some phone photography tonight when I come home and the band photography will be soon.. I just need to get in contact with Noah.  

 

Spent some time working on my logo today for my hobby website, and I'm pretty sure I'm darn near done. I really like the way it came out, and how simple it was to create.  I've been looking it over for a lot of the night trying to think of simple things to do to bring it together more.  I may try to raise up the top corners of the underline on the far ends to match with the curvature of the S and the C. 

I've also been brainstorming some ideas for the commercial logo in my mind, I really think I'd like it to be angled forward, the letters leaning top toward the end of the logo, it gives it a sort of faster feel to it, like doing business with the company will be easy and simple.  Color scheme ideas still haven't changed much, I want to keep them as white and red to give the site a more aggressive look. 

Here's a preview of my logo WIP for my hobby website...

Finished the last three thumbnails.  I like how most of them turned out, some feel a little too bland and some feel like I tried too hard on them but I think thats something Im gonna have to get used to, I wanna be able to make sure Im right in the middle where I want to be and in some cases leaning toward a certain side for design purposes like creating a bland website but giving it a clean look.  

I've been contemplating the logos for each of my websites and getting a lot of ideas from watching TV or just looking at things around me.  I've been pretty intrigued by the monster logo of late.  I really like how it is shaped, looking like it was actually a tear from three individual claws, but also looks like an M.  I think though that its a hard logo to work with because it really doesn't convey any sort of meaning.  If someone were to look at the logo by itself, not knowing what Monster was, they'd have a hard time figuring it out.

I started a few more thumbnails today, oriented the correct way this time.  I really like one in particular that I made for the hobby website.  The logo and a smaller graphic will be at the top of the page separated by a diagonal line that will lead down below the header, dividing two of the page tabs.  The rest of the page tabs will have smaller diagonal lines between them, one on each side of the main diagonal. 

As far as colors go, I think I want to go with a silver and black scheme with accents of white as that color scheme will match my car that I will be putting on the site.  

For the front page, I want to keep the information limited, only enough to let the user know what the page is about and to pique their interest.  I may put a shot of the car on the front page, very up close though.  Perhaps a wide angle shot of a tail or headlight.  


My cell phone page is also progressing a bit, the color scheme I'm planning to use will be white with accents of red, the text will be black.  This site will be much more open on the front page, with ads for certain phones on each side as well as specials that the site is running.

My thumbnails are meh.  I'm only really feeling a few of them.   I kinda feel like they need something more graphically speaking, it could be the lack of colors and graphics in general.  Either way, I wish I was more into the styling of the thumbnails in the first place, I feel like it'd make them a lot easier to draw because right now, its just getting repetitive.

I saw a few designs recently I like, but I keep having this image of a very clean website in my mind as far as what I want it to look like.  The only issue is that it would require a splash screen, and I know the kinds of projects we're doing do not have any business near a splash screen.

I've come up with a few ideas for my websites for this first project.  The commercial website is starting to work itself out in my mind, I think Im gonna try to get a few pictures of my family's different phones.  My dad is about to buy a new iPhone so I'll be able to get at least four different phone pictures, I'm also working next to a verizon store so I can get some more pictures there and they're even already displayed. 

My website on hobbies is going to be about modifying my car, I feel that so far its my strongest website idea.  I will be able to take pictures of my car and update the website constantly as I continue to modify.  I've got four major modifications in mind that I can write about. 

What I really need to think about is how I'm going to present each of my websites, I want the commercial site to look very clean as far as graphics go.  I dont want to have a ton of different pictures or logos, perhaps just one is fine since I'll already be hosting a ton of pictures for each different phone.  The car modification website will be more industrially designed, something that will fit a lot of the pictures I already have taken of the car.

Also, this logo has a lot to love about it.  I really like how the letters themselves seem much more simplified by removing the center of the A.  The angle is also very slight, not obnoxious and it gives the logo a very strong stance.  Spacing between the letters is really nice, or rather, the lack thereof, it completes the whole logo and keeps it stuck together.

I’m not really sure where I wanna begin with this class, seems like a lot of what I learned in high school is gonna be applicable to what we're using here.  Unfortunately I never learned Dreamweaver in high school, though I tend to take quickly to new computer programs so I’m looking forward to checking it out. 

After reviewing the syllabus, I’m already trying to visualize a few different layouts for the three 'faux-websites' we are going to start out with. 

As for the music website, I’m not really sure where to begin.  I don’t play any instruments and I can't really stand taking pictures of myself and posing as an artist.  I may try and get in contact with my friend Noah again and talk to him about getting a few shots of his band. 

The second website, commercial, should be really easy for me and I've already had a ton of ideas pop into my mind.  I think I’m gonna go ahead and make a site for selling something like electronic devices, perhaps cell phones.  I can even use last semester's graphic work to give the company a name like Denwa. 

Thirdly, it didn't take me more than a few minutes to come up with the idea of building the site around my hobby of modifying cars.  I can easily get plenty of pictures to put on the site and information just comes easily to me when I talk about cars. 

More to come later tonight methinks...