5 posts from July 2008

Ok, so there are three articles here, but it is the first two that this blog response is for. I just put the third one up for those who want to know more.

The first one started out with a good refresher of what block and inline elements are. I haven't dealt with that stuff in a long time, so that was good. All the articles are  have great links scattered throughout for more helpful information on particular topics, which was very nice. I really liked the fact that the author put in what Internet Explore has problems with, and I quite enjoyed the fixed position bit. Very funny. However, I still don't understand the authors explanation of the z-index. And to be quite honest I still don't quite understand the four different types of positioning and what there good for. I guess I might need to print this up and go through in more carefully, with a highlighter maybe. I found out in the second one that you can clear different ways, and that you can put a clear in the same div tag as the float. I will probably never use it that way, but it is good to know these things. I can't believe that tables were discussed. Especially in such a new blog, but I guess some people still want/need to know about them. I just skipped over that part myself. Hope you can get something out of these.

Well, here we are again. More articles to read and another blog to write. So here we go.

If you take a look at the articles liked above you will find some very good information on semantic coding. As a matter of fact the first article led me to the second article. In these articles I learned what semantic code was and what it's good for. Apparently I was already using semantic code and didn't even know it. That is just the way I was taught. I didn't know that putting your title in an h1 tag helped with SEO, but know I do. It's good to know why we do things. I also learned that putting your CSS and Javascript in external style sheets improves loading time and helps with SEO as well. I just thought it was a better way to organize all your code. And I do like good organization. There is also a very good list of semantic code elements in both articles. I hadn't even heard of most of these things before. I might just have to print out that list and try and use these things more. Well there you have it. Two good articles and some interesting things I learned from them.

(Hope this was the type of blog response the teacher was looking for.)

    Now, the article wasn't written all that well in my opinion, but the commandments are good. These are all things we need to keep in mind when designing or building a site. Some are obvious, "Thou shalt not clutter", and some aren't so apparent, "Thou shalt not name your Web 2.0 company with an unnecessary surplus or dearth of vowels." I think all these commandments are worth listening to.


A Design Process Revealed
(This is an article he had us read in the last class. If you haven't read this yet you should.)

   
This was a very interesting article, and one that we should have read in the first class. I would have liked to have know some of these things a bit earlier in my design career. Although I have learned most of these steps in previous classes, some of them are new to me. I have been introduced to Competitive Analysis before, but it was never really stressed as being a part of the design process before. I have never even heard of the Typography or Imagery steps before. They are both very interesting ideas for steps, and one's that I plan to try out for myself. His Composition stage is a bit different though. He is either combining the rough and color comp stage, or he just skipped over the rough completely. I really do like his idea about focusing on detail on the top first and then working your way down. I usually just do that by section. All in all I found this to be a very informative article about the design process.