FontTester

So the website http://www.fonttester.com is super excellent. It has three columns of text that you can format differently using the tools on the left side of the screen, which allow you to use different CSS properties and adjust the corresponding values in order to typographically format your text. You can then just copy the CSS that it writes for you.

Excellent!

Thanks, Mr. Gaussian, wherever you are.

With love from NatalieDee.

CurvyCorners

So I just found the website http://www.curvycorners.net/, which provides javascript that makes rounded corners in CSS. I read that rounded corners were supposed to be included in CSS 3 [at the w3c website], but they ultimately decided not to include it. CSS4 better have it. Why is it so complicated to get rounded corners??

In class: final thoughts

The most beneficial assignment for me was an in-class assignment before module four where we had to create three different pages using the same (X)HTML and create three different style sheets.

I created these:

• Sample One
• Sample Two
• Sample Three

The assignment allowed me to research explore different selectors and properties in CSS, and see the resultant effects of each line of code. I didn't know anything about CSS before this class,
and this mini-assignment really helped me learn quickly how to use style sheets and how effective CSS can be.

The purpose of a web author is to create and maintain a site that effectively conveys the content, message, and sentiment that the client wants the site to convey. I would say that the duties of a web author include:

• Branding
• Graphic creation
• Marketing
• Timely updates
• Making sure that the website is entirely functional at all times, in all [most ;)] browsers [curse you, backwards compatibility!]
• Coding
• Proof-reading content (including images, layout, and text)
  

Excellent branding: Sophistimom

A friend of mine sent me a site via StumbleUpon, and I couldn't help but notice the excellently well-defined branding. The site, Sophistimom.com, uses lots of white space and the colors white, light blue, and light maroon. The vertical background, ornate header font, leaf logo, and "S" favicon add to the defined personality of Sophistimom. The Sophistimom blogs about gourmet recipes and includes photos of the excellent presentation. The site effectively conveys an air of sophistication, classiness, and professionalism, but maintains the mom's personality.

Facebook addiction

We've all joked about being addicted to Facebook, but in this article I read, this woman really is a Facebook addict. Spending up to 20 hours a day on facebook has caused her relationship with her daughter and family to suffer. [20 hours a day leaves her only four hours to... sleep? Work? How does she survive?] Although at least half of the time she spends on Facebook has to do with her work, she no longer has time to help her family with anything. Facebook addictions can be a sign of social dysfunction, as those addicted are living in a false reality.

Yikes.

[Article from CNNHealth.com]

The story of the Twitter logo

The ubiquitous Twitter image depicting a white bird, brown coiling branch and pale blue "weathered" background was created by Simon Oxley. It was purchased by Twitter for only six dollars! Twitter is the 84th most popular site on the worldwide web, as measured by hits. You would think Oxley would want a little more for the graphic than he's gotten. At first, Oxley asked for the site to credit him for his the symbol. However, Twitter has not yet credited him for his work. I'd be more than a little mad.

[Article from Wired]

Online shopping

Congress is working on legislation that would authorize sales tax on items purchased online. The legislation would require shoppers to pay their home state's sales tax on items purchased from outside their state. The push is due to the bad economy, and sales tax revenues have decreased by 6.1%.

[Source: CNet News]

To-do list

I thought I'd make a to-do list for this class, so I can organize my web edits and make a game plan to finish up the semester. I need to:

• Edit my navigation for my main page for module 4.
• Change the colors of the divs
• Change the positioning of the columns
• Switch the resume and sketches text to make all the resume content blue
  
• Change the hover features
• Add sketches
• Add photos
• Link to blog
• Add design philosophy page

Module 5:

• Make two more gradients
• Make three logos
• Make two more headers, and finish the first

Honors Option:

• Do everything
  

Whiten your teeth!

Photoshop CS4: White Teeth
The narrator selects his teeth by using the magic wand tool, and then whitens them by using the hue & saturation dialogue box, under adjustments. To return the shading between teeth that provides the tooth definition, the narrator adjusts the levels of the teeth selection.

From class:

Who's visiting the site? Friends, family, potential employers, potential clients, professors, maybe design school admissions representatives.
What does she what to know? What does he want to do? They want to see Kyle's work (through drawings, sketches, and photos), learn about Kyle and his designs(through his resume and design philosophy), and keep in touch with Kyle.
What potential questions/tasks will you have for your users on Thursday? List at least five possibilities.

• Find Kyle's phone number.


• What is Kyle's email address?


• Who does Kyle make clothes for?


• What is your favorite sketch by Kyle?


• What is your favorite garment by Kyle?

Mike Padilla discusses compromise in regards to creating the best user interface (UI) design and even maps out the benefits and costs with particular design elements. What are at least four design benefits and costs you can list in this manner for your final site design?

Point & click	Intuitive	Additional time required for interaction due to increase motor skills required.
Full text	Easily understood	Requires additional space
Text links	Always understood	Must be read, do not stand out as actionable items as much from other text
Small font	More info per screen	More difficult to read for some users

Do you feel all of the costs are truly negative? Why or why not?
With point-and-click navigation, the minimal additional time required for user interaction due to increase motor skills required is beneficial, because they are looking at Kyle's website longer, which is good from a marketing standpoint. The small font on the resume page is probably a bad thing and I should enlarge it. Because the design is very minimalist and simple, the full text and text links are okay, especially since each text area is blocked off in color.

You Suck at Photoshop #5: Select Color Range:
2:20 totally makes fun of people who like to magic-wand everything in a color range instead of using the "select color range" tool. I never knew about the select color range tool! [Embarrasing, I know.] Good to know. The color range tool is effective for pulling things off of their backgrounds. Just make sure that when you go to Select --> Color Range that you turn up the fuzziness so that you don't have a white (or whatever color your background was) fuzzy shadow around the foreground object you're extracting.

HyperStudio!

I finally, after three months, I remembered the name of the Apple slide show software from 1997: HyperStudio. Check out these screen shots:

Photoshop Eye Editing

Awesome Eyes In Photoshop, a tutorial on YouTube.com presented by PhotoshopTalent.com teaches how to use the pen tool, dodge tool, burn tool, and sponge. I never really understood what those tools did or how to use them, so this was a very helpful tutorial for me.

In Photoshop, if you go to Image --> Adjustments --> Curves you can brighten a blue eye by selecting the blue channel and raising the curve.

I think this tutorial will come in handy. I've had to try to remedy red eyes many times before, but I usually suck at it. I usually try to replace the pupil by using the brush tool to make a new pupil, but the narrator selects the pupil area and deletes it, after making sure that the background color is black. He then goes back and adds the white eye-reflection mark. Duh! I felt so stupid after I saw that.

This just in: even the creator of Comic Sans, Vincent Connare, hates the font.

"If you love it, you don't know much about typography," Mr. Connare says. But, he adds, "if you hate it, you really don't know much about typography, either, and you should get another hobby."

Yikes.

[From The Wall Street Journal]

Bethany: Learn to use a computer

I've learned a lot about typography throughout this semester and reading random pages about web design online. I've linked a lot of typography tools and articles throughout this blog, so hit up the "typography" tag below this post.

I definitely went crazy during module four. After working on my site on my laptop, here in 317, and on a couple writing center laptops, I had much older version of the web pages on my laptop. When I synced my laptop with my AFS space through an FTP server, via Dreamweaver, Dreamweaver uploaded the old version of my site. It did this THREE TIMES. I still don't know what I did wrong, only that the correct answer to "Update links?" is "HELL NO." I ended up having to redo about four and a half hours of work. During the final four game. Woot woot.

There was one part of my site that I could not figure out how to re-make. I had a border on the left side of a div, which had text in it, and before one of the three retro-uploads, the line was right next to the text. After Dreamweaver got real cool and intuitive, I couldn't re-make that border. The line was about 200px to the left of the text. I really want that line back!! Padding and margin for the div (and the div next to it) are set at zero. I really have no clue how to fix it. Help?

When doing my write-up for module 4, after I made the web pages, came up with more than a handful of things I want to change on the sites. The things I want to fix are mostly for ease of viewing and cross-browser compatibility (which are very important things). I mixed pixel and percentage values in my style sheets, and all of the text on the resume page is too small. I want to fix those things, at the very least, before the page is published.

"Facebook saved my life."

A 16-year-old boy from Oxfordshire apparently, "...was using the social networking site late on Wednesday night and sent a private message to a girl in Maryland saying that he was going to harm himself." The girl then told her mom, who told the local police, who contacted a "special agent" at the White House, who contacted the British Embassy in Washington and finally the police control room near Oxfordshire.

He had overdosed, but was still conscious.

[Story from The BBC]

Youtube = doomed?

Youtube is expected to lose $470 million due to high operating expenses with relation to advertising revenues. They expect to make $240 million this year against $711 million in operating expenses. Youtube's CEO said that they would be careful in making large purchases, such as servers, in the future.

[Source: BusinessInsider.com]