Both Adobe and Apple are great companies who have done so much to take technology to the level it is at today, but they are in competition with each other. Competition is not always a bad thing. I causes us to do our absolute best knowing someone else may do a better job if we come up with anything less than the best. We need to learn what we can about the technology that is available and be open minded about it and what it can do to help us succeed in what we are doing. I liked this insert from an article I read.

A line in the sand

The problem with rallying behind a technology is that it traps us within the confines of its constraints. We easily shift “don’t know” and “not sure” into “can’t” and “won’t.” Creativity is dictated by programming languages. How sad.

Technologies aren’t inherently bad or good. They’re only appropriate or inappropriate for certain circumstances. They’re a means to an end, not solutions within themselves. Each one is powerful in its own right to accomplish a certain goal. The responsibility to use an appropriate technology lies with the one who made the choice. Unfortunately, we’ve misinterpreted irresponsible development as inadequate technology. Flash and Standards: The Cold War of the Web, by Dan Mall at http://www.alistapart.com/articles/flashstandards/

One thing I see happening is that because of this war, companies are putting restrictions on their software and devices to prevent people from accessing other things such as Adobe blocking Apple based programs from accessing Adobe based software etc. This can hinder people who like both and would use both given the opportunity.

I believe that this competition can actually help because each company will try to out-o the other which will mean they will keep putting out better and better products for the consumer to use.

Cascading style sheets bring power and flexibility to the Web design field. They give you the ability to change the appearance of hundreds of pages by changing only one file making it more efficient and powerful in its use. You can build your style sheet and use it on multiple web sites creating unity and structure to your sites. Style sheets make the  designer’s life much easier. Using the same rule over and over would be cumbersome, but with style sheets the designer can just give each item a class id and attach the style sheet.

I thought setting up a site at this point was a little elementary since we were already working on our sites. So what I learned in these two chapters was really very little. Finding tutorials online on Dreamweaver to refresh my memory on how to set up a Website were helpful though and helped me get started with my own site.

Web design is not my thing, but I understand the need for me to know how it works and to be able to design a site. Being a desktop Publishing major myself, I have not even done any web design for a whole year. A refresher in Web design would have been more beneficial to me at this point, than going back to do “Hello World!” It seemed like a waste of time.

Using Web standards gives your site greater accessibility and more visibility in Web searches. Older browsers will still understand the structure of the document. They may not be able to display the coolest additions, but they will provide the basic information to the user. For the business owner, this is essential to their business, because they will most likely have people with the newest updated browsers and clients with older versions. If they use the Web standard, they will be able to reach both clients adequately.  This also makes the site easier to develop and maintain.

Many people don’t upgrade their browsers for as long as 18 months after the upgrades become available making it difficult for the designers to get a great site in front of them. Zeldman was referring to this dilemma when he wrote his article, “To hell with bad browsers”. Today, because of the Web standards, more people are able to get the basic meaning out of the Web pages. It enables the designer to develop a site that is supported by older browsers, but with enhanced features in newer browsers that support the CSS version that they used.

In other words, a site built to web standards should ideally be lean, clean, CSS-based, accessible, usable and search engine friendly. The site should be compatible to CSS, HTML and (X)HTML. It should use the necessary codes and not have any broken links. It should also use alts for images just in case the image doesn’t load, so the user can still see what would have been there.

Card sorting is a user-centered design method or technique that helps the designer plan the site, giving structure to the design process, labeling each piece and categorizing it into groups, enabling users to quickly find their way around the site. Although it doesn’t replace the final structure, it does give stability to the design and helps answer questions.

It is an inexpensive and reliable way to sort your information and giving it overall structure. It helps you create findability on your site and will generate return customers. Basically, card sorting groups your items together by type, style, size or whatever other category you may choose that make sense to the user. Using this method will equip you for the information design process.

There are two primary methods for performing card sorts.

• Open Card Sorting: Participants are given cards showing site content with no pre-established groupings. They are asked to sort cards into groups that they feel are appropriate and then describe each group. Open card sorting is useful as input to information structures in new or existing sites and products.

• Closed Card Sorting: Participants are given cards showing site content with an established initial set of primary groups. Participants are asked to place cards into these pre-established primary groups. Closed card sorting is useful when adding new content to an existing structure, or for gaining additional feedback after an open card sort.

You also need to determine who the audience is and plan accordingly. You should map out the site and make sketches and wireframes before attempting to put anything on the computer. You may want to check with the client every once in a while to touch base with them on what you have so far.

The last step should be to arrange the information and design it in such a way that it blends, contrasts, and compliments the other elements on the page. The page should be visually appealing to the audience as well as be user friendly and easy to navigate.

This has helped me because I often look at the information and just begin to put it on a page and move it around until it is pleasing and it makes the most sense. I can see the importance of planning out the whole thing start to finish before beginning any designing.

Another issue is the colors you use for your design. You need to use Web-safe colors to design for the Web. Although many more colors are now available than a few years ago, colors may become distorted if you use colors that are not Web-safe.

Images used for the Web must also be compressed in order to work properly on the Web. Compressing images optimizes them to make sure they are ready for the Web. There are three way to do this: bmp, jpeg, or gif.

Just as color is important to be Web-safe, fonts are also sensitive and must be installed on the viewer’s computer in order for them to view the text in the font you chose. Some of the most popular fonts used on the Web today are:

• Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif
• Times New Roman, Times, serif
• Courier New, Courier, mono
• Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif
• Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif
• Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif

Another thing to be careful in Web design is that you know the difference between style and design. Design communicates on every level and tells you where you are and what you can do. Style on the other hand, is an aspect of design and communicates stylishness such as brand attributes. A great way to design a Website is to bring balance to the equation. Balancing usability with design and style will serve the purpose of the Website and be pleasing to the eye at the same time.

I also learned a lot from the different readings about the importance of planning before designing Websites. I believe this concept applies to all aspects of the design process. It is always a good idea to plan before beginning a project. It is interesting to me how much the design process is the same across the board for all design projects. Plan, do research, organize, sketch or map out, prioritize and then begin designing.

Next I added another layer on top of that a little smaller than the first giving it a little different shade of brown. I gave it a texture also and then changed the opacity so the other texture would show through. Then I added a fourth layer and made it kind of a bright yellow color. I used the multiply blending mode which intensified the color throughout. I imported a paper image and added it to the mix and desaturated it. Using the lasso tool, I selected a jagged rectangle around the whole piece, and then gave it a group mask.

I took a brush and touched the edges up with a dark brown color. After doing the whole edge, I duplicated the layer and gave it a Gaussian blur. I kept repeating that step over and over until it had the amount of burnt edge I wanted. This was a fun project I plan to try again.

Some Photoshop editing can be helpful when you want to adjust the lighting or take something out of a photograph that you don’t want in the picture, but putting someone’s head on another person’s body is going too far in editing photographs. Some of the photos that were tampered had missing or distorted body parts that made the pictures look unreal and unprofessional. Some of them were down right ridiculous!

I think the amount of photo editing done to a photo depends on what someone wants to have done to their photographs. A number of years ago, we had our family pictures taken and the photographer told us that if we like one person’s smile better in one photo than another, he could put that head in the other photo. We actually chose to do just that, because the picture that looked the best, one person was blinking or something and he just copied and pasted the head from another shot into it. I think this type of photo editing is okay.

I heard of a family who had a picture taken of their extended family at a family reunion. They were going to give a big canvas photo of the family to the grandmother for her birthday. Just weeks after the photo was taken one of the grandsons got engaged. The photographer copied and pasted the fiancé into the picture. There was a space just right to put her. The girl later saw the picture and said it made her feel very funny because she had never been there.