Process and Method
First, I was paired up with Vui Jiat. After class, I got his mobile number and MSN address. That night, I wrote a paragraph introducing myself. Vui Jiat and I discussed earlier that we would write 100 words each but the long windedness in me took over. I wrote almost 200 words. After that, we discussed online about the name of our web page, the theme, colour and layout among others. We decided to name this "The Other Side of The World" because I would assume that most of the pairings would be friends from the same course. But Vui Jiat is doing Computing while I am doing Mass Comm. We are strangers from two different worlds but we meet in this class to work on this assignment together. Thus, the background image. We also have two different colours, red and blue which is each chosen by us respectively.
I visited many web sites for help with HTML codes and tips. After that, I created a webpage and uploaded my files to it. I also created this blog to write my report.
Technologies and Tools
I use my Dell Inspiron 1420 laptop (red colour, if you would like to know =p)
, Notepad, Adobe Photoshop CS3, Mozilla Firefox, freewebs.com, and other HTML reference web sites. While using Notepad, I was able to view my webpage without even the need to be online. I save my work as .html and it opens up as a webpage. I used Adobe Photoshop to edit my background image. I wanted two different hue of colours on the same image. I also used Photoshop to resize my two images. I used Mozilla Firefox to search for web servers, HTML tutorials, blogs,images and others. I used freewebs.com as my web hosting server.HTML
Basic HTML is quite easy to understand. I only used the very basic like bold, paragraph, link , font color, font face,font size, break, table, image, background image. I also used others like marquee . It gets easier to control the content once the grasp on HTML is good. Well, I have lot more to learn.
At some point, I was frustrated because what I typed its not what I see. I am quite sure the HTML is correct but the viewer is showing something else. For example, "View my blog now!" The word "blog" is a link to my blog. I changed the color of that word only, but somehow somewhere, the word "now!" changed color too. I tried all sorts of ways. In the end, I just re typed the whole thing.
I like using the marquee code because it makes the webpage livelier. This time around, I learnt to make the text bounce in the page rather than having it leave the page and coming back in again.
For the heading, I changed the color to maroon using the hex code #800000 rather than the usual red, blue, green and etc.
At first, I wanted to use mouse over image, where by when the mouse goes over the image, it will change to another image. It worked at first, but after I added my partner's part into the page, it can't work anymore. I gave up eventually because my partner had only one picture and it's unfair for him if I have two but he only has one. Plus, it won't work!!!!
Web Hosting Server
I first went to Yahoo! Geocities because I have already an account there(I found out that they are no longer accepting new accounts by the way). But the problem is, I registered using my Yahoo! account(with a very weird username) and the website url is automatically my Yahoo! username. I couldn't change the web site url.Anyway, I decided not to use Geocities because it was quite crappy.
I went searching other web hosting servers but most of them actually require subscription fee. Then, I remembered that Miss Sha gave a few examples of free web hosting servers and I decided to look them up. First I went to bravenet.com. After happily registering and all that jazz, they actually charge for the website too. Abandoning that website, I went to freewebs.com. As usual, I registered and got an account. Due to the serious lagging on internet connection these days I could not use it at all. In the “file manager” page, it says “displaying 1 of 1 file(s)” which is the default index page, but I could not see it at all.I left it as it is for that time being.
Uploading Files
The next day, I tried again, this time with better connection. I uploaded my HTML file and images to the site. But I had to upload one at a time because if I want to upload multiple things at one go; I have to pay (what a drag!!!). But luckily there are not much files. When I uploaded my background image, I realised that it does not fill up the entire page but repeats about a quarter of the image which is absolutely not what I want. So, I went back to Photoshop, resized it and upload it again. I did it so many times but still it did not work. The size stays the same. What I found out was, the web server keeps uploading the old unresized image even after I have resized it so many times and re-uploading so many times!!! I changed the file name completely and upload it again. Finally, it worked!
Also, this time around, I typed my HTML using the "edit" function on the web server, uploading images to the web server as I went along. Previously, I had done everything on my PC attaching images and music from my computer. When I upload my website to Geocities, all the links were missing and I had to upload every single file and re write the proper HTML. That wasted a chunk of my time.
Blog
I discovered my long lost blog which I never updated when I tried to make a new one for this subject. Which is also when I found out that I can have multiple blogs under one user. I thought that was pretty convenient. I also can hide the blog that I do not wish to be seen by others. I chose an existing skin from the list of templates, and voila, I have my own blog for this subject. And this would be my very first post. I find that the "save now" feature is very convenient because it saves my work every now and then as draft and I can come back to it anytime. Also after I publish a post, I still can edit my post whenever I want.
What irks me the most is, there are so many unnecessary codes!!! Each time I make a change to the font or colour, everything goes haywire!!! I ended up typing it in "Edit HTML" tab, typing my own HTML code.
I never knew blogging would be so tiring.
Conclusion
To conclude, I would say that I learnt more on HTML. I am less cranky when facing problems because sometimes I would think that technology makes our life worse. That's when I'm cranky. Seriously I will die without technology. I wished I had more time to discuss with my partner to come up with a better web page. My partner has no comment on anything, so basically I decided on everything. I wish he contributed more. If I were to do this again, I will do it with someone who knows HTML very well, and has his own opinion.
Reference websites
http://www.htmlbasix.com/mouseoverimages.shtml
http://www.whadiz.com/what-is.aspx/web-design/html
http://www.htmlcodetutorial.com
http://www.w3schools.com/HTML/html_links.asp
