Feb 9, 2000 - This is to be a kind of journal of my project. Because I am on my own, rather than in a group, I need to keep track of my own progress.
My project is to make the Geography Careers Website look like it's having a better than a bad hair day, as it seems now. My own criticisms of the site could fill a book, but it would be too painful to write because I put much of it together myself - before I knew much of how it should be (could be) done. http://depts.washington.edu/geogjobs/
The most critical need for change is in basic design -- of information and of aesthetic qualities. It must be more navigable and more current. The different pages must look similar enough to belong together and they must also hold together logically. For example, a few of the problems are:
What's New? -- (not recent enough to be What's New) and -- portfolio examples links (are mostly broken by now )
Soc and Environment doesn't look like a parallel site, GIS Jobs, which doesn't look like How to Find Current Jobs in....
Resumes and eResumes and Internship Guide for UW Geograhy Students (both are basically boring, and far too long, with little navigation clues along the way)
There must be more color and visual interest (but without flash and dazzle to distract from the main purpose of getting-giving information.) I need to develop template pages, so I can put the content in without having to set up design each time. That should also save on the time it takes to make every page look consistent, and also make it easier to make changes, if I can figure out how to make my html editor (Dreamweaver2) do that part).
I have started a trial page on my homesite, but there seems to be too much information on the first page. I am more inclined to re-design, based on the Chronicle of Higher Education model (actually the same model used in numerous sites), which has a fixed panel on the left side with navigation aids, the middle with articles and jobs info and the right side with interesting sidelights listed. The length of the lines of text in the center of the page changes as you increase or decrease the size of the browser window. Thus, small browser windows don't loose anything, they simply have shorter lines of text in the center. (I must remind myself to check this from various browsers, to see what REALLY happens.) To look more closely at how the site is designed, I have copied the first page of an article and its source code, to compare what you see with what makes it so.
I've been loosing links and having to go retrieve them, so I can also see that I have a bad habit of changing file and folder names. I do that whenever I see better ways of organizing, which means that I probably need to spend more time planning before I jump in with information files.
To learn more about site organization in general, I've read Information Architecture and I'm now into Navigation for Users (whatever the title is). I've also read a fair amount of what Jacob Nielson has on the web (but haven't bought his $50 book yet), which I really like because it appeals to my sense of simplicity and clean logic. And, I like Web Design for Non-Designers and (I can't think of its title). the chapter in Learning HTML in a Week on organizing a site was useful too, and it helps that Dreamweaver (the editor program I'm using) has a site map function, albeit primitive and small, to give me a virtual view of where things are in the site.
I find it a real challenge to decide when to start actually making the pages. I have already made so many mistakes that require hours to revise or re-do that I want to read and collect more and more information on how to do this, but if I don't start, I will be paralyzed by information overload. I do find that whenever I do start, or put together another page, that page becomes another on the list of pages I have to change for some reason, or I get it started and discover that another gaping hole of my own ignorance opens in front of me and I'm stuck until I can either figure it out or find someone to help.
For example, I wanted to put the "transparent image" on the graphics page, but I didn't know what the point was, let alone how to do it. I vaguely remember it being mentioned in class, but I couldn't find it in the notes, nor my own and the documentation in PaintShopPro assumes you understand. So I tried working with it on one of the crop photos I had used earlier and it just turned the photo weird colors - nothing I really understood from one number value to the other end of the range. Later, I finally found some basics about it in the Web Style Guide and finally figured out that the point is to put images into web sites without whatever distracting background color they inevitably come with - apparently, that always accompany gif files. Again, I tried experimenting, stole a gif from the Yale Web Style page and tried to make the background transparent, but I couldn't get it to show up at all on the web page, so there must be something I'm missing in the save function in PSP. Anyway, this is likely to drive me nuts in the near future. At these points, I have to close up and go take a walk.
OK, back again, but only after some hours of exploring other web sites I like and trying to figure out why, and also a whole lot of hours fighting with Dreamweaver2 and the magic expanding and collapsing tables. I have a pretty good idea of what I want, but getting the tables to sit still when the size of the screen changes is another challenge. Problem was that I was also fighting with the Dreamweaver templates and library items at the same time and I couldn't tell which was giving me the trouble - maybe even a combination of the three.
So, I quit dealing with the Template/Library function (which sounds great when I can learn enough to get it to work), and FINALLY developed a template on my own, but I did need advice from a helper at Allexperts http://www.allexperts.com (a site where you can ask advice on many topics - I am an "expert" in general career and resume advice, for example, and getting very good ratings too, but such a baby in this stuff). Anyway, he suggested I put a 1x1 transparent gif at the top of each of my columns and pull it out to whatever width I wanted, so it would keep the columns from collapsing and moving around while I check what happens on wider and narrower screens, to be sure the text isn't much wider than 10-12 or so words per line (average) that I want and that neither the navigation bar nor the text collapse into nothing with a narrower screen.
Anyway, it worked beautifully (at least temporarily), and with that advance, I finished a new trial page for the whole site and three separate menu pages for the three main sections of the site.
http://staff.washington.edu/duttro/Newgeog/index.html new site design, which links to the three parts of the site, named for Geographers: planning careers, getting jobs and at work
../Newgeog/Careers/cmenu.html New section for Careers
../Newgeog/Jobs/jmenu.html New section for Jobs
../Newgeog/Work/wmenu.html New section for Work
(And, they look pretty good - except for one where the column size obviously has slipped - and in one browser (Netscape), I can see the "transparent gifs"! So, it's probably because I made them transparent when they were on a white background. Now, I'll try on that part again.) Also, I find that Netscape is collapsing empty tables and they look like hell, but I just discovered, in Web Design in a Nutshell that there is a workaround that helps.
Ha, having checked each of these pages again, I can see that a couple of links have slipped, too. (Must be those "improvements" again that not everything has caught up with. And, it's save, save, save, as I work) At least, it feels as though there is hope for getting some of what I want to show up where and how it's supposed to be.
ANOTHER reason for some of this progress was the purchase of more references, this time, the Dreamweaver 2 Bible by Joseph Lowery, for $39.95. Pricey though it is, it does quite a bit of basic explaining of how some of the little things work in DW2 (for example, how to "select" a table you want to work in), the kind of information I have been dying for all through this course. While the computer-types throw the word "intuitive" about all the time, I am more than ever convinced that what they mean when they say "intuitive" or "common sense" is based on years of experience and knowledge of how computers and computer programs work. The only "common" in common sense is the common experience of all those who live in that particular world.
{Main, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, Proj}
Kate Duttro
Dept. of Geography, Box 353550
University of Washington
Seattle, WA 98125-3550
206+436-0048
duttro@u.washington.edu
homepage
Go to other LIS530 assignments{p> Go to other LIS530 assignments{Main, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, Proj}
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