Where we'll go from now

Wow, 14 weeks already?! The time really DID pass quickly... but back to the business at hand.

The Web has seen many changes over the years, but what can we expect two years from now?

Well, for the most part, I expect the Web to be optimized for other media, such as audio/video archives and other personal accounts. I also hope that everything we do will done through what we search for, and how they get through will be even more compact.

On sale now

When websites are designed, sometimes they are used to help sell a company's products and/or services. That's so both ends of the line (the merchant and the customer) get what they want. The merchant receives the money the customer pays, and the customer receives what she paid for (based on how the site goes together).

The connection between money and web design lies within one key ingredient: simplicity. It has to be presented in a way the customer and merchant see fit and can agree on.

The media is the massage.

So says the great Marshall McLuhan...

The importance of adding media to a site (audio, video or images) is help to convey ideas through more than just text alone. Even if it means having to use another's work (especially by giving credit where credit's due), an idea can be built upon from another's work. I know, because I visit YouTube almost regularly not just to be entertained, but also gain an understanding of what the videos in my subscriptions are trying to tell me.

Sure, a picture may be worth a thousand words, but a video certainly goes above and beyond... but who am I to judge?

Building a better site around you

When building Web sites, it can either seem like second nature (provided you know the basics) or a challenge (if any design ideas pop out). When I complete the assignments, I usually feel confident- in a way. You see, I often depend on whether or not I have I have to keep switching codes when putting a site together.

So, through getting an idea of what's going on, Web design isn't a problem for me.

Path to someplace...

So far the course is rather easy as far as Web design courses go. Just fresh out from taking my midterm last week. I really enjoyed those FranklinLive sessions, since they gave us a chance to connect on a common ground. Nothing I know can make this better; it's just fine as it is.

Dynamic vices

One of my favorite sorts of websites is the dynamic kind. By that, I mean a site that contains stuff a user like me can interact with. If I go onto a site like Dailymotion, for example, I can preview a clip by scenes just by rolling over the clip to see some other related pictures from the clip in question. Other sites, have Twitter feeds that pop up at random by the time they're posted. Rollover or re-update, dynamic sites are sites everyone can relate to.

Suc-CSS breeds suc-CSS

Well, I think I recall a time back during sophomore year at Canisius in my DMA207 class, where we experimented with tables, CSS and such. Normally, I would've been rather a little harried about diving right into a related subject, but I knew that even tables have disadvantages. Thanks to using this uniform code, I managed to pull through, no problem.

Putting to bed the "embed"

CSS (Cascade-style sheeting) is way better than embedding, in my opinion. That way, you don't have go to from page to page to alter what's inside just to make one page like the other. From one page, you can choose an element to make uniform for the site, such as text size or color, background color, or tables. I hope I can gain some good experience from this when I make my site.

Tommy can you hear me? Tommy can you hear me?

Sorry, I couldn't resist! The reason for the title is because I want to discuss making web sites for the deaf and blind.

Now, when it comes to our friends who are visually and hearing-impaired, incorporating technology into those sites has come a long way. For those who are deaf, I've discovered most YouTube videos now come with the option to toggle closed-captioning. And I do know that computer systems contain speech-to-text for blind users, to help them feel their way around.

In my opinion, these are real necessities for any website maker. Even those who just lost their sense (well, some of it anyway) want to learn to how to use computers. Now, for starters, I would also want to include the CC'ing of a certain sound effect to identify whether a window is being opened or any other computer command, plus include a sensor that sounds for when the mouse isn't in the site window (blind) and pronunciations on certain words deaf people may not get.

Who ever said computers weren't any good for anybody?

How did I first start on the Web?

Well, my memories of Web design date back to around 1996, when I was just starting to have an AOL account of my own. It was just some various sites about TV shows I really liked.

Then things really began to take off when I was in middle school, where we learned to design home pages on Homestead. They didn't go over quite well as I hoped. Besides, getting ideas took time to put together to make the site substantial.

In high school, we made our own sites in my computer graphics class, showcasing all the art we've done in the class.

But college--that's another story. We were to make sites showcasing our work for every class we had in my Digital Media Arts major. I even took the liberty of incorporating my high school artwork within.

Oh, what a tangled Web...

Now, the Web may be useful, fun and all that, but most of us more often than not have had some trouble with everything about it. I'm one of them.

The biggest gripes I usually have about the Web are:

• the fact that when I'm on a particular site like YouTube or Veoh, some of the videos within tend to be no longer available due to a copyright claim--for all the wrong reasons

• having to put up with timeouts and delays in connecting to the Web

• when a domain name goes up for sale with no customers

• pop-up ads

In fact, I could go on all day... but what I DO like about the Web is that has the right information at the right time.

See, the most annoying things do have their softer side too.

A quaint little welcome

Hello all, and welcome to this special blog. I'm doing this as part of my WEBD-234 online class at Franklin University.

Now, I trust we have a lot to discuss how we plan to put our knowledge to the test in putting our sites together. Expect more from this blog this fall.