Jennifer Scagnelli - Reflection 2

Jennifer Scagnelli
IT 578 - Web Design	Reflection Two
I'm writing this reflection an hour after taking the midterm exam, which may or may not be a good idea. I pretty much bombed it by not remembering the answers to simple questions and completely misunderstanding what was being asked in some of the questions. Right now I don't feel as confident in my webdesign skills and knowledge as I did a week or so ago. I know that I can't get discouraged, but I mostly just feel stupid and disappointed in myself. As I began to design my homepage I felt like I was right on track and had fun with it. I still need to finish the design, but I am having a few problems with things like spacing. I also need to figure out the best navigation system to use. Each of my topic areas will contain pages that the reader will need to be able to access from the homepage, so I'm thinking of using dropdown menus in my left navigation bar so that all of the individual pages can be accessed directly from the homepage. For example, one of my topic areas is “information for field instructors”, and the reader might want to go directly to the “field instructor certification” info instead of having to first navigate through the “educational philosophy” and “selection of field agencies” information. While these pages are ordered in a hierarchy of relevant information, each page contains specific information that enables it to be freestanding. In the next few days I'll take some photos of our building and students to use as graphics in the header, and I've also found some clip art in “the big box of art” that I think might be appropriate. My goal is to do this and complete my webpage template within the next week or so, so that I can move ahead with the rest of my pages and my content. I have a lot of information that I can use, so I'll need to check with my content expert to see if any of it can be combined or narrowed down. Comments from the class and from Dr. O'Bannon when I showed my home page design were helpful. I changed my page background to a light gray so that there is a contrast at the edge of the table and the text isn't just floating out to the right side of the page. I also changed the width of my table. Not only does it look better but there will be less scrolling on the pages that have more text. I had a lot of trouble completing the exercises for chapter 16. For some reason DW wouldn't recognize the templates as templates. I'm still not sure what the problem was, how I fixed it, or if I even fixed it at all! I ended up feeling extremely frustrated, and this is another reason why I feel like I really need to move ahead and create the template for my project site. If I run into any problems I want to have enough time to figure out what's going on and be able to fix it. Some "aha" moments - I figured out that the reason my Flash buttons didn't appear when I uploaded my pages was because I didn't have Flash updated on my laptop..though maybe this is more of an "oh duh!" moment! I also figured out the solution to my problem with numbers and bullets in my lists. I wasn't aware that you could change the starting number and this solved the problem I encountered when I used bullets and they caused the numbered items on the page to change. All aspects of web design are much more detailed than I had thought they would be (not just the technical aspects of DW, but all of the design areas such as page design, typography, site design and everything else). As I've read and completed the discussion questions I feel that I've learned a lot, but I'm sure I'll be referring back to the book to be sure I don't overlook any important details. Overall I feel like I'm making a good amount of progress, just starting to feel a bit stressed by how little time we have left in the semester. Jen's 578 Home Page \| Reflective Journal \| Activities Table \| 578 Class Activities Page http://web.utk.edu/~jenscag/IT578/reflections/reflection3.html Contact Me Back to Top Last modified: March 29, 2007

I'm writing this reflection an hour after taking the midterm exam, which may or may not be a good idea. I pretty much bombed it by not remembering the answers to simple questions and completely misunderstanding what was being asked in some of the questions. Right now I don't feel as confident in my webdesign skills and knowledge as I did a week or so ago. I know that I can't get discouraged, but I mostly just feel stupid and disappointed in myself.

As I began to design my homepage I felt like I was right on track and had fun with it. I still need to finish the design, but I am having a few problems with things like spacing. I also need to figure out the best navigation system to use. Each of my topic areas will contain pages that the reader will need to be able to access from the homepage, so I'm thinking of using dropdown menus in my left navigation bar so that all of the individual pages can be accessed directly from the homepage. For example, one of my topic areas is “information for field instructors”, and the reader might want to go directly to the “field instructor certification” info instead of having to first navigate through the “educational philosophy” and “selection of field agencies” information. While these pages are ordered in a hierarchy of relevant information, each page contains specific information that enables it to be freestanding. In the next few days I'll take some photos of our building and students to use as graphics in the header, and I've also found some clip art in “the big box of art” that I think might be appropriate. My goal is to do this and complete my webpage template within the next week or so, so that I can move ahead with the rest of my pages and my content. I have a lot of information that I can use, so I'll need to check with my content expert to see if any of it can be combined or narrowed down.

Comments from the class and from Dr. O'Bannon when I showed my home page design were helpful. I changed my page background to a light gray so that there is a contrast at the edge of the table and the text isn't just floating out to the right side of the page. I also changed the width of my table. Not only does it look better but there will be less scrolling on the pages that have more text.

I had a lot of trouble completing the exercises for chapter 16. For some reason DW wouldn't recognize the templates as templates. I'm still not sure what the problem was, how I fixed it, or if I even fixed it at all! I ended up feeling extremely frustrated, and this is another reason why I feel like I really need to move ahead and create the template for my project site. If I run into any problems I want to have enough time to figure out what's going on and be able to fix it. Some "aha" moments - I figured out that the reason my Flash buttons didn't appear when I uploaded my pages was because I didn't have Flash updated on my laptop..though maybe this is more of an "oh duh!" moment! I also figured out the solution to my problem with numbers and bullets in my lists. I wasn't aware that you could change the starting number and this solved the problem I encountered when I used bullets and they caused the numbered items on the page to change.

All aspects of web design are much more detailed than I had thought they would be (not just the technical aspects of DW, but all of the design areas such as page design, typography, site design and everything else). As I've read and completed the discussion questions I feel that I've learned a lot, but I'm sure I'll be referring back to the book to be sure I don't overlook any important details. Overall I feel like I'm making a good amount of progress, just starting to feel a bit stressed by how little time we have left in the semester.