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Web Project: How to Choose a Topic?

One of the most challenging aspects of the Advanced Web Design course is how to choose a topic for your website. This will take more than a few minutes, and you may find that you still have not decided on one by the next class. But if you try some of the things below, you may find that, in fact, you have already decided. Here are a few pointers that may help you with it.

  1. Your topic will require quite a bit of content development. If you have spent time in the past writing or researching a topic, it is a good place to start.  We will be spending some time learning how to write content that is appropriate for readers of the web.
    What topics do you spend a lot of time talking to your friends about? Are there things that you talk about regularly, that inspire you, make your angry, or things you think about when you have time to yourself?
    Is there something personal, that you know through personal experience, that you can talk easily about? Think about your upbringing, your current responsibilities, past relationships, jobs. What gives you enjoyment, what are you willing to spend money on, complain and moan about, wish you had more time for, wish you did not have to do so much.
  2. Every night, write down three possible topics, even if they are lame. And put them aside.
  3. Spend some time on the internet and search for things that pop into your head.  Everything that you could imagine exists on there. Those sites will lead to other sites. Remember to make notes, and bookmark ones that interest you based on their design, or subject matter.
  4. Take a notepad, and spend some time jotting down all the things that you do in a day, a week, a month, and year. You should be familiar with your topic, so it should be something that you think about often, and that you won’t be required to do very much research on.
  5. Go out for a walk alone, speak to friends about this challenge, visit a museum, library, bookstore, write a letter to a friend and drop it in the mail.
  6. Think about the things that define you as a person. Ask your friends and family what they think defines you as a person.

Remember, a good site is something that you have spent some time thinking about, and determining that you can easily write, design, and code. It will be quite a bit of work to get it right, so be sure that you give the topic a worthy amount of contemplation. It will pay off at the end of the course, and you will have something you can be proud of, to show to your friends, family, prospective employers.

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Advanced Web Strategies ADV4850: Work for Hybrid Class 1

The work for this week is to complete all pages for the major project.  Every section should have at least one completed page, with appropriate content written. Every page should be search-engine-optimized, and have a distinctive title.

All comments given to you by Prof. Harper for the last homework assignment should be reviewed, and changes should be made as directed. At this point, students should have determined how their project site is going to have dynamically loaded content. This is a requirement for the final project, and lacking a dynamic aspect will result in a failing grade.

Be prepared to present your project in class, and discuss your design approach, and the technologies used on the site.

Please email me your homework from last week (implementation of a lightbox slide show) as a link to a live page by Tuesday, Nov 4.

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Web Page Layout Assignment: ADV3650 Advanced Web Design

Using a source such as the New York Times article on blood-consuming organisms, combine photos, captions, and an article in an interesting layout. You should practice the skills acquired in class, styling text using CSS, and layout techniques using divs, floats, positioning, and CSS. This one-page assignment should showcase your graphic design talent, it should be engaging to look at, and entice the viewer to read.

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Different Options For Implementing Lightboxes

If you have a selection of images you want to present as a thumbnail gallery you have a number of options. I’m going to show two of them here. One is the solution that’s built into WordPress, another is based on a wonderful Javascript library called Script.aculo.us.

The pics are from when we went down to our dog’s breeder to choose her and bring her back to NYC. The breeder is Pacific Hounds in Bridgewater, TX (north of Fort Worth) they mostly have harriers and beagles though they also have some foxhounds (both American and English) as well as a considerable number of bloodhounds which they run under their other business name HHP Bloodhounds.

First the gallery feature built into WordPress 2.6…

Notice that when you click on the images you’re taken to another page that just has a larger version of the image on it, and then when you click on the larger image you get the full size image.

Now lets try a nicer option from HuddleTogether.com (which is based on Script.aculo.us, follow the Huddle Together link for full instructions and downloads).

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Homework for ADV3650 Advanced Web Design Monday Evening Session

The students of the Advanced Web Design Monday evening should be working on their web project for homework this week, building it out further, and filling out the site with appropriate content. At this point, every student should have a grasp of what their project is about, and should have found at least one affiliate program appropriate for the site they are building.

Be prepared at the next class, to present your site, and talk about it from the perspective of your design approach, how you built the site, and the technology challenges that you have encountered while building the site. Students will get into groups of 3-4, and present to that group. The students will write an assessment of each other’s projects, and these assessments will be handed in at the end of the class. This is an opportunity to see other student’s accomplishments. You should ask one another how to approach problems you may be having.

Midterms grades are being determined this week. For all the students who still have homework outstanding, please email me your homework by Friday, Oct 24.

The homework assignments to date, are as follows:

  1. Written concept for website with affiliate program, register a domain name, sign up for hosting service.
  2. 3 logo designs, 3 interface designs (look-and-feel) for site.
  3. Site map, 3 pages of written copy for site, with keywords pulled out into a list. Choose and finish one final design.
  4. Build and publish live 3 pages from site, including the main navigation. Site pages should be linked. Each page should have content filled in, and each page should have a different title.
  5. Exercise: create one page using CSS learned in class. Must choose 2 from:
    inline style, embedded style, linked style. Must choose 2 from child selector, sibling selector, class selector, contextual class selector, grouped rule. And 1 ID. Please email the homework as a link to a live page.

If you have any questions, please email me, and put “question” in the subject line.