Moved

Please go to Shingle.uni.cc now. I mentioned that this domain is mine and it used to just point to here (shingle.wordpress.com), but I have just set up WP on Ahplace, which is a free and nice web hosting service. (It was quite easy, as WP has advertised, so I encourage you to try it too.) So my domain now goes to the newly set up blog, and that looks quite cool, so I hope you enjoy it too. As you might have guessed, I will not be writing on this blog, so update your bookmarks, if you still want to read on.

Del.icio.us bookmarks

If you had looked at the sidebar of this blog, you might have noticed my “Recent Bookmarks”. It is a list of recent bookmarks I have added to my list on Del.icio.us. Why I’m mentioning it here is that there are some good stuff for your web design needs. The most recent one, for example, Background Image Maker, is responsible for two of the images on my personal portal. Saved me a lot of time because I could have wasted the whole night with The GIMP and produce nothing. (Not meant to say The GIMP is bad. It’s good for people who know how to use it.)

There are some tags that are most related to web design. I got most of them directly or indirectly from Digg. Something like web design, HTML, CSS, photos if you’re looking for stock photos, even PHP which I know nothing about. Some tags are really quite chaotic, but you should still find something useful.

Deadline met

One big step in the course work is to make the portal(s). The teacher set the deadline for us to make the pages to be Sept 1. By now of course I’ve made my pages. I don’t know how I can show it on the blog, and I don’t really want to. But I can say that I am reasonably satisfied. The only thing that bugs me is the contrast between the grey text and the lighter grey background is not big enough.

I haven’t tested the pages thoroughly in IE, only had a brief look. My main browser for coding is Flock for Mac (with the Developer’s Toolbar extension installed). Of course I care about the 3% of Safari users (that’s including me) so I tested it in Safari too. So I have covered the 2nd and 3rd used browsers in the world but not the 1st. It might have big troubles in IE but I don’t know yet.

One thing I thought funny was I can’t judge how beautiful/usable my pages are. I thought that with my years of experience on the internet browsing good and bad sites, I can identify if a page is good or not. But no, my pages went through a few big and small design changes, but I can’t say if those changes are for the better. I guess it’s just hard to judge one’s own work impartially.

A domain for this blog

There’s a domain that I’ve got for this blog. It’s free of course, I don’t pay for anything. It just points here, in case you don’t like that WordPress subdomain.

The domain: http://shingle.uni.cc

Yes this is a domain, registered under my name. If you want one, you can go to Uni.cc to register one for free.

Working late

I worked till 2 am last night. It was not the first time, I’ve done that once before. It’s unhealthy, I know, but I felt I was really productive in those times. I could concentrate on the work, and really produce something useful. I could tweak bits of CSS, change HTML codes, working is just easier with concentration.

In the afternoon, I’m usually on Neopets, reading news, or doing other things, but never anything related to work. I think I have to change my habits.

What I was most happy about was I positioned the web page content in the center! The code is a bit of trick. I found that with a little googling. Yesterday I tried to make some transparency too. The code is really complicated. Opacity is a standard in CSS3, but now only Safari, Opera, Firefox and those very good browsers support it. Older versions of Firefox requires another line of code. Everyone’s favourite browser, Internet Explorer, doesn’t support these, needless to say. So there is another trick to get around this. CSS is really interesting.

I’ve added some pretty menu tabs to my web pages too. Those are found in Exploding Boy. They are really pretty … To match the tabs, I’ve changed my PP’s color to pink too. Not a lot of pink, it’s just grey background. Some titles will be pink, that’s all.

Next I’ll make some gradients to be used for the background. Don’t know if the teacher will like it if I make a “Web 2.0″ style web site. But gradients are pretty.

Analysis of the topic

Isn’t it what you’ve been waiting for? My take on the course work topic. In our school we have to choose Module D. The following is the topic.

Module D (Multimedia Production and Web Authoring): Personal Portals

Personal portals are gaining increasing attention from Internet content providers and surfers. A user can customize a web page hosted by a personal portal publisher (e.g. Xanga.com) to include information and materials according to his/her own needs or taste. The web page may then act as the entry point for the user to access various resources on the Internet.

Candidates are required to

(1) Discuss what features/technology should be provided by a personal portal publisher to facilitate user customization and how these features/technology should be evaluated. Study and compare the features/technology offered by two existing personal portal publishers.

(2) Suppose that your school would like to set up a personal portal for each student. Propose the features/technology that should be provided for the students to design their own student personal portal. The proposed elements should contain multimedia materials and interactive features.

With a preset profile of two or more students, design a personal portal for each student which includes the proposed features/technology and illustrate the layout of the design in the form of web pages.

Suggested time allocations for Part (1) and Part (2) are 30% and 70% respectively.

Interesting, eh? Now getting down to business. Serious questions:

1. What is a “personal portal”?
2. Xanga? Am I making a Xanga clone?
3. Features/technology? Discuss? Study and compare? Hm…
4. It’s the school wanting to give students these “personal portals” (PP from here on). How to stop silly students posting silly things?
5. “Design their own student PP”! The internet is going to be ugly.
6. Multimedia! OMG. Flash? *faint*
7. Interactive! Oh. Do we have the skills?
8. “Design a PP for each student.” Oh dear, we’re making two PPs or what?
9. “Illustrate”! What a key word this is.
10. “Web pages”. That means more than one pages. Doh.

Ah, what a nice little list. We have questions, we obviously need answers. There are no model answers, but since you’re here, don’t you just prefer my answers?

1. As the only example of PP in the topic is Xanga, what Xanga is is a PP. What’s Xanga? A blog provider. Conclusion: PP is blog. I have another question now: who on earth invented this term “personal portal”? Who doesn’t know the word “blog” nowadays? Why do we need this new term?
2. Xanga clone? Possibly. It can be used as a model, at least. You make something like a Xanga, you’re not too far off.
3. This is a big, big question. Probably I shouldn’t have put it all in one question. Features, these are what the users can see and use. Like blog, comments, RSS feeds, photo slideshow, videos. Technology, that’s what is behind the features. Like RSS is the technology behind your magically updating feeds. Like you have PHP and a database (or more, I don’t know) behind your blogs and comments. Discuss. According to my dear Oxford dictionary, it can mean talk or write. I wonder what it means here. Anyway, study and compare. You do have to write it down. I think I will write some paragraphs and use tables to sum up.
4. Big problem. The education is not doing much to stop these silly and often stupid students. What do we do? We can use word filters, like how people catch spam? Good suggestion, but how can I put it in our HTML based web pages? It’s unlikely that I will ever learn the technology necessary for this. How about employ some tech teachers to do this for all the student PPs? That’s costly. That’s not tech enough. So un-CIT.
5. Duh, this is for the eyes of numerous fellow students and some other unlucky guys that happens to stumble upon PPs of those students that have no design talents. No way we can save these people I guess. Rest in peace.
6. *Faint again* What things do we have for multimedia other than Flash? Multimedia, that’s pictures, music, videos, and everyone’s favourite, Flash animations. Are we going to make a page showing pictures? Link to illegal music downloads? Copy codes from YouTube? Make your very own Flash animation? I have no idea how to get pass this one.
7. Interactive, makes me think of PHP. It’s impossible for me to learn PHP, right? Too tough! We’re not expected to know PHP, are we? So what else can we do? Currently I have put a shoutbox from a service called ShoutMix. It’s pretty good, but I’m not sure if there are rules that says you can’t use anyone else’s services. It’s exam after all. All work should be my own.
8. That sentence means making two or more PPs to me, but our teacher seems to think not. He said a lot of things about it, but I just don’t understand what he means. It’s a mystery. For now I’m making one PP. It’s not like I have time for another PP now.
9. “Illustrate”. The teacher said a lot of things about this as well. I understand his point on this. We’re not really making PPs. We’re not really making software to let students make their own PPs. We’re just illustrating our designs. We can pretend. We can fake. My only problem is I think I’ll abuse this. I’ll make forms that is going nowhere. Then if the teacher tests out the web pages, he will know. Don’t know if this is permitted.
10. You’re not just making one page. Well, I think it’s impossible to make just one page.

Very well. Questions answered. Bear in mind these are all my opinions. You have your own answers? Feel free to share in the comments.

My CIT course work journal

This new blog of mine is going to be about my hard work on the CIT course work, as part of my CE exam. Look forward to analysis of the course work topic, working step by step, and outlines of the final report that accounts for most of the 20% of marks of this course work.

Long sentences aside, please enjoy my newest blog. I’m a poor student who has found herself in a serious exam project. I don’t write very well but I hope I can convey my thoughts.