Webdesign in the mountains

Hello Everyone

Here is an agenda for Tuesday's team meeting.

1. Introduction.

2. Genie's Presentation

3. Class discussion on "Holiday Highlights" - New ideas for websites

4. New websites found

5. Questions

6. Conclusion

Cheers from Sheena

After all this time (of being lazy really), I'm sad, yet equally happy to announce my blog has moved to a new permanent address.

It's had a makeover, and the good old wp procedure- so things are looking up for the old girl, and she's about to see a lot more action.

http://blog.pennyhaslop.com

On the twelfth day of Christmas, blackangelrose sent to me...

Get your own Twelve Days:

http://www.tipsntutorials.com is a great way to learn about some of the more specific snippets of code and covers HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP, MySQL and SEO.
If you know the basics, but would like to learn how to use your code more effectively and for actual useful things, it's really worth a look.

What is podcasting?






So what is all the fuss about podcasting?

Portable, flexible and global.

Is it of any interest to you as webdesigners of the future?

Provide emotional context and overall tone. Enables people with vision impairment and reading disabilities to access information and entertainmant.

What are the possibilities and limitations?

Possibilities:
Creative entrepreneurs and smart technologists may make it easy for podcasters to create hyperlinks to pre-defined cues in audio files, deliver on-the-fly closed captioning, automatic index creation or full-text transcripts.*

Limitations:
Podcasts lack rapid comprehension - the user does not know immediately whether the contents are useful.*
Lack of access to high speed connections, may have to pay, file sizes and file compatability.

*Source: The value of podcasting
http://blogs.bnet.com/church/?m=20050708

All sources accessed on 17 October 2006.

Toggl is an uber-fantastic way of keeping track of the time you spend on things! It's FREE and easy to sign up, and it's as simple as clicking a little toggl, and the clock starts ticking!

Don't forget to press stop when you get distracted or go for a break! ;-)

PHP Talk has a great list of Interview Questions for PHP Programmers which may be a good list to keep coming back to- it gets pretty hard pretty quickly!
Might also be a great resource for our Intro to Programming stuff or for those of us creating our own games and learning activities!

After doing some work with SOTT, using full source code of the Torque Game Engine. I have a few things that I can port back to this MOD version.

New Features:

• new Health Vile Particle Effect (they spin around the outside of the vile giving a nicer effect)

• new Team Scoreboard, now you can see who is on your team.

• Menu fixes

• Gatlin is no longer Energy and Ammo based - more powerful and useful
  

Unfortunately things I couldn't port over:

• Show same team player names above head at all times
  

• AI practise mode

• Advanced Arrays for scripts (if anyone has had a go at scripting would have noticed a lack of dynamic arrays)

To combat this some advanced AI scripting has been put in but, its not really great at the moment so its there but needs to be activated.

So to activate AI bots:
get the console by pressing: '~' tild key
type in as excatly shown without quotes "$AIPlayer::TeamCount = x;"
'x' is the number of Bots per side, I recommend no more then 2. If you want more try putting it on another computer to host and handle the bots.

At the moment only "Stronghold" and "Frozen Hell" have the mission capability for AI. (just copy the "paths" in the missions and move them to the correct places you want bots to spawn at)

Download at the normal location or here SOTT 0.1.9.9

Anyway back to TSE for me, Enjoy!

P.S. It should be able to Run on Linux and Mac Systems, and download the other binarys required from: GarageGames demos section

I think I was speaking with Kevin about designing for mobiles yesterday, and came across a link to an article about Nokia releasing the source code for their S60 OSS Browser posted on Dave Shea's mezzoblue.

This browser enables smartphone users to browse full Web pages on a smartphone screen with features such as:

* Preservation of the original page layout, presented just as the Web site designer intended;
* Easy navigation of Web pages through page miniatures, reducing the amount of scrolling;
* Pop-up blocking, enhanced start page, and simplified menus;
* Visual History, an easy-to-use back function, showing miniature views of previous pages;
* Text Search, which works as you type, taking you directly to the interesting part of the page;
* Dynamic HTML, supporting dynamic menus, rollovers, and scripted behavior such as AJAX applications;
* Extensive support of industry standards including W3C's HTML, XHTML 1.0, DOM, CSS and SVG-Tiny; other Web standards such as SSL and ECMAScript; and Netscape style plug-ins such as Flash Lite and audio.

This could mean a standards compliant base for all browsers made for mobile devices! Good news for all of us!

• Levels of HTML Knowledge Roger Johansson
  
5 for this.


• Levels of CSS Knowledge Emil Stenström
  
I'd say I'm a level 5 too.


• Levels of Javascript Knowledge Dean Edwards
  
Somewhere between 2 and 4. Need some improvement here....


• Levels of Accessibility Knowledge Joe Clark (whom I think wrote this to justify his own opinion, that accessibility would be NOTHING without him).
I wont merit a response.

Getting some revenge for selling a broken laptop...

http://www.amirtofangsazan.blogspot.com

Well done to and his excellent CSS Zen Garden spoof .

Well after talking about Sam and Max...
At this years E3 there was a video on the very two :-).

Check out the video and website at:
http://www.telltalegames.com/samandmax/

"Telltale Games is working with Sam & Max creator Steve Purcell to create an ongoing series of episodic Sam & Max games. We've partnered with GameTap to distribute the first season of games and share in the general revelry. (Dan Connors also got a nice t-shirt out of the deal!) Season 1 will debut this fall at GameTap and on Telltale's site with short, punchy episodes released in rapid succession, each telling a self-contained story, all the while feeding into a grander season-wide arc."

It seems that episodic computer games are the big thing at the moment! With "Bones" being one of the first by the same people (TellTale) . Also the FPS's "Sin" and "Half-Life episodes"

Shame its not Freelance Police but I'm still happy :-).

The website it self is very ncie, with a fun make your own comic :-). I was no good but others are much better:
http://www.telltalegames.com/samandmax/comics/5145108

Enjoy!

ma.gnolia.com is a bookmarking service, which allows you to save, access and share bookmarks anywhere in the world!

Think of it as a bloglines for bookmarks.

I have created a group called bmwebdesign.

I Urge that you guys sign up and try it out! Take a look at some Web Development bookmarks! All bookmarks are available through RSS feed also.

Well after much a frustrated weekend- I have finally got my mouseovers to work in Internet Explorer.

The loveliness of cabin and motel mouseovers can be viewed here.

This is how I solved the problem-
After roughly 2 months of putting it aside, I knew I would be able to locate the problem LOGICALLY!

I was using the property innerHTML and I couldn't figure out why my HTML was not being processed.
I thought about what the opposite property could be- outerHTML - which makes no sense... Then it struck me that outerHTML could represent be the tags themselves, so innerHTML must be the text (or whatever) inside an HTML tag.

To cut a long story short, my original copy contained the following code: (sorry blogger doesn't like code!)

paragraph (block)
span (inline)
h4 /h4 (block)
img (inline)
/span
/paragraph

WHAT A SEMANTIC NIGHTMARE! (Of course this isn't immediately obvious when code is being brought in from this variable, added to that one, not effecting this one.......)

The current working version is as follows-
paragraph (block)
strong (inline)
/strong
img (inline)
/paragraph

It Feels Great :)

I have also done a bit of http://blackgoldcabins.com.au/index.php>redesigning the landing page. What do you think?

Sam and max's second game(Sam & Max Freelance Police) was cancelled about 2 years ago now. They we're a funny couple, a rabbit and a dog fighting crime in a wacky fun world. It was one of the very popular adventure games of the time, along with Monkey Island and Indiana Jones (all LucasGames).

It seemed to of been cancelled to make way for even more Star Wars games. Also because they also stuffed up Monkey island 4 - lack of there attention to the games story. So they now only make what they know they can and only they can do, Star Wars... you'll notice on there website that they have a huge amount of games but only one isn't star wars... All others are in the classics section (most not even there), which because of these games they became noticeable(more then just games of their films...) in the beginning...

So what can you do? (Stop buying Star Wars games (there awful new films too) and...) See www.savesamandmax.com

They are no longer called "LucasGames" but are just "LucasArts".

"The Principles of Design" by Joshua David McClug-Genevese is an article discussing what he calls the basic tenets of web page design: principles & elements...

He points out that, "They represent the basic assumptions of the world that guide the design practice, and affect the arrangement of objects within a composition. By comparison, the elements of design are the components of design themselves, the objects to be arranged."

He goes on to say: "Let’s begin by focusing on the principles of design, the axioms of our profession. Specifically, we will be looking at the following principles":

* Balance
* Rhythm
* Proportion
* Dominance
* Unity


Balance, is described as falling into 2 categories symmetrical & asymmetrical...



Rhythm, is described as the repetition or alternation of elements & fall into 3 main groupings...



"Proportion, is the comparison of dimensions or distribution of forms. It is the relationship in scale between one element and another, or between a whole object and one of its parts."



"Dominance, relates to varying degrees of emphasis in design. It determines the visual weight of a composition, establishes space and perspective, and often resolves where the eye goes first when looking at a design. There are three stages of dominance, each relating to the weight of a particular object within a composition.

*

Dominant: The object given the most visual weight, the element of primary emphasis that advances to the foreground in the composition.
*

Sub-dominant: The element of secondary emphasis, the elements in the middle ground of the composition.
*

Subordinate: The object given the least visual weight, the element of tertiary emphasis that recedes to the background of the composition."




"Unity, the concept of unity describes the relationship between the individual parts and the whole of a composition. It investigates the aspects of a given design that are necessary to tie the composition together, to give it a sense of wholeness, or to break it apart and give it a sense of variety. Unity in design is a concept that stems from some of the Gestalt theories of visual perception and psychology, specifically those dealing with how the human brain organizes visual information into categories, or groups."



The "How C.R.A.P. is Your Site Design?" article by Mike Rundle considers what he calls the 4 golden rules of site design:

* Contrast

"Elements that aren’t the same should be very different so they stand out, making them “slightly different” confuses the user into seeing a relation that doesn’t exist. Strong contrast between page elements allows the user’s eye to flow from one to another down the page instead of creating a sea of similarity that’s boring and not communicative."

* Repetition

"Repeat styles down the page for a cohesive feel — if you style related elements the same way in one area, continue that trend for other areas for consistency."

* Alignment

"Everything on the page needs to be visually connected to something else, nothing should be out of place or distinct from all other design elements."

* Proximity

"Proximity creates related meaning: elements that are related should be grouped together, whereas separate design elements should have enough space in between to communicate they are different."

He goes on to make similar propositions to the above author about form & design. And as I have just (and am still) experiencing problems with my/this blog while writing this review I'm going to have to finish of with a few parting paragraphs (at least for the time being...)

In this assignment, I have been asked to compare some of the concepts discussed to the several sites that I've worked on during my course. I think that they fall somewhere within the scope of the different styles & concepts; & without being totally devoid of any type of planning...

While as a student a lot these sites are for the most part - experimental, I think they conform within the bounds of commonsense & align with a lot of the ideas extolled here & will evolve over time. I might just point out here, that the client sites that I have done or am doing are,( where the designer does not have a large say,) are subject to the desires & constraints of the client's vision for the site; & doesn't give any monumental importance to designer's notion of what or how the site should or shouldn't look...

Thanks to everyone who tried this map and suggested something other then the normal weapons, so here! :-)

Its a replacement on this level for the submachinegun so its key number '2'. The only other weapon that remains on this map is the starting pistol and later hyper-pistol.

The new blunderbuss gives this map a better feel, its still easter monday so not so late to add to it :-). Only thing it lacks is a good pop sound and egg crack sounds ;-). And maybe a fancy egg skin (texture) on the blunderbuss. But I think though things can be left up to others who may havea better idea than me.

Download here SOTT 0.1.8.1

Enjoy!

I decided to quickly make an Easter special map for SOTT with nice rolling hils and easter egss as far as the eye can see.

With easter eggs falling from the sky and many large ones embedded in the green hills its a treat. Along with a happy sun its a welcome sight to anyones day.

It can be downloaded here at the normal location SOTT 0.1.8.0 plus Easter Pack

Enjoy and I hope everyone has a nice easter!