Sam Crawshaw

A brief synopsis

This weeks task over the holiday has been to produce screen designs for our portfolio that we will be using to showcase our work throughout the two years of this course.

My website will utilise XHTML 1.0 [Strict] to describe the contents and structure of the text within the document. CSS 3 will be used to present/format the information contained within the XHTML file. This will be done by defining fonts, colours, hyperlinks, image placement and the layout of the page via an external CSS file. The finished page will then be able to validate to the W3C standards.

Here are a list of the project/website goals I have set myself:

Validate to CSS 3

I think it’s time to start using CSS3 as the new standard. People will umm and arr about it until Internet 2 is public domain. So I look at it this way: If I don’t validate to CSS3 – who will? I will use the valuator on the W3C Standard site for validation of CSS3.

My target audience for this assignment are of high caliber and I will need to be assertive with my designs, code and presentation if I am to fulfill the outcomes and requirements of the unit.

Who And Why

Chameleon is the web site I have chosen for my professional competitive analysis.

Chameleon Digital Media is a company based in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire. The company is made up of a team of designers, developers and marketers and have been in the profession since 1998. This should provide me with a good insight into what makes an effective and established web page.

Who And Why

For my competitive analysis of a fellow student’s online portfolio I have decided to stick closer to home and choose a local web designer, now working in a professional manner. I will justify my choice by breaking down each section of the site and providing a critical reflection on each of the choices that have been presented.

Well, with only five weeks until the end of the year and four to the deadline for two more assignments it seems I am ahead of schedule for once. I’m looking forward to the reverse design process as the work up to this point has been enjoyable.

This week’s blog entry is concentrating on opportunities for employment and putting ourselves in the shoes of the interviewer. These questions could be expected to be answered in an interview situation.

I have chosen six questions in my interviewing scenario. These questions will help me to develop my employment ability skills and confidence in the near future.

A Quick Insight

Marking this assignment has been one of the most demanding things I have done on this course to date. It’s not the marking as such but being able to decipher the critical thinking behind my decisions.

Evaluation

After a frantic week of trying to get the last threads of this assignment into something that resembles a website I have learnt a few valuable lessons along the way.

Falling Apart

After finally building the log in system I have stumbled across various other problems. I have been testing locally for the majority of the course and as a result when it has come time to move the database over most of the settings have needed tweaking.

Interaction

This week’s work has kind of taken a back burner which isn’t going to help in the long run. I’ve spent too much time pottering about on an adjacent assignment and I think I may have over stepped the time mark a little.

I haven’t done nearly as much work as I would have like to and following the book I was using concerning MySQL databases has left me even more confused than when I started.

Web Designer

About the Job

“We have an opportunity for a Web Designer to work within a fast paced in-house marketing team. Responsibilities include the maintenance and updating of current group websites. Identify and resolve issues relating to group online marketing.

MySQL

Tasks this week of creating a log in system has proved to be more difficult than I expected. I had originally planned to have finished learning to build a registration system by the end of this week but time has seemed to elude me this week. I will have to put in extra hours this week to make up for lost time.

PHP Statements

This weeks task have been to finish learning PHP and MySQL and start to put these methods into practice. I have created a basic page to hold these findings which I am happy to report are running smoothly.

I have created a few scripts that process information using PHP. These scripts include a basic interaction form and an eMail form in three instances; basic, with validation and with ‘sticky forms’.