Wednesday 11 June 2014

Evaluation

When i started this project i was a little worried as i hadn't been too acquainted with HTML and css and the HTML and css i did do was a couple of years ago was only a bit and i didn't like coding because i am a more visual person and i struggled with coding back then so i wasn't too keen on this project.

We were first given our brief which stated that we had to create a responsive website that was user friendly and had a similar visual style to the ibook and contains the same content as the wonders of nature ibook did.

To start with the project i began doing some visual research in terms of web design, seeing sites from simplistic and minimalistic well designed sites to bulking content infested sites. Doing the visual research allowed me to get an idea in my head about how i could incorporate design elements from my ibook design to a website, and how my website could visually look. I got a lot of inspiration from a ton of sites some responsive some not. Finding responsive sites also allowed me to picture how i could lay out my content on smaller platforms so seeing sites that already did that was very helpful to my idea development.

After getting a lot of web design research done i then went onto brainstorming elements i could include in my site and ways in which i could make the website user friendly and then i also brainstormed what was fundamental for a website and what I'd need to include like navigation and content etc. I also spent a lot of time on the project sketching wireframes and concepts for the design like the logo and banners etc. This helped me to develop my ideas further and and get a better of how my website could look visually and how it would be laid out.

I spent a lot of time figuring out how i would present my content and i came to the conclusion that i was going to have to cut some of my content as some it wasn't needed as much and it would take too much extra time to add content that was necessarily not needed. I ended up deciding i was going to combine a couple of sections together and that i would have one chapter introduction page and i would have two section pages. The chapter page would be like an introduction to that chapter and to the sections. The section pages go off on a tangent on a different topic relating to the chapter topic.

I feel like this way of laying out the website was a good way for me to understand how the content would be placed and how the user would be able to navigate through the site as well as having the content divided up and not all on one page.

After spending a lot of time developing ideas in my sketchbook and on illustrator i later began to develop my website with html and css and began designing the frame of the website. The website has 3 css style sheets, 1 being the homepage style sheet, 2 being the chapter pages and 3 being the section pages. I did this in order to make it easier to organise chapter pages and section pages.

Overall i'm very pleased with my site, i really like how i incorporated a very similar style from my ibook to the website as i wanted the site to look really similar so people could tell it was made by the same person and that both of these projects held the same style, visually. The page layout of the site i'm very proud of, i really like the way i laid out the site as well as all the content i added like videos, text content, graphics and images, sliders etc. So there i a wide range of content on my site that i' glad i was able to add, both new and from my ibook.

The issues i had throughout this project was getting used to the skeleton framework as i realised that i wasn't using it properly but once i got past that i was able to work on my site productively, getting a lot of work done and making my website responsive for all the platforms.

 For me the biggest achievement about this project was managing to get it done! I really didn't have a lot of experience with html and css and the html and css i did know back a couple of years ago i ended up forgetting so this project was almost like a new experience, however i've learnt so much about responsive web design and more html and css in general and its been great to be refreshed on html and css coding and it allowed me to produce something i'm very happy with.

In conclusion i did have a lot of struggles with this project but when i was able to overcome these problems, i felt so proud and it made me more knowledgable about overcoming issues in the future. This project believe it or not was probably my favourite just because i felt like a sense of  accomplishment when i was able to produce something i really thought i was going to struggle with and being able to achieve what i felt like was the unachievable felt amazing and it's definatley made me more confident with html and css, and like it a little more.

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