Week 3 Evaluating a Web Site

There are multiple criteria for evaluating web resources that must take into account when creating and also viewing a web site. They are the following:

(1) Purpose- what is the purpose of this site or page? What does the URL say about the producer of the web site and its purpose? (2) Objectivity - does the content reflect a bias? (3) Currency- Is the information on the page u-to date? Can you tell when the page was last updated? Are there dead links within the current website? (4) Responbility- are the authors up-front about their purpose and content? Is there anyway to contact the authors, is there information located on the website page? (5) Accessibility- Are you able to get into the website easily, does the site load quickly and able to move around the site easily? (6)Authority- What are the authors credentials? These credentials be made up on the website, false information?

All inforamtion contained on a website needs to be evaluated by readers for authority, appropriateness, and other personal criteria for value. If you locate inforamtion that is just "too good to be true", than it probably is. Never use inforamtion taken off of the World Wide Web that you can not verify. The internet is a great hoax place for people.

The two websites that I chose to evaluate were:

• Rochester Electronics - http://www.rocelec.com/
• Source ESB - http://www.sourceesb.com/

Rochester Electroncs is an aweful sight if they are looking to get business from people within the web. However in my situation I have a direct contact for this company so the only navigating I do through the website is to see if they have a product, stock, pricing, etc. If I was an individual looking to purchase somethign from this company I would have a secon opinion in my purchase decision. For one the navigation bar goes horizontal and vertical, which per the book is a NO NO! When navigating through the website they do show great color repetition to keep the eye at a soft tone, but the font size and style is just too much for a reader of the website. They did not concentrate on the individuals that would be viewing the website! At the top they give you the option to sign into their website, but not the offer to new clients that would be interesting in possible becoming a frequent returner of their website. It is not very user friendly for people who do not use the world wide web for company purpose vs. individual purpose. An example is my father, he works for a contract manufacturere and if he was on this website looking for a part he would be lost on what to do and how to navigate through the websire because he only uses the internet during work hours and doesnt get much "practice". Our engineers at my work are always complaing about certain sites, since we have moves away from magazine and catalogs to everything being on the internet it is much more difficult for them, time freindly, YES!

Source ESB - In my opinion is a really great site for new and returning customers. They use the same color reptition, on colors that GRAB your eyes and keep your eyes guiding through the entire site. Thye are giving you many options on how to search for a part or manufacture. They give you option of manually typing the number in, looking it up alphabetically, or a quick (reference) look up. This gives the viewer many options as to which THEY feel comforatable navigating around the site on how they prefer; friendly to all ages. In order to be able to view the site you must create a "free" account and then this time you have your own histry, views, etc. To me

The reason that I picked these two websites is becuase these are two of the websites that I use on a daily basis at my job, and am viewing many times throughout the day. I will be much more critical now when viewing websites, especially most of my daily work is being on Outlook and the Internet! it is nice to now just look at many different sites and see what they can do it iprove the site, or if it is a "perfect" webpage. I have taken a few notes already to get my prepared when creating my own webpage.

Week 3 Blog - Reflecting On the Readings

The inforamtion that is covered this week is a quite bit to take all in at once when reading, but when going through and working on the website and choosing which ones are good/bad it is very helpful information. One of the big starting points is the navigation design and style in which you choose, this is where you want to begin your creative thinking process. You do NOT want to have a hortizontal scroll bar for any reader of your website. Scrolling is quite ignoring when reading a website and then having a hortizontal one is even harder for the reader to even navigate where they are on the page when it is being moved around just to read the information within the web site. You dont often see this, but now when I do I know that it isnt me and they are in the wrong doing!

There is always more then "one way" to create and visualize something within a screen. You need to take the time to explore your options and what will look right for the reader and not yourself! When reading the assigned material and then looking at websites to reference the material too I noticed myself gotting notes down to reference from when I am creating my own work. You can learn alot from other designers. You can find websties that display works from the same field that you might be interested in, and then reinvent it into your own personal way.
However the "bad design" is much easier to pick out then the "good designs" but we all have our own personal opinions from what might be good and bad to our own eye/preference. To qualify as a good working website it shoudl be comparable to the quality of your work, your products, and/or your philosophy. Doing this incorrectly can alter the way people view your website. Their initial impression of your or your business, and many people need help in making that first imprtession a good.bold one.

By reading this material and searchign the web all day long at work I have really noticed myself looking at their webpages in much more detail then I would have normally before this class. I look at multiple manufacture distributors websites multiple times during the day and even do searchign within the internet to find a specific distributors website. I look to see if it is easy to navigate through when only going in and looking for the certain part numbers I am looking to purchase. I have noticed some really good guiding ones and then others that i am just roaming around the website "trying" to find what I am actually looking for. I even submitted a comment to one of the distributors because their website was NOT informative on what they offer/sell and once I was able to find what I was looking for they were out of stock so I was back to the beginning, after spending serval mintues.

I am really enjoying learning about websites and how to creat them, the HMTL Lab was very excitign to do and see that I am able to create something like what we had to create!

Week #2 Blog

Digital Images are made up of tiny squares that are called pixels, and each pixel in the image has a specific location, size, and a very specific color value. Images that are viewed on a computer monitor such as ones that are designed for email and the web should be in a resolution of 72ppi. You are able to re-size your image and change the resolution at the same time. When uploading pictures onto a web page you need to keep in mind the color is in contrast. The text should always have a good contrast between the type of color and the background color. The pictures need to match and flow with the web page color contrast; which you can change when uploading the picture. This feature I have never known existed. I have PictureProject and I have a tool bar that I downloaded when playing around with this program that I am able to change the color contrast of the pictures and resize the pictures.
When you choose to index an image, you can choose the color palette. However, you do not have to have all the 256 colors in the palette. Limiting the colors makes the file size much smaller, which is better for displaying on the web (smaller files appear on the page faster). More pictures then one would think get posted on the web, even ones that you might not be aware of. One might not have a web page created but have at one point in our lives, uploaded, copied, or created a picture onto your personal computer and is now floating somewhere on the web. The most popular is the digital cameras, which capture images at 72" pixels per inch and is multiplied by the number of pixels present on the image sensor.
You want to make sure that you are using browser-safe colors for you page. These colors can be represented by RGB values, percentages of each color, or hexadecimal code. This reminds me of microsoft powerpoint 2007 and your options that you are given in this program to grab the readers attention with the design options to have to grab the readers attention.

An interesting thing I read about in relation to my discussion above is; that I never really understood what it was is the bit depth.A bit is the smallest unit of inforamtion that a computer understands. A bit is one electronic pulse. That pulse can do two things-- it can be an on signal or an off signal. Now when I am searching for a computer I am able to understand what "type" of bit size I would like my monitor to be.

Scanned images allow you to choose your resolution. This pixel size is determined by the resolution of the image and is actually inversely proportional to resolution. A term that is used when talking about scanners is bit depth, also called color depth. This refers to the number of colors that the scanner is capable of reproducing. Each pixel requires 24 bits to create standard true color and virtually all scanners on the market support this. Scanners normally automatically resample a too-large image to be smaller so it will then fit into the program's window size. What you then see if the smaller copy on the screen in different pixels. If scanning for the web, you need to keep in mind that a few viewers still use 800 x 600 pixels, so always make sure you are correctly resizing your pictures before placing on a web page browser.

Interestingly enough I recently just tried using my scanner for the first time, to scan older pictures for me to print at home. I placed the picture in the scanner and it automatically scanned my picture and put it onto my computer for me to edit, however the picture was extremely tiny compared to the size (white space) it should have been. I looked at this for several hours and could not figure out how to make the picture appear smaller so I could print. So I gave up. I went back this evening after reading over the assigned material and figure out to make the pictures appear larger on the screen and have the picture look/print the way I want it to. This class, even though it is only week 2 I think is the most interesting and I hope that it gets way more indepth because I am learning so much about the computer that I never knew about or had the oportunity to learn as well!

Graphic Design

Graphic design is the art or profession of visual communication that combines images,words, and ideas to convey information to an audience. A graphic designer is then responsible for arranging and using those elements on different types of media; such as a poster or website. An interesting opinion also holds for most graphic design workers; because they are being valued by their employers and among ourselves!!!

From reading about graphic design I am able to pick the good from the bad; flyers, advertisements, logos, etc. I have learnedso much already within this course on how to create anything that someone views more acceptable to ones thoughts and ideas. With the knowledge I have already gained and intend to gain it will be extremely helpful to me once I graduate in December from Albright and move into a new career path. I will now be able to post a stronger resume, create blogs on employers web sites, look for job postings on the web; all by using the CRAP principals.

I now analyze everything that grabs my eyes attention. I never put together where graphic design was presented.
In logos, book designs, billboards, product packaging, and greeting cards. Newspapers even present their articles with some sort of graphic design no matter how simple it may be, it’s there to help catch the eye and increase the value of what you are looking at or reading.

Print vs. web can be compared in major topic areas such as: media, audience, layout, color, technology, and careers. When reading and comparing the two I believe that print is a better option to go. However with the web you are able to access whatever you need wherever you are at, any given point of the day. As a graphic designer it would be interesting because your work is always accessable to anyone. With print the differnce is that there is more money to be made because of the copies you provide to sell vs. not the number of hits your website would get. Print is more developed, by creating books for over 500 years; where as the web has only been established for a number of years and still continuing to improve.

First Blog

Hello!