When navigating around my website I want the thumbnails to change colour when you hover over and when they are selected. This is a feature on the terroir site, all of the thumbnails are grey and then turn to full colour when your mouse is over them. If I manage to code this I would like the thumbnails to have a red transparent overlay and then change to full colour when hovered over. I think that the red will look good with the colour scheme of my site and fit well with the transparent red ‘contact’ page.

http://www.terroir.com.au/

The Little Yellow Duck website was a large influence when designing my website. It was basic and extremely easy to navigate round. Also it gave me the idea for having selected pieces of my work on the home page. This will allow me to put my best pieces in plain site of the client and hopefully they will be impressed enough to look through the rest of my site. Another feature of the site that I liked was the entire box in the head bar highlighting when selected as oppose to just the text changing colour. I think it adds more colour to the site without it being too distracting. 

http://www.littleyellowduck.co.uk/

I looked at a lot of sites that I thought were simple and had basic navigation. What I didn’t like about the Kane site is the use of black, I thought it was too distracting and in your face. When I was navigating through the site I found it difficult to focus on the work and the text because my attention was constantly drawn away. One of the things from this site that I will take through to my own site is the very good use of a grid structure. It made viewing the work simple an easy because everything was were it should be.   

http://www.kane.com.au/

http://www.thevaccines.co.uk/gb/home/

This was one of the sources for the inspiration for my site. It has a very minimalistic colour palette and is very simple. I have followed The plain white background with one colour for the type and lines. Also I thought that the contents bar across the top was easy to use and didn’t distract you too much from the site. It was fixed through out the site, not moving from page to page. This is another feature that I used because I didn’t want to overcomplicate the navigation. I did however move away from the use of all upper case. In my site I have used all lower case, I think it is more subtle and makes the site a little friendlier.

Had a good bash at coding my website and I think I have most of it finished. There are a few hiccoughs though. This is not what my ‘contents’ page should look like… not on bit. I’m not able to make it transparent until the next lesson but I can’t get the ‘hello agin’ to be white on a red background. I’ve had to settle for this for the time being. It’s all falling together though!  

This is the design for the homepage of my website. I have kept it relatively simple with it being predominantly white and having a little bit of red to liven it up. The navigator bar will be consistent on all of the pages and will highlight yellow when selected/hovered over.

When the ‘work’ page is selected it will bring you to a page with thumbnails of the projects that I have done. All of the images will have a red fade overlay on them and will become full colour when you hover over it.

When inside a selected project you will be able to scroll through all of the pieces of work from left to right. Beneath will be the title, brief and a description of the project. To the right will be he programs that I have used for each project to show viewers my capabilities.

When you select the contact link this screen will rise from the bottom of the page and give you my details. I have tried to make it friendly and approachable. To get off this page you just select another link at the top.

Now all that’s left is to code the bugger! 

I want my website to be quite minimalistic so that the focus is on my work. I don’t like sites that have gadgets and gizmos zooming around the page when you’re trying to look at something. 

I like the layout of this site and how everything is easily visible. All of the pages are clearly displayed and navigating around the site was very simple. I think that the black and white colour palette makes it look a little too bland though. Although I want my site to be mainly white I will also add a touch of colour to liven it up a bit.

When using siteinspire.com to look at other sites, i realised the website itself looked pretty basic even though it had a lot going on. My website will have nowhere near as much information on it as this one but I still think it will be a good frame of reference when making my own. 

I don’t think that the morning session went the way it was supposed to, everyone’s computer crashed through the whole session so it was quite difficult. However, all was not lost. I spoke to Andy about the design of my website and I think I have a good idea of how it is going to look.

As well as that, we had another four solid hours of coding, it gets quite frustrating when nothing is working and your convinced that the computer has made the error. Then you find out that you’ve forgotten a space bar or a full stop or to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ to the computer or something else as ridiculous and seemingly unnecessary. I did get my head around it toward the end of the lesson and I left the lesson feeling a little bit better about coding than I had before the session.

I know that this isn’t remotely interesting but here it is in all it’s glory..

And finally.. My baby!

Just doing some of the activities that we were set in the last web lesson, I think I’ve forgotten everything we went over.. Whoops!

I never thought I would see the day but I have passed through my first web lesson and have actually got something to show for it. I know many people will see this as child’s play but it gave me a cracking head ache. Simple coding I know, but I was chuffed with myself…

And here’s the money shot!

This is my first web lesson in all of the two and a bit years that I have been here. I usually try to avoid computers at all costs… but if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em!

From these web lessons I’m hoping to just get the gist of setting up a website. Word on the street is that they’re a nightmare to make so I just want to understand the basics of coding and layouts etc.

I want my site to pretty much display my work to the outside world, I’m not interested in fancy buttons or flashy gizmos to confuse the user. Things like that usually annoy me when I’m using them.