Banner posting continues to be a challenge. I find the creative work fun, and I am getting pretty comfortable with using Fireworks. What is difficult is figuring out how to assemble the page and tiling background so that it tranfers correctly from Dreamweaver to the web. I know that there is one step I am missing and I am detemined to get this right. I have spent the majority of my time on the FTP side when I would have much rather spent more time working on the creative side….I intend to solve this problem tonight!!! I do like the ability to manage the background that Fireworks has. I believe that this will be useful when I begin my final site work. I have made some tiling backgrounds in previous html design work, Fireworks/Dreamweaver just make the process quicker (as soon as I figure out what I am doing wrong with my extened backgrounds!)
One thing I have noticed is how quickly multiple files can build up as I have worked on variations of the banner designs. File management is probably my weakest point and I believe that I will find my problem in this area. I should have set up a separate working file and then transfered my final comps to the banner file to clean up. I will work on that this week to weed out some of the dead files.
On to the Image work…Dreamweaver makes this extremely easy to handle. I have done this before with code and it is tedious to get the hotspots working correctly…Dreamweaver makes the process simple.
The link to Getty and having an account there could prove useful down the road when I cannot find any of my own photo work to use in a website.
Link to Getty:
http://www.gettyimages.com
I have really developed an appreciation for the ease with which Dreamweaver sets up CSS style sheets. I have tried multiple times to teach myself how to do this and understand the code, but I find that I keep reverting to basic html code and tags when I should be using CSS characters.
Links to some of the reading and review sites:
This is an example of a really bad site that Vincent Flanders has tagged. He is right!
http://www.vincentflanders.com/videos/gnn.html
http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/videos.html
Looking at the different sites really does make one think about what not to do. I will probably use this link a lot when I get deeper into the design and construction of my own work. Just to make sure I don’t end up on his list!!!!
I’ll end here since I want to take another stab at getting the banners working correctly.
Back again. Time to talk about my final project.
The reason I am taking this course is to be able to create a web presence for our family business. Primarily a real estate sales endeavor, there are several other options I can offer from my own professional background in large construction project development. I plan to emphasize my partners real estate sales expertise as the primary website development project. My secondary goal (this may be in the future) is to develop my own expetise in capitol project development. Right now that is secondary to the real estate sales site, this is the one that will have the most immediate impact on our business earning potential. More to follow as I work through the process of developing the full plan for the site.
Time to sign off for today.
P
your idea sounds fine – do you have access to content, logo, photos, etc? be sure you are realistically planning for the time you have in the class. go ahead and work on the project profiler/ morgue file.
Jenn
Just to update you on the access to materials.
We are members of the Remax network (paid) so the logo is available for the website as long as it includes the copyright/trademark.
Photo’s are generated by me, I am the designated property and area photographer.
Other content will be generated by me as needed, I am trying to keep the word content to a minimum unless neccessary. I can write the bio sheet (about me), so I am not worried about that. I’ll be able to show you more next week, at least the page outlines and what I want to include on each one. I am hoping to keep this generic with only a few featured properties. The rest of the listings can be accomplished through links to the MLS website.
More next week.
Thanks
Peter