Final Project

I can't believe this semester is going to its end! It was my shortest semester ever! While being busy with weekly assignmets I didn't notice that New Year is coming! Wow...

Ok, I am happy to present my Digital Portfolio, which has all the links to my work done during the entire semester in ISP 523 class.

This is finally my Project! It is about a future trip to St.-Petersburg, Russia (and not to St.-Petersburg, Florida).

Interactive Web Form Page

This week's assignment was different than the previous ones. My webpage 9 does not have so many graphic elements as all other pages created before, and is designed to collect evaluation feedback for my final project.

Before creating my web usability form I wanted to decide for myself, how it can be useful and what potential result of getting the response can be. My final project is about students' trip to Russia, St.-Petersburg this simmer 2006. It will be organized by the Department of Geography and Planning as a whole class equivalent 6 credits. I am very happy and proud of our University to give such a wonderful opportunity to the students. The trip will have both educational and entertainment purposes. It is always interesting to visit new places and learn something new for yourself. My web form will serve the purposes of both finding the weak and strong parts of my web site as well as getting students opinion and recommendations about the trip. Of course, in such situations you can always contact your professor for all the necessary information. But I find this kind of form to be useful too. For example, in some cases professor is not available or it is just easier for a student to fill this form and give his opinion/reccomendations than contacting someone through email.

Perl module appeared difficult for me to study. Even though we did not have to write it from the beginning, I got some errors in submitting the form and had to fix the code.

Forms are becoming more and more popular on the Web now. I am sure you have seen those endless pop-up windows, asking you to answer this or that question. Some of these forms are really short, having just several questions. Others are more complicated. I think anyone in his life has had to fill these forms online. The examples are numerous. Do you remember yourself searching for a book in the library catalog online and submitting your order? Our Interlibrary loan uses these forms. You can find a book from the WorldCat catalog and ask for the lending libraries to send it to you. Another example is taxation. Instead of filling the various number of papers (which are complicated to fill by a person without good instructions), you can go online and complete the taxation forms. This will save your time a lot! One more example is our ITS services. Once I had a chance to request software to install on my computer. So, I filled the required form and submitted it to the service. It saved my time a lot and I got a response in less than one day! One can name a lot of examples of using the interactive web forms. Companies use them to get the valuable opinion of their customers. The answers can be used to improve the productivity of the companies according to people's needs.

Nowadays more people prefer to fill the forms online instead of filling endless paperwork. You can create your web form in such a way that it can even check for user's input spelling mistakes, etc. The implementations of the forms online are really useful and have a great future!

Fireworks, Auto Shapes and More Cool Things

This week we were continuing working with Macromedia Fireworks MX 2004. The program gives you a lot of freedom to express your ideas. The more I work with it the more I find it to be user friendly and more intuitive than Flash, for example.

The program allows you to create various types of shapes. There are several auto shapes in Fireworks. As it is mentioned in the Help, "Auto Shapes are intelligent vector object groups that adhere to specialized rules to simplify the creation and editing of common visual elements". And it is really true. For me it is difficult to draw anything from scratch with a mouse. That is why I found these auto shapes useful in creating vector objects. I tried all of the auto shape forms. After creating a vector object you can select it and small yellow points appear around the object. They give you a lot of control in changing the shape of your object. And if you are creative, you can get new type of objects rather than drawing them from scratch. I tried changing the star, oval and arrow objects and this is what my final results were:

For my web page 8 I used the techniques shown by our small Web Team 4 - creating buttons and pop-up menus and editing text properties. As I mentioned in my previous blog posting, I wanted to try creating buttons in Fireworks. We had some experience with buttons in Adobe Photoshop, Macromedia (roll-over effects) and Flash. Fireworks allows you to control and change your button's properties very easily. You can apply a lot of effects to them. If you want to create a button in Fireworks you do basically the same operations as in Flash. To create a button from scratch you choose Edit>Insert>New symbol and choose button type. Or you can simply convert any object into button by choosing Modify>Symbol>Convert to Symbol. It is the same as in Flash; and it is very easy to apply or change over, down and other frames in Fireworks. This all worked well for me. You can add different fill modes to your buttons so they have some shadow and even 3D effect (for example, by choosing gradient fill options and adding inner bevel effect to a button):

In my web page 8 I used several text effects. For the title I used the effect of transperent text - so you can see the image "through" the text itself. I typed the text and then copied it and made it bigger. Using the magic tool I selected all the letters, saved bitmap selection and pasted it on the other text (restored bitmap selection). The result was that I was able to see through the text and see the underlying layer (image).

I created a draft page for my final project. The idea was to create a banner or a logo. But I have to work on it more. I also placed three buttons - and one button has pop-up menu with three links. The links do not work yet and have to be updated.

I am excited that we are learning Fireworks program. I like all the programs we have learned in this class. I think they are all useful in designing web pages.

I noticed a very interesting fact. After learning Macromedia programs I began to pay more attention to the design of the web pages. My mind now works in a different way - I am not only enjoying the cool stuff on the web but also analysing it, thinking how the pages were created, for example, if they were created in Macromedia Flash I check this by right clicking to any interesting commercial or small animation I see.

Fireworks Page

Macromedia Fireworks is a new kind of program for me. I did not know anything about it until last week. I had no idea how many exciting features it has and how much accessibility it can add to your web pages. I was just at the beginning level last week and discovered many interesting things for myself in this program so far.

I am really excited that we are using this powerful tool for designing web pages. I really enjoy working and exploring the program. Although, you should not forget that this program is just a kind of graphics software (but what a powerful one!) and should be used with Dreamweaver. Actually, what you do is creating your page in Fireworks the way you like and then exporting it to Dreamweaver to fix the code and add additional features if necessary.

Fireworks program is similar to Adobe Photoshop in the way it allows you to create graphics. But Fireworks is more advanced software in the way it has more web design oriented tools. We all have a lot of experience with Macromedia Flash and creating animations. Fireworks allows you to export your animations as gif or Flash swf files. At the same time, you can create animated graphics in Fireworks itself too, for example, "moving" text or objects. So, as we see, Fireworks work with other applications. You can export the files created in Fireworks into Macromedia applications, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator and others.

Last week in class we were working individually and in small groups to learn Fireworks. I liked our last class. I was reading Professor Mackey's tutorials about creating files in Fireworks, and did quite a good job. I successfully finished all the tutorials except the validation step.

For my Webpage #7 I created a mock-up landing page for my digital portfolio. I used web slices and roll-overs for the links to my web pages created during the semester. I remember myself struggling with Flash, creating buttons and trying to find a way of showing images using the buttons (Webpage #6). The problem was that after pointing to the large picture, where the "over" frame of the button was, the image appeared (this happened because the "over" frame had two images - the button itself and the enlarged picture). Last week I could not find any solution to my problem. And I was really suprised when I discovered that Fireworks allows you to create a roll-over effect that replaces your image with another one in a different location on the same page when you point over the mouse. That what I wanted to create in Flash and finally found a good answer to my question in Fireworks. I took the same idea for my digital portfolio.

While working on this page I discovered a lot of new tools in Fireworks. I found the toolbar on the left to be quite similar to the one in Photoshop. I tried to draw different vector objects and apply special effects to them. I discovered that it is very easy to draw any kind of objects starting from simple arrows to very complicated spirals. And the variety of techniques to improve you drawing is really great! For example, you can apply different styles for the borders by choosing Air Brush/Textured and then choosing any kind of texture you like. This technique will help you to get marvellous table frames. I also worked with the text, and found a lot of interesting effects which you can apply to your text. The graphics in Fireworks can be interactive. You add slices and hotspots to your objects and you get rollover functions. I think, this program is less complicated than the other Macromedia programs we have worked with. And it is definitely less complicated than Adobe Photoshop.

My next step in learning this program will be learning how to create button symbols and drop-down menus. I also want to try creating animation in Fireworks. I found Fireworks to be very intuitive to work with. Although I do not think it is more visually-oriented than other programs we have learned. That is why I was reading the tutorial that comes with Fireworks installation "Using Fireworks MX" to get some support. I found the tutorial to be very informative. I will be reading this tutorial to get some help while working in Fireworks. I would recommend this tutorial to anyone who has just started learning Fireworks. Besides, do you know that Macromedia site has Fireworks support Forums? One of them is Fireworks General Discussion Forum . There you can find the answers to different types of questions asked by the users or you can post your own question to get some support information.

Why Blogging? Deja-vu...or Flash Techniques

Blogging is popular... Do you know that there is an official blog search? Try Google Blog search, where you can search for your favourite blog topics. Try typing "Flash tutorials" and you will be amazed by the number of people who share their thoughts and opinion about Flash.

This week we were writing our comments to other students in class. It was interesting to see what other students think about Flash, I discovered that it was not only me who spent hours and hours to figure out what my mistakes are and how to create a good web page. All the blogs and web pages created by students look really great. I wrote a response to Lawrence's blog where he provided some links to Flash tutorials.

For my Web Page #6 I wanted to use buttons and menu techniques. I also wanted to create something that I can show later to my family and friends as an example of my work created in Information Science Class. As s result I decided to create a small photo album.

I discovered that in Flash you can use several scenes with different frames in them. This is something like several windows, you navigate to them by clicking their names in a scene panel. Buttons will be helpful there to navigate from one scene to another. The main page has pull-down menu, with links to 2 other pages, Albany and Boston pictures. I wanted to create three scences, but I failed at this part. It seems to me that pull-down menu is a movie clip and when creating a link to another scene from this menu it does not see it. That is why I created two different web pages, each for SUNY and Boston. The album is small with only six pictures. It is only for demonstration results. I applied some motion tweening to the main page. After posting everything and looking at the final result I discovered that my pictures (or buttons in Flash) do not work as they are supposed to work. When you point you mouse to any picture a bigger preview appears on the right. But... when you just point your mouse to this empty area on the right some photo comes up. I did not want to get this result. This is the negative moment in creating a button, I think. I could not find any solution to this problem. The "over" frame has this bigger image and it is shown every time you point your mouse to it.

My conclusion here, Flash is a program which can surprise you at the moments when you do not expect any problems to appear. You have to have a good understanding of what you are trying to do and what result you expect.

Flash Page

Web has a lot of amazing things. When you go online, you can see plenty of pop-up windows, banners and animations. I was interested in the question of the origin of all these things. How are they created? Do you have to be a proficient artist or an experienced programmer to be able to draw all this fancy stuff? Some of the animations are really nice.

I started learning about Flash MX2004 one month ago. Our team group is having a presentation about Flash this week. So, I have been reading the Macromedia tutorials. I tried to complete some of the lessons but I found them to be a little bit complicated; and it took me much time to study them. I found that learning the Flash's effects is much more difficult than learning Photoshop, for example. It took me hours to follow all the steps in the tutorials. But after getting the correct result I was excited. I could not believe that I created these animations by myself. I actually enjoy using Flash. The tools in the toolbar are similar to those of the Photoshop. Flash gives you an opportunity to create anything from scratch by drawing, cutting, pasting, transforming, scaling and using all other creative tools. I like using Color Mixer. It is a special design panel for creating solid, radial, linear and bitmap fillings of the shapes. And then you can use Fill transform Tool to change the direction of your filling. You can create really interesting fillings by using these tools. You can also import images in the Flash Library and use them on your Stage.

In class we were introduced to some general techniques such as shape and motion tweenings. You can also add timeline effects to an object by right clicking on it and choosing Effects (Blur, Drop shadow, Expand and Explode) or Transform/Transition. I used Transform and Explode effects for creating my Flash animation for Web Page 5 assignment. The idea was to create a working animation which will be used as a banner for my Digital Portfolio. I tried to use the basic and more advanced effects in Flash. I drew some simple objects and added motion tweening to them. Then I placed text with motion and shape tweenings. You can edit your text almost the same as in Word by using text properties and choosing text font, size, et cetera. And it is really great.

I found Flash to be a powerful program. If you know how to use it, you have a wonderful chance to create an interesting animation and make your site look better. Flash is a great tool to bring easy interaction to your sites. And I like the fact that Flash creates vector based images and video. The resolution of them can be really high. And the size of your animation is not so big. My small banner for Digital Portfolio is only 35 Kb.

Census Data

For this assignment I decided to create a table with Census information from the American Community Survey website. I was very surprised by the fact that such kind of Survey was done every 10 years before. Now American Community Survey will improve the situation, providing economic, social, demographic, and housing information to the communities every year, instead of once in 10 years.

From the site I learned much interesting information about collecting the data for the Census. Data can be collected by mail (self-enumeration through mail-out/mail-back), telephone (computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing (CATI) and by personal visits (Computer Assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI).

Knowledge of the results of the ACS can help to solve different problems and needs of the population. I study at the Department of Geography and Planning. Though I am a geography major, I am also interested in planning courses. And I know that such kind of information from the Census is very important for planners. Planners can estimate demographic, economic, social and housing characteristics. If you know, for example, which areas are extremely rural and which are not so populated, you can better plan medical facilities, educational institutions and so on. Accurate knowledge of these characteristics helps planners making decisions on development that is suitable for future residents. It helps in economic development, for business decision making. It can be used by government as well - knowledge of standard level of leaving can help to plan the budget properly (pensions, insurance and welfare payments, cash benefits). These problems are really difficult to solve without results of ACS (53 population variables, and 42 housing variables).

ACS provides local communities with more up-to-date and accurate data to help them better plan to address the needs of their citizens.

I found a lot of useful information on the ACS website. As an example I created a table which shows some general facts for three counties.

I did not like the navigation on this site. After reading Page Design tutorial from the Yale Web Style Guide I can say that this web site was not created according all the requirements to make it easy to explore and read. It took me some time to find the necessary information. I think that this site lacks visual hierarchy and logic. That is the main problem of many modern sites. They have good information inside and very complicated navigation. So, you should always think about your readers while creating a good web site.