Evaluation

Screen Based Communication 2 has been one of the most challenging briefs for me yet. Although, I must admit I think that at the end of pretty much every unit. I’m sure, that with time, the scars will heal and my next project will become the biggest challenge I’ve yet to face.
Initially, I flew through the design process like a duck in water, but as soon as I was hoisted out of my comfort zone and thrown into the dark, eerie world of web design I soon felt the panic picking at the flaws in my design, and my self worth.
I’ve never been the most technically minded of people, and it always takes me a little more time to grasp a new computer programme that it should. As with Photoshop, Illustrator and more recently Flash, I only began to grasp the concept of the programme when it gets too late. I’m sure that if I were to take more time on this programme, perhaps take the effort to try to build another website I’d feel a lot more comfortable, and perhaps even begin to enjoy the dreaded Dreamweaver.
I started with a limited knowledge of how to make a use my website, but I managed to labour on through. With the help from countless online tutorials and HTML for Dummies books from the library, I managed to create a website somewhat resembling the design I had in my mind and down on paper.
One of the main problems I encountered was when I attempted to use java script on my site. I was desperately trying to get the script to work for a j query photo gallery, which just didn’t want to work. When I finally got it working, using the term working in the loosest possible way, it would only work with one half of my page and not another and just creating more problems than it was solving. By playing around with Dreamweaver myself I discovered the behaviours tool, and found that the last week of my life that I had spent stressing over this java script had all been in vain. I think the biggest lesson I learnt from this exercise in futility was not to be scared of my computer. Just by messing around with the settings and the programme available to me I managed to work the problem out on my own, with only minimal input from Google.
Another issue that has been plaguing my dreams over the last month was my significant lack of a CSS page. As I only have one page to my website, and that my styling can be found within the html page, I felt that adding a separate CSS page would be unnecessary. If I were to create a website in the future that had more pages that I needed to style I will be able to add a CSS page and am aware of how to link it to the html page.
Considering that at the beginning of this project I was completely unaware of how websites work, how they were designed, where they were hosted and completely ignorant of anything else to do with the internet except perhaps how to get to Facebook, I feel that my progress though this unit has been drastic. Although my design and site may not be the most complex and adventurous on the world, I feel it displays my work well and is easy to navigate for anyone who might want to browse through my work. I have worked to the best of my abilities and I feel I have gained a lot of valuable knowledge on the subject of web design and have got another Adobe programme under my belt.

Take a look: http://www.visualcommunication.org/leah_barnes