Good Mypsace Coding

I feel that this is a good myspace because he hasn't just added code to change the colours of things in the page but they have completely changed the layout. This form of coding for myspace is called "Div Overlays". This completely gets rid of the gineric myspace layout that looks horrible. This kind of code isnt used much with myspace so it is nice to see somthing different and makes it stand out from the crowd.

I think the design behind this myspace is also good because the use of colours is well put together. I really like the image at the top of the page, it has been edited to look like it is stuck to the page. The only thing i would have changed on this myspace page is the colour of the box at the bottom of page. At the moment they are orange and i would have changed these to a colour that suits the image and background more, maybe like a black blue to go with the image. I don't know what colour for this with out playing with it and experimenting to find the correct colour.

Similar Design

Mark Weihberg Photography
http://www.pixelriot.pl/mwp






















I think this website has a similar feel to it as mine. I think this is because the use or orange warm colours and the use or squares. The orange colours and squares are similar to my logo and text and the squares are also alike my background pattern on my header.

I think this website does not portray their info / images as well as my website. They have used white squares as thumbnails, which you then rollover to show the thumbnail image at the top of the page. Where as all my thumbnail images are shown in the first place in the place i want them on the page. I feel this is beneficial because on their site people will have to rollover all the white square to just see the thumbnail image which is time consuming and will put a lot of people off. Also if returning viewers want to see a certain image they will have to remember roughly where the image was of go though all of them again.

The thumbnail images are also cropped images of the real thing so when you click on it you see the whole image. This means sometimes the real image is not as you expected.





















I think the use of flash on this website makes it more interactive than my website. Once you click on the image the sections of the page slide out and then the image fades in. This gives a really nice effect and makes the page look professional. Once you are on the full image page you can also roll over below the image and a box drops down with the rest of the thumbnails from the same section as the image you are on. This is nice but the drop down bit doesn't tell you that if you roll here the thumbnails will appear it just relies on the user rolling over the box.

This idea of flash pages fading in and out and sections just shrinking out is an idea i would have liked to use but i felt that due to time restraints it would be quicker and easier to produce a html page. Another reason a choose html over flash is just due it being more search engine friendly and being able to refine the site more with the coding and keywords.

MySpace Research

www.myspace.com/lalygraphics

This myspace is an online portfolio for a graphic designer. This is only part on their of their porfolio as she also has a website portfolio. I found this myspace relevant to my work as both mine and this myspace will be an online portfolio for graphics work.

In this myspace she has kept the original myspace template but changed the colour sceem and added background images to make the page lok alot more appealing. I really like the simple look and colour sceem on this page. She has kept the colour seem of the page to two colours green and white.

















To show of her work she has taken full advantage f the photo gallary in myspace. She has a full page of illustrations and graphics she has produced and they are all very welll produced. Also to show off her work well she has added alot of graphics to the main page of the profile. All down the left hand side of the profile she has her graphics, this all looks very neat and tdy but at the same time is good ecause people dont have to go into her gallery to view her work.



















The only thing i have noticed that could have been improved is the border around the grapics that are on display. The border has rounded edges and this means when saved as an image there are little white areas around the edges of the image. This could have been solved by the setting the background colour behind the graphics to the samecolour as the bacjground of the profile.


























David Hampshire Graphic Design
http://www.myspace.com/creativedesigner

This is a myspace page that is being used as a portfolio for a graphic designer. I like the way that he has layed out his work and also his interests and skills. He used the general infomation box down the left hand side very well to show case his skills and strengths. This is all very well put forward in different paragraphs explaining his diffrent strengths in different areas from illustration to print.






















Once again like the other profile above he has used the profile to add images on the page so that they are not all just with in the pictures area. I feel this is good because as soon as people view your page they will see the standard of your work with out having to click through your images.

He has used the About me section very well to sell himself with some well written paragraphs about his interests and hobbies. He has written this well to really sell himself but he has kept it at a nice length. This means people will get a good idea of his interests and background with out getting bored of reading loads and loads of information before they have even seen his work.






















Once you get inside his pictures area I think he could have improved this by simply naming the albums better and adding a highlight photo for the albums. The main album is just called my photos which could have been called my work or something. I feel this because there isn't actual many photos inside the album it is more of illustration than photographs.













The only real thing i don't like about the main profile page is the choose of font colour and also the borders around the different sections. He has used a red font and double lined blue lines, I feel these colours don't go together very well and also don't go with the rest of the page. I think for a graphic design portfolio this doesn't look very good and could have easily been improved.

Layers

Layers are a good way for quickly and easily arranging images and information. You can simply click and drag to draw a new layer and then once it is created you can just drag its width and height to adjust the size of your layers. You can also very quickly drag and drop your layers around the page to quickly move the position of the layer within your website. The other good thing is you can convert your layers into tables to save you the hassle of spliting, merging and adjusting loads of the cells in your tables. This is easy by just going to Modify >> Covert >> Layers To Tables.



















Layout View




















Layout view is very similar to layers and most of the features are virtually the same it is just a different way to produce the same kind of finish. The layout view produces across between the layers and tables you have the ability to move and place the areas like layers but the code produced is the code for tables (

Tables

Tables can easily be created within Dreamweaver and are relatively to arrange all your information and images. These tables are very familiar to tables used in most programs such as word processing and others. With these tables in Dreamweaver you can easily change the widths , heights , and merge or split cells very quickly and easily just using the property's palette. You can also add tables inside another tables and you can do this as much as you like.

Frames

Frames are used in web design and are useful for creating navigation around websites as you can use it so that your secondary frame always stays in the same. This means you do not have to re-create the navigation for every page saving you time and effort. They are also good for creating photographic gallery's using the secondary frame as your thumbnails and the main frame for your big image and all your information about the image and anything else you want to add.

The downside to frames is that they are not very good for SEO. This means search engines such as Google will find it hard to find your page. This results in your page ranking badly on search engines and you not recieving many hits on your website.

Web Site Research

www.tnop.com

I really like the graphics and the illustrations on this website. All the graphics on the website have been really well produced with nice bright colours and clean lines making the pages stand out. I did find that at first i found the web site confusing and hard to understand as there is a lot going on in the index page which makes the site look a bit cluttered. Once i figured out where all different parts on the web site where i started to have a look around the portfolio. When there i found that the nice graphics are carried on through out the web site and has done some very nice graphics for his portfolio.


















From this website I feel I have learn't that having nice bright and clean graphics can make a web site look very good and also stand out. This is because the bright colours and clean graphics attract your eye and your attention. However this is all well and good, but also over loading a page and not making it easy to understand how to navigate the site can put visitors off and make them go else where as they want to be able to browse easily.

















www.eccentris.com

This website has been produced purely using flash. The first thing I noticed about this website is the fact that it has an intro page, but the enter here link isn't every visible. This means it is hard to find unless you read the text that it is at the bottom of. Once inside the website it is very clean and interesting. The site being built in flash means that they can have a lot more interactive things than a static html website. They developed this well by incorporating sound by making an audio player on the web site. They have also used flash to its potential by having a lot of transitions or visual movements on the page.
































Here you can see a nicely made piece of user interaction. There is a tab at the top of the page called Filters that the user can click and then more tabs appear. From there the user can chose the different tabs to change the look of the website making it more appealing to to a wider audience. This also make the site more enjoyable to look at and to view.

I think there are a few downsides to the design of this website. The main thing being I feel the actual content or reason for the website isn't very easy to find meaning people just finding the website wouldn't understand very easily what the website is about. I also think the text on the website isn't very well presented as it is a light grey on a white background making the content hard to see and tiring to read. Also making the website entirely in flash makes the website not very accessible due to the restrictions with search engines and also screen readers. I think they may have added the splash page to the website so that the search engines will be able to find the html splash page to help with this restriction.