finished! an evaluation

So my website is finished! It can be found at http://www.laura-siragher.com.

I'm really happy with how clean and white it is; it's very much a frame for the images, letting them speak for themselves. Every time I tried to create something more stylised it just ended up annoying me, so in the end it was better to just let it be nice and simple. During my time studying Vis Com I am going to be generating a lot of work, and my design has made it incredibly easy to update my galleries as I go along, which is really helpful. I've let people try it out and they've said it's also very easy to navigate and understand their way around, which I'm pleased about.

Although I knew some of the basics of HTML before starting the course, I've learned a lot, especially about the more technical aspects of presenting my work, such as the rollovers and pop-ups. Adapting and changing the code so it did what I was was confusing at times, but this just made it more of an achievement once I worked it out.

I tried to incorporate a blog into the design during the last few days but doing it the way I wanted to ended up being slightly too confusing; however, it's definitely something I'd like to try in the future.

If I were to redo the website, I would probably have one try at creating something that was more of a work of art in itself without being too fussy or irritating; however, something tells me I would probably just revert back to the old design in the end!

adding text to pop-ups

I have found a way to add text to the pop-up boxes in the main gallery - instead of sourcing an image, the javascript now sources an html file which has the image and the text in it. After that, all that was needed to be done was to change the size of the pop-up window, and it was sorted.

header images and explanations

I really am fickle with this whole design; I wasn't keen on how rectangular the header image for the main page was, so I designed something specifically:



The general idea behind it is that of technology creating beautiful things, but it also gives the front page a bit of colour.

Talking with Sue has made me realise that it might be nice to give some of my work in the gallery a bit of context, so people can understand why I created the images as well as being able to see them. I want to put this text into the pop-up windows that open, but seeing as the javascript code I used for the pop-ups is merely sourcing an image and giving me no other options for its creation, I'll have to think about how this might be possible.

further modification

So I've decided that I don't really like the repeating background all that much; it's a little too strong and too distracting, and I want my work to be the focus of this website. So I've decided to keep a plain white background, and also change the text to a sans serif font. I've also changed the header image, but only a little, just to give it a little more colour. So it now looks like this:



I've also started to upload stuff onto a web server; I used a place called IX Webhosting which seems to do what I want it do and give me lots of ways to manage my site. The only thing I'm having trouble with is connecting to the site with Dreamweaver and uploading files that way; it connects fine in college, but not at home, which is where the majority of my files are anyway. How odd.

more design attempts

So now my homepage looks like this:

As you can see, the tables are now white, there's a new stripy background, and the main images has changed; it's now a mishmash of various images from my own work, which I think makes the whole thing a bit more relevant. I'm not quite sure about the background yet, but I'm going to keep it for now, I think.

displaying the content

So now I have decided, more or less, on the general look of the website, I have to start thinking about how best to allow people to look at my work.

As I said in an earlier post, I really like what Dead Air Space does when it comes to images - having a smaller thumbnail that, on click, opens up a pop-up window with the main image inside it. Looking at the source code of that site isn't helping too much but after a bit of googling I found Web Source that told me how to create some Javascript code that could do it for me. It was then a case of changing certain numbers around and labelling images right and I had a pop-up window for each image in my main gallery.

For my projects, I've decided to try something else. In our Web Design sessions we learned how to use rollover images in Dreamweaver and through that I have created a series of thumnails that open up a larger image beside them without having to resort to frames.

Design attempt number two

So I've decided to try out something a bit more modern-looking and clean. I still like the font on the header, so that's going to stay. I found a great site called Kaliber 10000 that has a lot of design resources, including repeating pixel pattens for commercial and non-commercial website use. There's quite a few I really like:

So I might try out a few of them.

I'm also thinking that if I change the colour scheme and design I will probably have to change the front page image. I want to have something there, because my current home page would look a bit bare and rubbish without it. Something related to my work would probably work out best.