Today we looked at themes for our website. I say this is much more fun than coding itself. Ha. I know the type of look that I want for it so it wasn’t a hassle to find one that fits my criteria. I looked for themes that would jump in straight to the portfolio. I want as little words as possible to cut out the BS. I think one thing I’ve always liked when looking at portfolios is just a page filled with pictures of the work. So I want to bring that into mine.
Ali Syafie
So we officially moved on to the next project. This time, we’re designing a website, more specifically a story. We have a lot more freedom with this one since we get to do it over anything we want. I have a few things in mind, but I’ll have to think about how I’m gonna do the research for those. Can’t get too excited, but excited.
Today we critiqued our navigation systems. It went pretty alright. The others made some pretty interesting systems. And they all had different concepts. It was interesting to see what others thought of mine, since its pretty plain and simple. But I received some pretty good feedback. Definitely will make some changes for the port. Oh yeah and for some reason I whistled for no reason..
We had a quiz today, which turned out to be a lot more action packed than what I expected. It was alright at first but then it got confusing since there we’re a solid 70-ish names. Which we now have to start thinking about possible navigations to organize all those names. There were a few interesting websites we looked at with cool navigation. It should be interesting, at least until the coding starts.
Cheers.
Today was filled code, lovely. At first it was quite interesting trying to break down the layouts. But then I started running out of things to think about, and it was still the early stages. But we also figured out a few things that I was quite confused about, so it really helped. I still need to figure out what all the initials and abbreviations mean, and how the orders work. I think it’ll make it a lot easier. Since I got to see how complex it can be to code my work, that definitely gave me a heads up in case I want to change it to save my life.
If web design is your thing, Vitaly is someone you should know about. The Belarus-born web designer has gone back and forth between programming and writing. Always having appreciated quality content, Vitaly aims to focus solely on putting out the pure quality resources. He admits that professionalism is key, and it has helped him grow Smashing Mag into something bigger than expected. He started it only to re-publish his writings in English, but it took a turn when he noticed the traffic they’re getting.
He loves beautiful interface, and he loves simplicity. He’s been in the game for around 15 years and he can only get better from here.
Smashing Magazine, is a German-based website and online book publisher that provides content surrounding a range of digital topics. Founded by Vitaly Friedman, Smashing Mag mainly focuses on providing professional resources for Web Designers and Developers.
The website has six categories which their online content evolves around; Coding, Design, Mobile, Graphics, UX Design, and WordPress. Basically covering almost all aspects of web design, they have articles from colour arrangement to the language of code. All these categories are also covered in workshops ran by Vitaly himself, who graduated from Saarland University, studying Computer Science and Mathematics . More than just an online-content provider, Smashing Mag not only publish and sell books, but they provide and in-depth background about their products, and not to mention, in a fully responsive and beautiful website.
Hence mainly being a magazine, their website also has job listings from anywhere in Europe to the States.
CodeAcademy
Its my second time playing around with CodeAcademy and coding seems less and less of a hassle. Although I haven’t remembered every symbol, but the overall information that we need to know where to put is not as bizzare. I don’t know if I’m ready to full-on build a website, but definitely getting closer.
Responsive Design
Responsive Design, is the form of art used in websites that focuses on user interaction and experience. Mainly a minimalist design, responsive websites uses CSS3 Media Queries to allow the whole layout to adapt to different screens on various devices. With the use of a flexible grid system, it automatically responds to the screen size, and proportionally readjust its content to maximize its viewing experience. With the objective to show only the relevant information, unrelated data flow is usually minimized to a dropdown menu.
As a lady once said, “Every designer has to know something about coding.”
The first day of class started off pretty heavy. Coding wasn’t something I knew how to do. I had a couple experiences trying to code, but it was just so much information and formula to retain. Initially I thought WordPress is a fully-manual site, having never worked with it. But as we advance through class, WordPress turned out to be a lot more simple.
As a Content Management System (CMS), it is sort of like a book. You are able to create or add pages, images, categories, covers, and arrange them in any way. This system is mostly used for sites that provides data and information, text or image.
WordPress, specifically, was built on PHP, a general web development app that uses actual code. Even though I have yet to understand the art of coding, knowing how a website is actually programmed to look exactly like that will be very interesting.
and a lot of work.
Cheers.