Evaluation.

This unit focused on coding rather then the aesthetic aspect of the website. I completed the code academy course as a basis for coding the website, after this I still was constantly googling for how to code different things. For example the interactive contact form, now I've completed my website I feel as though I have basic knowledge of HTML and CSS; I think I can confidently code a website now. Because of my lack of skill in coding it was heavily limiting in what I could do visually. As  I started out on paper sketching out potential designs I soon found out it wasn't possible for me to complete this with my knowledge of HTML and CSS. So knowing this I decided on a much simpler design.

Going for the simpler design although may not visually be the best it keeps the site easy to use, read and navigate. Also the simplicity helped with making it successfully scale down to mobile resolutions so all platforms can view it without difficulty.

With all this in mind I then progressed on to make the site, using a lot of bad code which caused problems I had to scrap what I had done and restart. I found a basic template which utilised a scaling navbar as I couldn't make this myself efficiently, I then edited this to suite the target audience and make each page individual and suited towards it's purpose.

One problem I had was the navbar looked like It was on homepage all the time no matter which page it was on, this was caused by me duplicating the home page and then remaking it for each new page rather then a new page linked to a master page which I'll do in future to save myself from the potential problems I cam across. To fix the issue I had I had to manually edit the code of the navbar for each page to correctly highlight which page it should be on.

Overall I found it difficult to create and code my own website and had to resort to using tools like W3schools to help me with a large portion of the code, although now I know how to code a basic website including a scaling navbar, which is key to modern sites needing to be viewable from multiple devices.

Website

Here's the home page, with a footer to enclose the page and balance out the red - white also links to facebook, twitter and RSS feed as needed.

The header is the name and room for a logo, with a large, welcoming image to the site, this can be changed per page to whatever is needed or felt suiting, the above is just an example. 

Each page is different and shows information in an easy to understand and concise manner. More pages can be added to however many are needed 

The contact form allows users to contact the site owners and once sent refers you to the page below, which you can easily navigate to other areas of the site from as to not disrupt the flow of the viewer.

The site was built to scale to any resolution, as the growth of the mobile market means sites failing to do so will lose a large amount of views, this was a problem I had to overcome to make a modern and successful website. Having the navbar cascade down rather then squish together means it's easily clicked and also read easily. Although this means it takes a lot of screen space I think the usability gained from this decision is worth the lack of aesthetic value.

Problems in Webdesign

There's lots of problems I'll need to overcome when It comes to designing my site. Such as the usability, the aesthetics, the security also keeping consistency throughout the site and trying to keep it lightweight. These are a few of the problems I will have to consider to create a successful website, if not it could be too complex to a user or just look repulsive so the user wouldn't want to browse more.

What is HTML, CSS and Java Script

What is HTML?

HTML, which stands for Hypertext Markup Language is a markup language that's used for creating interactive web pages. It largely consists of tags for example <p> and </p> they come in pairs, opening and closing, for example the one above is for paragraph text, as in the the main chunk of text you'll read on a web page. Web browsers read the code and then turn it into visual imagery and different styles of text, graphics and so on. Although it is possible to look at the raw code it's usually messy and visually unappealing. For my website I will mainly use HTML although for a lot of the visual department I may need CSS or Java of which I'll explain below.

What is CSS?

CSS, which stands for Cascading Style Sheets is the file which controls the visual style side of the code, and is linked with HTML documents for the main code, CSS means that various tags can link to separate styles to create an efficient and easily manageable code rather then a mess of styles in the HTML itself. This also allows multiple pages to share the same aesthetic formatting an style. For my own site I will use CSS to create the visual side of the website and keep the code as neat as possible.

What is Java?

Java is a computer programming language used with HTML and CSS, Java like CSS is used alongside a html document and linked with it. Java is used for more advanced parts of webdesign for example a slide show or so on. You can use java within HTML documents with the <script></script> tags but if you intend to use a large amount of java scrip this will result in a messy and hard to manage code.