This is meeee

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

3756U - Ethics Privacy and Copyright

Ok ... here's your explanation of the difference between European and American notions of privacy as it relates to websites:

The United States and the European Union share the goal of enhancing privacy protection for their citizens, but the United States takes a different approach to privacy from that taken by the European Union (See Appendix A in my full Report below). The United States uses a sectoral approach that relies on a mix of legislation, regulation, and self regulation.

In order to bridge these different privacy approaches and provide a streamlined means for U.S. organisations to comply with the European Union Directive, the U.S. Department of Commerce in consultation with the European Commission developed a "safe harbor" framework.

The safe harbor — approved by the EU in July of 2000 — is an important way for U.S. companies to avoid experiencing interruptions in their business dealings with the EU or facing prosecution by European authorities under European privacy laws. Certifying to the safe harbor will assure that EU organisations know that your company provides "adequate" privacy protection, as defined by the Directive.


See my full report for this module here: 3756U Ethics Privacy and Copyright.

hmmm... contemplating if I can claim 'fair use' of other website content in my research for this assignment.... There's soooo much to be careful about in relation to the law on privacy, security and copyright... I'm scared!!

I've become aware of a lot I didn't realise doing these last two reports. Wasnt sure about some of the listed performance criteria headings again. Anyway... let me know if you have time.

Sunday, December 9, 2007

3755F - Ensure Basic Website Security

The end is nigh :(

I'm really gonna miss this!! and you, Peter Shanks! You have been a great inspiration and mentor... Thank you so much for everything.... I just hope I do something with it now :)

I'll be recommending Bathurst TAFE to anyone interested in an Information Technology course. Over the last few years I've studied with a number of TAFE Colleges and in my experience all the teachers in general and you in particular have been the most encouraging and helpful of all.

Please keep in touch for a while so I dont suffer separation anxiety! lol

Ok... basic web security... once again I'm a little confused with the wording of the dreaded Green Book (which I now look upon with kindness) so do read and make sure I've understood as much as you say.

Now I'm off to make sure my netBios over tcp/ip is disabled lol and research copyright.


Cheers and Happy Holidays and New Year and all that jazz.

Monday, December 3, 2007

3755B Maintain Website Performance

I hope I've covered the requirements for this assignment. I'm still not sure if I've fully understood parts of it - some guess work happening...

Anyway... happy reading. Berate me harshly if I've got it all wrong and I'll try again when my text book arrives hahah. Cant remember what format you prefer so here's both:

Maintain Website Performance (pdf)

Maintain Website Performance (doc)

sheeesh... I just saw Rany's Flash site... way to make me feel inadequate lol... i've got no idea how she must have made that... how come you didnt make me do something that interactive? :)

I'm feeling like a looohuuuuserrrrr this week
so do call again...
and cheer me up! lol

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Baby Steps

This week I fixed up the usability recording so you should be able to view it now.

I also did the comparison and installed traffic monitoring software to look at the log file from my TAFE site. I got all the sample screen shots into my Report which is not quite finished yet. Still struggling with two requirements before I'm done with this assignment. Call me lol.

I found a good blog about web analytics but its all too much information for me. I'm going to invest in Avinash Kaushik's book because it has some really good reviews and I'm sure will help me understand this subject... actually, I just like books and wanna be able to look back on at least one for each module in this course.

Another site I'm finding helpful is Bruce Clay Inc.

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Monitoring Traffic and Compiling Website Traffic Reports

I've set up Google Analytics on Blayney Heritage Country. The reports are not showing anything yet but I have some stats from Yahoo for it.

I need to discuss some areas of this assignment before I can finish my Report. Its half done and you can have it next week after our chat today :)

Other than that all I've done this week is some research on different analysis software. I can feel another text book coming on....

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

3755R Ensure Site Usability

Thanks for recommending Dont Make Me Think by Steve Krug. I got it new from eBay for $30 - Angus & Robertson quoted me $70!

Ok - I did a desktop recording of a few questions and tasks using CamStudio - we both felt like idiots and it could have been a lot better and would be if I spent more time on it. I've never been good at role playing :P but I think it shows I have an idea of what to do for a usability test and hopefully, combined with my Report, will satisfy the learning outcomes for this Module. Let me know if you think I should re-do the recording or if I havent covered all the criteria in the Report.

This assignment certainly showed me some major flaws I didnt know existed in my portfolio website which I will be correcting as soon as I know how eg the css navigation menu overlaps the site content when the text size is enlarged in the browsers, the site map is difficult to find and I should have an option to 'search'.

That said I think my Usability Test was successful because the it made it clear there needs to be some changes to make the site more usable :)

Usability Test Recording
.avi format

Usability Report
.pdf format

Monday, October 22, 2007

3755G Apply a Web Authoring Tool

The web authoring tool I've chosen for this module is Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 because I have it and apparently it's the preferred industry standard.

I've defined the site and set up the FTP. I also played around with the workspace environment, changing the position of panels etc and am quite happy to have the Insert and Properties panels top and bottom with a few others on the right hand side. I changed these around so I have easier access (for me) to the CSS and Files panels and minimised some others. This is consistent with my other Adobe programs. F4 is a favourite button to get rid of the lot when they annoy me and so I have a larger view of the actual work area. I prefer to work with the split view so I can see the code as well as the WISYWIG screen.

I've also had a good look around the menu dropdowns, buttons and tools gaining access to a full range of features.

Anyway... you can see my very basic first page using an inbuilt layout here just to prove I can FTP from Dreamweaver :P
I have added some text formatting, images, links (inserted a Spry Menu Bar).
I've created a template for the other pages and will link an external css file this week hopefully.

After searching for some CS3 tutorials I found VineyarDesigns was really helpful. It has lots of easy to follow tutorials and other excellent information about web design, home businesses and and stressed out working mums! I love this site already!

I also found the best lot of tutorials on thesitewizard.com.

Problem: IE renders the inbuilt css of my web page on my laptop but not on my PC ?? and FF does not render the css properly on my laptop or the PC ??? and according to Dreamweaver the site has no browser issues... help :)

Dreamweaver is sooo easy after Flash!! I flew through this and I'm liking it :)

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

27th September... already!

Hmm... i've given up on the preloader. I'll try sending it to Robert from another email account since the zip file is too big to send from work .

I've been working on the contact form this week (well today at least lol). I created one that works fine but still trying to make it happen in the website. Seems to be the way it goes ... everything works well in its own little Flash file but when it comes to adding to my site it falls over. Sux to be me

Maybe you have enough to mark anyway. I mean.. u didnt ask for a preloader... or a contact form lol...

Anyway, I'll just have to come into TAFE again soon I guess and try to get all the bits n pieces sorted.

5 minutes later:
Wait... I just deleted the original song out of the library and bingo! site is now 1.72 mb instead of 7.5 or whatever it was... duhhh... so now my preloader is visible from about 45% instead of 85%... still not ideal but better.

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

When will it endddd...

Ok..
so I have a Flash interface that pretty much works now but still needs some (a lot of) tweaking.

Some things I want to know:
  • What do I do about the size of the site? I compressed the music file from 5mb down to 1.14mb and now the Properties box is telling me its larger than it was before I compressed the song ie 7.3mb. The template I purchased is only like 1.96mb??

  • The colors look really crappy on some monitors and the size of buttons etc change - the purchased template is consistent on all monitors - how come mine isn't?

  • The site takes soooo long to download then the preloader flashes for a few seconds only. At 7.3mb file size I would think you should see the preloader while its taking that longggg time to download - why is this?
As well as the above challenges for this week (month?), I will be continuing to add content and working towards php for the contact form.

Wow... I've blogged with hours to spare before you call lol

Yayyyy... The Sofia Initiative is back on line!!
Maybe this will help with optimization and publishing.


Image: "Hypnotised Chicken"

http://www.flickr.com/photos/61456874@N00/131617677

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Pre Loader Problems

I literally dont know what day it is this week - I was totally surprised late yesterday afternoon when I realised it was Wednesday and not Tuesday - there went my extra day to finish stuff for you so I'm sorry I havent uploaded anything to be marked - was hoping to have the preloader working first - looking forward to your call to discuss where I'm going wrong (just to give you something to do lol .. i know ya luv me for it heheh)

That aside - I've got some content pages happening using the Flash feature Robert forwarded.
Thanks to my visit to the campus last week I'm understanding links better and have now added some using both text and button symbol (that looks like text) methods. I even worked out how to add an email link and it works - yayyy.

If we cant get the preloader working when we chat I'll upload what I have tonight anyway - am worried about the size of the music though.

Once thats out of the way I think all I have to do is add some more content and (for bonus points lol) get the contact form happening with some Flashy php :P then I'm done with this. Oh, but I probably have to do a mirror site too yeah? damn... I'm far from done.

Ah well, talk to you in a few minutes I guess, unless you forget me about me lol.

Monday, August 20, 2007

Surrrpriiiise!!

What a productive weekend for a change - just look what I did! heheh


I'm even starting to like Flash a little bit now.

It's far from finished - I have to make a pre-loader and set my text links and work on the size and I'll probably play around with the colours but at least its something for you to see that I've made some good progress.

I'm in the process of finding how to change the colour of the scrollbar and will try to make a dropdown menu for the topics. I also have to get the other pages made and code the contact form.

The fire is not exactly how I hoped but its kinda working.

I'm in training again on Thursday and not sure what time we'll finish so if we dont get to have our chat then, give me a call some time Friday if you want.

ps I hope you can see it ok... i just realised the background colour is not the same viewing it here from work as it is vewing it from my laptop?? will work on it again this weekend.

Monday, August 6, 2007

Blehhhh

Ok I finally got something on a Flash stage!!! Its crap but its a start of practice for the assignment. I can at least make a button and go to another scene. Had to download trial of Fireworks because Adobe isnt continuing development of ImageReady and its not included in CS3.

Sheesh ... everywhere I've turned with this program has been a drama. Obviously the graphics are not good in this file... was just to see if I could put a few scenes together. When I can make a some kind of interesting page transition and get some text happening I'll start the assignment.

Flash Buttons and Scenes Practice

Sunday, June 24, 2007

Confusing

While I managed to get through some Flash exercises without much problem, when it comes to making an actual site with cool buttons etc, I am totally confused :(

You can see my Interface Design Plan (aka waffle) here in .pdf format. I haven't made a diagram of the navigation plan yet and I still haven't made a prototype button - slack I know - but it's all too hard :P

Anyway... the navigation will link to every page from every page and the button will be a fade in and out one with changing colours and a very small animation of fire like this from my original site.

You can see the page roughs at the end of the Plan and I hope to add the navigation diagram and button prototype soon.

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Plan an Interface Design

Its 10 minutes before you call!
Here's some basic ideas to re-design my old self taught site that sucks.
Im having trouble wording the constraints coz I'm trying to hurry (and scoffing a hamburger). Will upload the waffle tonight re intended audience and objectives etc. or I'll email what I have already when we chat.
This template is awsome in Flash and I think perfect for my metaphor "Hell Aint Cool".
(whats a metaphor? lol and can I just buy the template and use it for the project :)) heheh























Tuesday, May 29, 2007

My (not so) Flashy Flash

Well I didnt have time to be creative with these exercises but I did manage to do some basic stuff in Flash CS3 Professional. Hopefully I'll get more familiar with it before my 30 day trial is up.

You can see them following the links below:

The banner is not doing exactly what I wanted so I'll keep playing with it.

When I used the Publish option in Flash, the html it produced presents me with the alert "This page requires AC_RunActiveContent.js" (where do I get it?) but the cookie cutter code as per Tizag Tutorial works fine so I modified and used that instead.

Thursday, May 17, 2007

KruMPinIT

JavaScript Challenges


I love doing these exercises! Its taken me a while but I'm actually starting to feel comfortable with this stuff - and I like it!! I'll be going back to my Contact Form soon and pimping it out with all my newly acquired skills... Its gonna be da bomb lol.

Ok... enough excitement... I've completed four challenges so far and my stuff works so check it out below:

Challenge 1 - Peekaboo Elements - Hiding/Showing Elements
Challenge 2 - 'Same as Above' Postal Address Boxes - with Disable and Enable
Challenge 3 - Radio Buttons and Check Boxes - Making sure a selection has been made
Challenge 4 - Better Input Validation - In-line error messages instead of Pop-up alerts

Cheers

Sunday, May 6, 2007

WooHoo!

JavaScript

Finally! my Contact Form is working with only one pop-up at the end. Now I want to get the email address checked for illegal characters and maybe have the error messages show beside the form elements rather than have a pop-up at all. I might even keep playing with it to get a valid length and illegal characters for the username and a password etc... help meeee :)

Sites I admire:

Hmm... well I had a look around the TAFE site and I have to say I really admire Rany's page! Well done Rany .. I love your gradients and i really like the 'cleanness' of your profile page in particular .. you've done so well in such a short time .. I now have no defense at all for my lame first attempts lol.

I also had a look what the Digital Media students have been up to. Gavin Woodhouse's site is great. Appears very artistic to me. The colors he used for his navigation buttons look really impressive on each of the different coloured backgrounds .. simple and clean design .. I like it a lot.

Thursday, May 3, 2007

Ok.. so I didnt give up...

Having already completed the assignment for the Black Square Problem last year, I decided to present it as a JavaScript gallery as suggested anyway. The thing I learned from this exercise was how good it is to cut and paste scripts :) hmmm but seriously I searched and located a number of scripts for the slideshow and this was the one I was most comfortable with as far as my understanding of variables and functions. It was easy enough to edit the array and I can see how it all works. I obtained this script from CodeLifter.com.

You can see my flowchart that represents my design of the 'web application' exercise here. I hope this is right coz, as usual, it took me a while to get my head around it but I made it look pretty at least.

WooHoo... Check out my Login Form here! So simple when you know how. Thank you so much for the blow-by-blow analysis... some blondes really need you to talk slowly like this lol and I must say I finally feel motivated again and a little more confident to have another go at my Contact Form. Hopefully it will be working like a dream by next blog.

I didnt go to the web pages that suck site coz my own pages suck enough so I will tell you the thing I hate most about Hell Aint Cool is the large, comic font I used for starters. I also hate the background pattern and colour on the link buttons. Maybe plain red text would look better. I like my background and I kinda like my lil fiery devil guy coz he's a cool animation but I hate the animated heading now ... less is more as they say. Anyway, basically the whole design of this site sucks big time and I intend to fix it good when I can.

As for The Ploughman ... well I hate the ugly background and the uglierrr buttons on this site as well. I like the font but its hard to read with the colours. I can improve this site a lot too if only I had the tiiiime. Both these sites definitely show a lack of design intelligence but in defense of myself I'm thinking they were an ok attempt for self-taught basic html.

I'm out of time. Will have to comment on sites I admire in another blog - and they wont be mine lol.
Cheers.

Tuesday, April 3, 2007

GeTtiN' ovEr a DoUbLE edGed TaNtY

Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the universe is winning
---Rich Cook

Didnt do much at all this week but did manage to change my index links, create a link to the Creative Commons licence for my video sequence, and linked back to all the pics and music used giving attribution to the owners and creators of the original images etc.

Also, while in my bad mood, I've gone out and purchased a shit load of text books, the first of which I highly recommend - How to do Everything with Javascript by Scott Duffy - wow - I'm reading it from cover to cover (who the hell reads a text book from cover to cover??)

Anyway, I can hardly put it down. Its very well written and is really giving me a better
understanding of the terminology and the program flow. At a quick glance, it looks like it has some good stuff on the DOM too.

Image : Rachel Sian : "Reading"

The other two books that make up my Alphabet Soup Library are HTML, XHTML & CSS by Elizabeth Castro and PHP5/MySQL Programming for the Absolute Beginner by Andy Harris - they look like they're gonna be a great permanent reference too. You gotta love a hard copy resource - I know I do!

This is waffle... maybe next week will be better...

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

I giVe uP !! *%^#$!

Image : Sharlene : "iGiveUp" :P

Monday, March 26, 2007

A Better Week Than the Last One

I am pleased to inform I not only brushed up on some css and got my new index page made, I also kinda validated my Contact Form. I say kinda because I'm sure there's a better way, and I'm sure I'll hear about it :)

I havent uploaded the new index yet because I'm too tired to change all the links, but this is what it will look like.

Back to the javascript form.... I want to have the whole thing validate in one foul swoop and/or have the fields that are not valid change colour with the error message alongside. I'm very confused about all the different ways you can write javascript and have gotten myself quite overwhelmed.
I think I was supposed to start on 3755G - Apply a Web Authoring Tool as well this week, but that hasn't happened yet. I will be using Dreamweaver for this module - I hope I get to like it but at the moment it seems a lot easier to keep manually coding in an editor.

So... two blogs this week coz I was slack and had none last week. Cheers.

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Try Hard that Never Quite Makes It

Ok.. I think I have my multimedia sequence happening! Woohoo. Check out my Flash video 'Random Life' and also my PowerPoint Show, 'Rain Florist' – which opens in another window so you don’t get stuck in limbo with no return to the webpage - I knew there had to be a way :P
The credits for images and music used are on the last frame of the video.

I still had some reading to do about accessibility and now you can check out my understanding of the WAI Guideline Priorities here.

I have tested my webpages for the sight impaired using a free version of Thunder ScreenReader. When downloaded this talking software makes a modern XP or Vista computer immediately usable by someone who can’t see to read the screen. Makes a talking computer that speaks as you press keys and reads out what’s on the screen.

Well that’s a few more little things out of the way. Im old and Im tired and Im not glowing with pride that all the good stuff is still a work in progress with me. It IS like rocket science when I can rarely give full attention to study but one of these days I'll have my tasks completed in a more suitable timeframe.


Image : Sam & Ian : "A Single Daffodil"

I know I should be doing my javascript form validation but im really tired of the look of my website so Im going to play around with Photoshop and create a new index page that’s fresh and sunny looking – kinda outdoorsy since I don’t get out there enough for the real thing.

Thursday, March 8, 2007

Accessibility

Sheesh... who woulda thought!

Ok. Instead of doing what I planned for this week, I've been the whole time making my site more accessible (Level AAA conformance, no less). I miss my gradient background but its nice to see green ticks when I put my pages through the checker. It took ages to find one that I had any amount of affection for. I finally settled on WebEXACT for the following reasons:
  • Its free! An online service that lets you test single pages of web content for quality, accessibility and privacy issues.
  • You can choose to test for Priority 1, 2 or 3 automatic checkpoints.
  • Optionally expands the code fragments (line, tag, attribute & value) to easily find the location of the problem in your code.
  • Provides a detailed guideline for manual checkpoints with number of warnings and instances included.
  • Each guideline warning has an explanation and rationale plus links to the WAI Guideline checkpoint references.
Its friendly as far as they go and I think, kinder than some. Anyway, just thought I would share it here coz it might save y'all some time searching.

One that I tried spat the dummy because some of the links in my footer were not reachable by a screen reader within a certain amount of time. What do I do to fix this? I have no idea and not in the mood to research.... sooooo.... if anyone has some pointers, please feel free to comment :)




Now thats out of the way, Im going to do myself some dreaming under a tree and suck up some fresh air and sunshine for the weekend. Yayyyy.


Image : Nyx : "Here be Squirrels"

Thursday, March 1, 2007

My Work in Progress


I guess I should post a link to my TAFE site so here it is:

http://www.bathurst-tafe.nsw.edu.au/~schapman/

Be afraid (very afraid) of the links to my self taught websites. Ok for first attempts but they're ghastly designs now I know a little better. yuk lol.

I thoroughly enjoyed working on the books database last year. It was my first experience with PHP and mySQL. Powerful stuff once you get a handle on it and no doubt I'll have to review it again a lot this year for it to stay in my head. Actually I really need to get back to work on the Sessions which I didnt complete. hmmm. note to self: get back to sessions! soooon.
The RSS and XML stuff was interesting too.

Currently I'm working my way through the Tizag Javascript Tutorial - a good simple tut for my bad simple mind.

Javascript is funnnn :)

Wow. Two posts now. Blogging in leaps and bounds...
hopefully next time I'll have some up-to-date work to post.



Fresh apples for the Teacher
Do apples get bonus points?? heheh

Image : "I Love Apples" : Ansy










Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Is it 2007 Nowww??

I think this is my second year studying Cert IV Web and it will probably take me another 3 years to finish it! Peter is a great Teach which im sure all continuing students realise and all new students will soon discover. What a legend! I return bearing gifts of fruit and flowers :) heheh.

This is my first attempt at blogging and not sure if i'll have time to keep it up because I work full time authoring and producing online help documentation for Local Government software applications with back-up telephone support, also studying UNIX at present, take care of a home with husband and three teenagers and most spare minutes im trying to get my head around the alphabet soup that makes up this course (html, php, css, rss, js, xml ... will it ever end?) oh and Im trying to learn Bengali language as well.... five clones of myself would be really handy right about now...

Anyway... needless to say its not easy fitting everything in but I think I must be a nerd at heart and get a real buzz outta all that gobboldygook eventually turning into something at the touch of a button. Im looking forward to a hopefully productive year with Bathurst TAFE again.