Sunday, 12 May 2013

Future work and research

Okay so Im pretty proud with what I have managed to conjure up.

However there are some improvements that I would like to make in future


  • Implement a slider into the website
  • Style the background better
  • Allow for server side scripting
  • Eventually creating a website when anyone can listen to anything they wanted.
 Even though these are only minor changes some of them will be fairly difficult to implement to the amount that I will have to research. 

Although I believe I can do this and may even make it my summer project.

Friday, 10 May 2013

Building and styling the website

Building the website wasn't difficult for me although I did take usability into consideration whilst building though.

I asked my housemates what they all thought of the design before I started coding it, they all agreed that it was a nice design. I then asked would they use the website if they was looking to buy a certain album, in which they responded they would.

When I started building the website I started with the basics I didn't style it or anything I just put straight forward HTML into the website this allowed me to see what the website looked like before it had any styles within it.

This is what it looked like, ugly isn't it?

Okay so i thought about styling and since it was at the top I needed to sort the navigation out. I decided to create a class for each link within the navigation it makes my style sheet look some what messy but it also helps me manipulate it into doing what I want which is appear in the center of the screen.

Okay so i have now styled my navigation and its looking good, I also changed the font family and colour whilst I was at it.


This is what I ended up with eventually personally I like the look of it, also when you click it the link doesn't become underlined or highlighted purple I changed this so that it would stay one colour throughout the process.

Next I decided to style the background as I didn't want white as my background, I wanted a grey, not like grey behind the nav, something a bit darker.


I grabbed the hex code for this colour, its a pretty dark shade of grey but fits well in the website.

I needed to then manipulate the image into place, this required me to put it in a <p> </p> Tag, which I did, I then changed its position to absolute so I could move it around the page, after a good 10 minutes of figuring out the pixels of the position i wanted it I had managed to get it into place.


A lot better now isn't it.

Next I needed to create the content box within the website, although I do have knowledge of doing this I did need to look at w3schools just to double check that I was doing it correctly. After I did this I realised I was. I then remember that within CSS3 you can round off your boxes, which is what I did, its simple to do this.

I then filled the content box in and ended up with this.


Overall I know it looks very basic but I feel that it is quite effective, ideally  I would like to create JavaScript Slideshow using html5 but I don't have the time.

Moving on to the 'Buy Music' page I knew my plan for this page however its whether I could pull it off I say this because I have planned to use Javascript within this page. Either way I jumped straight into it knowing that I had to at least attempt to use Javascript.

At first I was using this way of creating Rollovers

function MouseRollover(MyImage) {
Myimage.src = "BMTHS1.Jpg";

}
{
function MouseOff(MyImage) {
Myimage.src = "BMTHS2.Jpg";

}

However I found this ineffective when it came to trying to do multiple image searches so i went to the internet for helpin googling how to create multiple image rollovers in JavaScript after searching I found a website which had exactly what I wanted on it. Although the code looked completely different it still achieved the same effect.

This is the way I ended up creating multiple image rollovers.

In the head I had this

pic1 = new Image();
   pic1.src = 'BMTHS2.jpg';
   pic2 = new Image();
   pic2.src = 'BMTHS1.jpg';
   pic3 = new Image();
   pic3.src = '18MB.jpg';
   pic4 = new Image();
   pic4.src = '18MF.jpg';
   pic5 = new Image();
   pic5.src = 'FOBB.jpg';
   pic6 = new Image();
   pic6.src = 'FOBF.jpeg';

Then in body I put this:


<p class="bmth">Bring Me The Horizon Sempiternal</p>
<p class="pic1"
      onmouseover="document.getElementById('r1').src=pic1.src;"
      onmouseout="document.getElementById('r1').src=pic2.src;">
   <img src="BMTHS1.jpg" width="100" height="69"
        border="0" id="r1" alt="BMTH Sempiternal" />

This worked for this one so I then decided to add my next one.

<p class="calvin">Calvin Harris 18 Months</p>
   <p class="pic2"
      onmouseover="document.getElementById('r2').src=pic3.src;"
      onmouseout="document.getElementById('r2').src=pic4.src;">
   <img src="18MF.jpg" width="100" height="69"
        border="0" id="r2" alt="CH 18 Months" />

The way this works compared to the other way this will search through the document and find the picture source and then post that on mouseover and then on mouse-out it will look for the other picture source this is done by document.getElementById. The ('r2') is so that it knows it is the second rollover.

After I had achieved this, I launched it only to then realise I had stacked them onto of each other so I styled them in CSS using there own classes and manipulated into the place where I wanted them I then added text on top of the image to allow the user to see what the album was before they purchase it, I included a buy now button however they don't lead to anything due to not being allowed to use client side scripting.

This is the finished product all of the albums have a front cover on mouse off and a back cover on mouse over.







As we can see I have kept everything the same inpart from what is in the context box.

Moving onto the Listen to music, on this page I wanted to show a sample song from each album displayed in the buy music page.

I remember a lecture about being able to use the <audio controls> in HTML5 I used these to create my audio controller. I also remembered that Firefox doesn't support mp3 and that it supports ogg so I remembered to change the file extensions and put them in. I also included some text next to the track so that the user can see what they are listening too. I did this three times one for each album displayed on the buy music page.


You can also see here how I have manipulated the text to fit and then moved the audio controls next to each bit of text.




Saturday, 23 March 2013

Planning

After some thinking I decided to go with a music website.

Due to the amount of websites already out there, actually deciding what the whole idea was going to be about was fair difficult.

But I decided on a music database. So that users can listen to one selected song before they buy the album. Due to restrictions whilst building this website I was unable to add a database into the website.

To get around not adding at database I choose 3 albums and 3 songs from them albums to put on the website the first being Bring Me The Horizon - Sleepwalking the second being Calvin Harris - I Need Your Love and the third being Fall Out Boy - My Songs Know What You Did In The Dark.

So now that I had some information to go onto the website I needed to consider a design for it.

I looked at these websites.

http://grooveshark.com/


Although I don't have the skills to create I browsed through this website and thought about what I could take from this website to incorporate into mine. With this website I really liked the whole search for the music you want to listen for bar, however if you felt indecisive you can just play a playlist, allowing you to discover new music.


https://soundcloud.com/
Sound cloud has a really nice slider effect on there website, when you hover your mouse over to the right it pops up with the next slide, if you click it will change to the next slide allowing you to see what people have posted on SoundCloud. I really thought about including this into my website, however I was very unsure on how to do it even with research into how to do it, and due to amount of other coursework I have, it would be unwise to spend a big amount of my time on this. 

I didn't really take anything from Soundcloud except awing in how good it looks. I really enjoy the player that they have within the website.

I notice neither of these websites have a navigation menu, this being a weird concept to me, I still decided to include this into my website.

So I decided to start planning the design for the website I thought of having something really simplistic, so i thought about having something music related on the website. I wanted a static image that stays there when you click on the images. I then thought how can i implement actual content onto the website. I then remember I had learnt about CSS boxes, I decided to implement this into my website.

I didn't really know how to plan the navigation menu, Im quite iffy with them, I know how to do them it's I am a fussy bugger. I remember learning about Classes in lectures. Through previous experience I know how effective they are, so I will be implementing them also into the styling of my website.

Styling my website won't be hard I feel like I know CSS and CSS3 fairly well to use it to my advantage to manipulate everything on my website into the design that I desire.

The design is simple I don't want a header on my websites I want it looking similar to this.



Nav 
IMAGE:CONTENT BOX

Although this is simple I believe I can fit all my information into this.

I thought about using Javascript through this whole website however I only have pretty basic skills. I only want to include a image rollover when the user is viewing albums, to show the front cover on mouseoff and when on mouseon it will show you the front cover. Although this isn't a big challenge I will be pretty happy with myself If I achieve this.

Colours are fairly important whilst designing websites, I want to keep to only 3 or 4 colours for my website these being grey, white and black.

















Tuesday, 12 March 2013

Idea, Tips and Research

After reading over what was required for the assignment, i thought I need an idea and pretty quick. So i need something that I am actually interested in.

I have decided to do a website on music it will be my fictitious company.




Tips for designing a website:

  • Provide information within index page what the product is about.
  • Provide image rollovers within homepage to keep a visual element towards the website
  • Motion captures the users eye, so use visuals but don't go over the top with them.
  • Consistency within colour is important, also vibrant colour do not mix very well within web pages.
  • Moving banners work well in a front page, allowing you to show visuals without having them scattered around the page.

Further Research to do:

  • Research into mouseover text Javascript
  • Research into Javascript sliders 
  • Research into Current web trends
  • Research into Colour matching
















Monday, 11 March 2013

Assignment

A start-up organisation of your choice, which can be fictitious in nature, wishes to implement their initial 'teaser' website announcing their products and services. You have been asked to provide a functional three page site as your bid for the contract, with a development blog documenting the entire production process.

The site must be implemented using HTML, CSS and JavaScript, with extensive use of embedded media (Images, audio and video). The initial target platform is a modern, standards-compliment browser running on a desktop PC. Additional credit may be awarded by successfully supporting additional platforms such as a mobile and tablet. You do not need to target older, less compliant browsers. You should also avoid using server-side technologies (PHP, SQL etc.) as the focus of this assignment is on client-side languages only.

Take care in the design of your site. You will need to consider the user experience in creating a suitable interface and should refine the design over multiple iterations. consider the target audience of your chosen organisation and current trends in web design.

The development blog should contain detailed entries covering the entire project duration. This included initial concepts, idea refinement, research, implementation, usability tests and so on. It should also demonstrate an understanding of legal and developmental issues with web design (e.g. accessibility, browser support) and explain how your work takes these aspects into account . Blogs must be hosted at www.blogger.com as a unique blog containing only work for this assignment. Ensure the blog's visibility is not set to private. You must include screen shots of all blog posts with your submission.