It's Coming Together with CSS!

Webpage Development Progress

Home page 12/2/10



 A lot has happened with the web page since previewed here in October.  CSS has stepped up our game.  I have learned the necessity of well-coded HTML and the beauty of page manipulation with CSS.

Building a page really made it clear how helpful it is to map it out before-hand and create a template.  The real crux lies in text formatting and image sizing within the differing sections of the webpage.  It takes hours of tweaking to get the look above.

Content Management

CMS - the overall management of many webpages and content is accomplished through a content management system.  My employer (Washington County) uses Clockwork.  It saves time and money by allowing a unform look and enabling many users to make incremental changes without needing to have countless web administrators and HTML/CSS manual manipulation.

On the downside, a user may find a CMS page to be dull and lack creative user input.  There are resitrictions and limitations to what a web developer can do.  As our readings indicate:

"...most CMS software does not cater to the diverse library needs..." (Fulton, C. (2010). Library perspectives on web content management systems. FirstMonday, 15(8-2)).

Given the amount of time it has taken to personally create a webpage from scratch and the outcome I strongly believe a system-wide CMS makes sense for most libraries.

 

Web Languages & Design Challenges

Languages

I am intrigued and amazed by the vast number of languages one can learn for web applications.  Here is a list on Wikipedia.  It seems there may be as many computer languages as there are human languages.  I had no idea.  They do share two things in common: syntax (arrangement) and semantics (meaning).  From there the differences are astounding.

I think Perl, C, PHP, Java and JavaScript would be essential languages to learn if one wanted a good foothold in the web design world.

Design Challenges

I am still struggling with learning how to model and layout the divs and blocks of text and images on a web page.  I understand the theory but lack the confidence in implementing the CSS and HTML to accomplish the layout without flaws.  I will keep at it though!

Banners, Sideboards, Text Sizing and Main Body

Well the time has come.  I have learned strict XHTML.  I know some designing via CSS and I have plodded through theoretical text about user design and structure.  Now I think I know how I want my page to look (the group graphed it) but putting all those CSS commands to work is the real crux of the issue.  It takes a lot of tweaking.  And when you have the page looking just how you want you find changing the size can mess up the layout!  Sighh....

I focused on the banner and navigation bar today and made some headway.  Here's the code this week:

body {background-color: beige;}
h1 {color: orange;}
h2 {font-stle: sans-serif;}
#banner {
background-color: beige;
width: 100%;
margin: 0px;
}

#logo {
padding: 5px;
float: left;
}

#bannertext {
height: 100px;
font-family: ariel;
padding-top: 8px;
margin-left: 400px;
}

#navmenu {
width: 100%;
height: 80px;
margin: 0px;
background-color: blue;
}

#navmenu ul {
list-style: none;
padding: 0px;
margin: 0px;
}

#navmenu li{
width: 180px;
text-align: center;
float: left;
}

#navmenu a:link {
text-decoration: none;
line-height: 50px;
}

#navmenu a:visited {
text-decoration: none;
color: orange;
line-height: 50px;
}

#navmenu a:hover {
text-decoration: none;
display:block;
width: 180px;
line-height: 40px;
background: yellow;
}


Next week let's see what improvements I make and if I get the side menu created and some work on text size options for visually disabled.

Whither Intellectual Property?

Good, Bad & Ugly

The internet and digital media converses the rather archaic notions of copyright intellectual property.  The law has been slow to respond to the ever-changing and fast-paced digital realm.  Thus came about the open access and creative commons paradigm. 

This free access vs. creative rights debate rages on. 

I personally feel it is largely the result of a generational shift in society.  People have become accustomed to free and instrant gratification without understanding the true nature of the work and creativity needed to produce the items they are pirating.  And this applies to coporations as much as individuals.

Services like Napster and BitTorrent as well as other sharing services and freeware and open access have been the thorn in the side of publishers and media kings but now may be actually hurting the actual creators of the content.  Where's the money?  Time will tell if this new model will survive.

Librarian turned Web Services Director

Shane Nackerud presented on recent trends and applications available at the University of Minnesota Libraries.  Shane demonstrated how a librarian without formal web design/web programming educational background can become a web usability and informatics expert in the library field.  He is a powerhouse.  He advised future librarians the absolute need to at least be familiar with web design and the theoretical understanding of the planning and creation inherit in web design. 

I have often thought that there will be a blending of IT and MLIS skills and qualifications in future permutations of library jobs.  At times Shane seems to indicate an MLIS degree would not be needed for what he does but I believe it is very helpful since he focuses his work for libraries and has the educational understanding of the field and the needs of librarians and patrons.

I found both hope for future librarians and concerns about those in the profession ("reference librarians are a dime a dozen"). 

Style, Validation and Indexing, Oh My!

Major Challenges

OK so I was delusional.  Making a web site without web authoring programs is hard work.  It's not for the feint of heart.  A team of three of us turned in our simple web page and this is what it looks like on the left.  It's small so it can fit.  It's not pretty but it works on two browsers, has navigation, simple images and working links.  It's in XHTML strict but it doesn't pass W3C validation (the home page had 12 errors, many of which seem related to the URL links we point to).  Wow - I have great respect for coders who did this on their own, back in the day.  I need to read up on the DIV command! 

On top of this, a web designer needs to be cognizant of the meta data, key words and effective registration of their page so it can be found on the internet by the spiders, bots and browser indexing protocol.  There's plenty to consider when designing a webpage, as my previous posts hinted at. 

Well I better get back to making this page look nice.  See you later!

Social Software: Privacy and Misuse

So Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are hip and cool, I know.  Add to those, Amazon and eBay.  But what about all the private materials you post and all those recommendations and reviews you post?  You think it's totally private and without a "cost"?

What about the state looking to see if you are paying your sales tax on those books and DVDs?  A New York Times article says Amazon has the data and the state may get a search warrant for it.  

What about the data-mining Facebook does and shares with its advertising vendors?

Or what about the fears of overshare?

For those of us who came of age, technologically speaking, in the Web 2.0 Era, it may be too late to cancel, delete or otherwise redact what’s out there. Basically we have to deal with cards we’ve dealt ourselves. One could argue that if you choose to live your life in public you don’t get to control what other people do with this public information. You can, however, choose how much of it to put out there.

And add to all this the possibility that HTML 5 may implement more aggressive data-mining practices embedded into the internet.