REB #9: “Once you know what the story is and get it right—as right as you can, anyway—it belongs to anyone who wants to read it. Or criticize it.”

– On Writing by Stephen King

This week, we’re writing about our author/artist websites, which we will be designing and potentially publishing over the course of the next month. First up: the content of my site.

I’ve had a blog for almost a year now, one that I’ve actually managed to update on a fairly regular basis. I’ve tried to start blogs before but have never stuck with them. That said, since I’ve already got a blog started, I would like to try to incorporate it in some way. But that topic is better suited for my forthcoming posts on navigation and design, so I’ll go into more detail in the next two posts.

On this blog, I do have an “about me” page, a résumé page, a favorites page (favorite books, movies, and TV shows), and even a page to post completed/published stories, books, videos, and other projects (which I’ve done nothing with, as of yet). I’m trying to think of the best way to integrate all this information into the new website or if I even want to; I’m not sure just yet. My best bet may be to keep it on the blog and use the website for something else.

In any case, I’ve already started playing with Dreamweaver—and even tried out a couple of designs—but right now, my favorite design uses the controversial frames method, with a header on the top, a menu on the bottom, and the content in the middle (again, more to come on design and navigation in a future post). If that’s confusing, I’ll try to explain: these are all in the same browser window but are in separate “frames” (kind of like picture-in-picture for the Internet).

The content that appears in the middle frame, so far, consists of a page on which I can list my published works, an about me page, and even my entire blog (with the header and menu intact, in their respective frames, which doesn’t look great with the blog design but could be worse). I’m struggling to come up with more content for the middle frame of the home page, though, the one the reader sees first. As I said in a comment on Mike’s blog, I would also like to include a hypertext narrative of some kind (and maybe some other stories that I’ve written), but that will take a lot of time and effort to (1) write and (2) implement correctly; I suppose it’s something that will evolve over time, even if I have to work on it beyond the deadline for class.

*NOTE: This blog entry is syndicated from a blog I had to start for my Electronic Publishing class at U.B. this semester. I may or may not delete the extraneous blog when the class is over, but I thought I would at least give my readers the opportunity to read the contents of that blog indefinitely.

REB #6: “There are 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary and those who don’t.”

– Unknown author/coiner, but I found it at Board of Wisdom

I’ve been making websites since I was about 12 or 13, when I taught myself HTML (HyperText Markup Language) from a book. Yes, I was a geek—am a geek. That said, I’ve worked with HTML (and the newer CSS) off and on for over a decade.

In 7th grade, I redesigned my school corporation’s website, and the director of my jr./sr. high school’s computer club (called Buddy Step-Up, which is since defunct) liked it enough to ask if we could take over the corporation’s web design. We got it approved, and my design went live. It went through a couple of different iterations after that; it’s now unrecognizable, and frankly, I’m not a huge fan of the latest design, which uses Javascript and is rather slow (sorry Ben, if you’re the designer; it’s nothing personal!).

In any case, I’m not yet up-to-date on the newest version of HTML (which is 5.0), not that it’s officially “released” yet, but it is available for people to use while the bigwigs work out the bugs. So, I guess I would like to learn some of the new tags added in version 5.0. I know about the video tag, and it’s very easy to use. What I don’t know, however, is how to make something like this nifty little page that lets the user drag the text boxes to the trash can. While this looks very simple and, at first glance, not very useful, I think there could be some interesting applications for it. One thing I could do is make a website with short stories on it, and then use this code in order to provide the reader with a way to track what he/she has already read. The reader would drag a story to a trash can, or something else, and it would disappear. He or she could then go through the rest of the stories (or other website elements), out of order, until there is nothing left to read. Then it’s time to log off.

Granted, this trash can webpage is actually done with HTML and Javascript, which I don’t know at all, but I do know that it wouldn’t be possible without the update to HTML. Maybe it’s time to learn Javascript, at least the basics.

I’ve done programming before but never with Java or Javascript. On the other hand, I did use Alice for a class in undergrad; it’s like a front-end to Java, and it’s very cool. The user can program in Java without realizing it. It’s just like making an animated story. Seriously, it’s just drag-and-drop, moving characters and other elements around to create an animated Java program. It’s designed for high schoolers and college students, so it’s very use to use, once you know the basics of the program. Check it out if you’re interested in programming; ignore this paragraph if you’re not.

*NOTE: This blog entry is syndicated from a blog I had to start for my Electronic Publishing class at U.B. this semester. I may or may not delete the extraneous blog when the class is over, but I thought I would at least give my readers the opportunity to read the contents of that blog indefinitely.