MODULE FOUR - Flash

Flash is one of the most exciting programs on the net, when in the hands of a really good designer. Everyone has seen those sh**ty 'shoot the monkey to win an iPhone' advertisements, and that is not what I'm talking about. I'm talking turning a web page into something more dynamic than just articles and textual information.

For example recently I've noticed a lot of advertisement popups on news.com.au. Normally I'd oppose to these obtrusive popups, but lately there has been a lot of innovation that made me take notice. For example I noticed an Intel ad recently that seemed to be just this little box among the sea words and pictures. Then all of a sudden the letters in the flash ad exploded and letters went flying right across the page to my amazement. This is made possible by Javascript manipulating div's in order to make the flash area bigger for a moment. Because the DIV is transparent, as is the background of the flash movie, it gives the impression that the flash advertisement was able to break out of it's containment, when in fact it momentarily took control of the whole area of the browser.

I also like it when I find a movie trailer advertisement on a webpage... on one condition... I want to be the one who initiates the download and playing of the movie. Lately a lot of movies just play themselves and you only have the choice of turning the sound on. Now if god bestows his wrath upon the world once more and I have to see Paris Hilton's skull on the TV spots, I don't want to go to news.com.au and have my bandwidth and CPU power wasted on her mediocre (is that too generous) acting skills. Is there not a rule or something that web designers need to ethically follow, where you don't force something upon somebody in a web page?

Anyway, Flash is cool, it's here to stay and as speeds and processing power gets better, I think it's going to develop into an extremely powerful programming platform.

MODULE FOUR - Bookmark Manager

I'm personally not a big fan of storing information like bookmarks on my computer. The reason being that when I format my computer, 9 times out of 10 I'll forget to save my bookmarks. That's what got me onto using delicious. It's a web based bookmark manager that has many other benefits than your normal browser gives you.

For starters, delicious is a social network. Not in the same sense as what Facebook is, but rather it is more focused on sharing bookmarks. The strength of this social network is the ability of seeking bookmark rankings. The more users that have bookmarked a particular URL, the more likely that the URL contains valid and relevant information.

Your able to search for bookmarks in delicious just like pages in Google. Delicious works by searching through the tags that users gives their bookmarks. For example if I bookmarked a page on the Joe Satriani Ibanez guitar then I would give it the tags 'Satriani', 'Ibanez' and 'Guitar'. I left 'joe' out because it is quite an abitrary tag that wouldn't give as relevant a result as what 'Satriani' would. In fact the whole searching capabilities of Delicious rely on a tags level of relevance to the bookmark it is referencing.

The other bonus of delicious is that you can access your bookmarks from any computer in the world. All you do is go to the delicious site and log in and all your bookmarks are displayed in your profile, where you can search through your tags or create notes to remind you why you bookmarked a particular page.

The future is cloud computing, and I really feel that the more information I can unchain from my computer (as long as it is secured) the better!

If you'd like to jump on the delicious band wagon head on over to http://delicious.com/

There's also an extension for Firefox that makes using delicious easy as one could want.

MODULE THREE - Web 2.0

Well to start with the aesthetics of the BlinkList site own the HTML page. There is nothing to attract your eyes in the HTML version except for an overwhelming blueness. Finding the information you want would be a nightmare because of this.

On the BlinkList site, each article has a picture and a heading that can be easily read, making each one of them distinguishable from the next. The inclusion of server side scripting also allows a rating and comments system to be implemented, which can help you decide the validity and usefulness of an article.

I'm going to go out on a whim here and say that everybody in this course would prefer the BlinkList site like me.

The only true benefit I can come up with for the HTML version is that it would load quicker. Also the fact that it would probably be easier for most people to create a page like this.

MODULE THREE - Copyright

Just quickly before I begin, I want to point out that I haven't done the optional tasks. I know that of course optional means you can choose whether or not you do it, but I think it's good for my learning. However I'm so time deprived with work, school and finding room mates that I'm purposely skipping these not because I don't want or am too lazy to do them, but because I like to sleep a little bit before the sun comes up :-)

Anyway as for the Curtin logo. I struggled to find good solid information on this, so I resorted to a little commonsense and the WebCT discussion board. I don't think I can rewrite my thoughts any better so here's what I wrote there:

• 
  "I think that it would be in breach of copyright, because by placing that logo on your assignment you are in a way passing it off as officially endorsed by Curtin. So to me this means that you are 'selling' your essay to people as though it is part of the Curtin 'brand', which in fact means you are stealing curtin's good reputation to use as your own."
  

Have I used copyrighted materials before? Well sure probably in my own personal stuff. But in my work not at all.

MODULE THREE - BLOGS

So here I am discussing what I think about blogs on a blog. I never had any experience with blogs before I started this course, and I actually used to think they were a little bit geeky. It was not until I started using one did I find out how easy it is to spill your mind out into it without even knowing who might be viewing it.

I've found that I've actually started to search around for some interesting blogs, and more specifically, blogs that can make me laugh. I found a blog by someone called David Thorn who writes the most off beat posts poking fun (and sometimes confrontation) at every day happenings in his life and the people around him. In some cases he exposes his friends so much that they threaten him until he pulls it down. Whether he does this for his own amusement or for the amusement of others I'm not sure. But I do think that he's found an outlet for his mind in blogs. I'm sure if he found me talking so in depth about him, he'd probably try and make me look like an idiot on his blog. He had a news item a few weeks ago about a picture of a spider as payment for a bill. I recommend you check it out!

What I also find cool is the fact that people who are incredible writers but aren't journalists can now share their views and information with a huge audience. I'm sure everybody at some stage has come across a professional looking blog searching for information without even realising that it could be just some guy or girl doing it in their spare time. Perhaps these aren't going to hold much water in a referencing situation, but I've found that sometimes when I don't understand a reputable sources information, I can find a blog written by somebody that clears it up for me in everyday terms.

At this stage, I don't think I'm the sort of person that can maintain a regularly updated personal blog. For school and work it's fine, but the only reason that I could see myself using a blog is if I was to travel and wanted to share my experiences as the happened with people who cared. :-P

MODULE THREE - HTML Tags

I just completed my webpage and uploaded it to my webspace. I didn't have many difficulties completing this as I'm pretty familiar with the basics of HTML. I decided to style my page with CSS to conform to the current standard, because it just feels really wrong when I style a page within the markup.

One thing I can say is that Joe Barta's exercises are extremely useful for a beginner and I would recommend it to any learner!

I prefer html to blogging because I really love learning design. I'm no expert at design yet, but I get more enjoyment from creating pages than I do expressing my thoughts through blogging. I am getting used to it thanks to this course though :-)

Holiday nearly at an end

So the end is in sight, and soon I fly back to Melbourne to restart my 'other' life once more. I've been very quiet the last 3 weeks as I R&R down in Hobart, but I deserve it damn it! :-P This has been an extremely busy year with work where I do way over my set hours, and there is no such thing as school holidays in Open University (i don't want to have a whole study period off just to have a holiday).

Back to it!