Blog Topic #7: What's Semantic Markup?

Semantic markup is the use of descriptive HTML tags to describe the content of a web page. For example, using a "p" tag to mark up a paragraph of text or using a "ul" tag to makup a list and "li" tags for its list elements. Semantic markup permits both user and the computers to "understand" the meaning of the content that is being presented.

Many designers believe the structure should be separate the presentation or the design, so the content of the pages remain "pure" and be easily understood when the design is stripped away.

One of the more common things that people do is that they tend to use "table"s to format their pages. Some designers believe "table" should only be used to markup tabular data which consists of columns and rows. They thing using "table" to layout pages was trick to be able to layout paged before CSS was widely support.

Some more of the semantic mistakes are:

• Using h1 , h2, h3...tags to increase the font size or making the text bold.
• Using "line break" tag to put more space between the elements.

• Using more than one "h1" tags in a page, since it should only be used for the top level headline.

I am sure there many other semantic mistakes that people make, including myself, but these are the only once that comes to mind now.

Blog Topic #3: What is RSS?

RSS is acronym for Really Simple Syndication. It is a family of web feed format, and frequently updated web documents such as blogs, and news headline websites use it to publish their contents. This system is very useful in that it enables the publishers to syndicate their contents automatically. It also allows the readers easy access to the latest updated contents from their favorite web-blogs and new-related sites without visiting the sites each time.

An "aggregator" is either mobile devise based, or web based software that is used to read RSS.

Many different RSS readers are available for different platforms. These readers include Amephetadesk, FeedReader, and NewsGator. Web-based feed RSS readers are also available through My Yahoo, Google Reader and Bloglines.
Once I have the feed reader, I can subscribe to my friends' blogs by adding the weblogs' URI-Uniform Resource Identifier, to the list of feeds my Feed Reader. this allows it to check the updates on a regular basis. If my fellow classmates have added the RSS gadget to their blog page, I can just click that icon to subscribe to their blogs.

Blog Topic #4: Customize This

The are many options for customizing the looks of my blog page. In addition to changing the colors and fonts to different areas of my page, I also added images and gadgets among others.

After selecting the "Water Mark" template from the template designer, I changed the background image to the "Maple Leave" image. I also chose the warmer brown color theme to better complement the background image. In the advanced menu, I was able to also customize the text color to specific elements such as the Blog Title and Footer colors to various shades of brown. Furthermore, the text and color of the links can also be altered, both in the body and the footer sections. For my blog, I set the link color and the "visited link" colors the same, and the "hovering link" color a brighter shade to be more inviting.

Some gadgets were also added to my blog page, including "profile", "Archive", "Followers", and the "Pageview" counter. The positions of these gadgets were rearranged in a descending order, and the overall body layout was set with a right-sided sidebar. The width of the of the blog was left at the default setting and the width of the sidebar reduced to allow for better readability

I think the overall look of my blog is pleasant and convey the serene feeling I was looking for.

Blog Topic #1

Blog Topic #1

This is a website for a graphic design company. In addition to introduce the company to its potential clients, it showcases its past projects in a very clever and creative way.

Homepage is "rolled" out to reveal the contents on the page. Since I am also taking Flash 1 along with this class this semester, I find this especially interesting to me. Because I believe this is achieved by the way of Flash. The red square opened up into an irregular grid, and produced a red ball to introduce the company logo. The red ball becomes part of the menu bar, is very imaginative. The contrast of the black background with the brilliant color of the graphics really makes them stand out. The past projects are shown as thumbnails which are display in pop-up windows when selected, with the help of JavaScript.

I also liked that along with the top and bottom navigations, it also utilized the red square grid pattern as part of its navigation. It is a very clever idea for the secondary navigation.

The overall design of the website is very clean, even with all the different colors and elements in it. The visual impact of the company logo designed into the red grid is outstanding. The portfolio page with each section having a different yet coordinating color logos, and are then displayed in their respective page, is a wonderful design touch.