User:Vtaylor/CIS89A Learning Web Design/topic 4

NOTE: Throughout the course there are a number of discussion activities that require research and comments. These are important because they address topics that web developers need to know about. And you should be critically examining the site designs, layouts and usability. We will be look at site evaluation criteria in more depth later in the course. For now use this evaluation criteria to guide your review of the sites you visit. In your post for each of the research activities include a note about the site design based on one of the criteria in the evaluation description.


 * 1) Success Skills - Share it - Communication and Collaboration are becoming more important as we are expanding our personal and professional networks of contacts and businesses. Review 2-3 articles from Success skills - Share it. The internet is all about sharing - information and processes including web development. What do professional web developers do? Look at the .html and .css source code for the sites you selected. What do you see that is different from what you are creating with Glitch? How does the code determine what the site looks like? Can you adapt some of these features and ideas in your own code? Post a link and a brief summary of one idea that you got from looking at the source code for the article you selected to the Success Skills - Share it discussion.

Pick two Blogs (or Vlogs) you find interesting and start reading them. Some that I like - Scientific American, Gizmodo. In the Blogs discussion, for one that you selected, post a link and a brief description and why you selected it.
 * 1) Blogs/Vlogs - Consider subscribing to the blogs or vlogs (video) of people or groups that regularly provide new and interesting information about a subject that interests you. Blogs/Vlogs are used by individuals, companies, colleges and organizations as a way to provide updates and news to "subscribers" - usually by email. But they are also viewable as web pages, so you don't have to subscribe to see the information.

Look through the Weebly themes or WordPress themes that are provided. It is important to understand how powerful CSS is for determining the look and layout for a site. The pages for your site don't have to have all the formatting coded on each page. Select 2 examples of themes from the themes gallery. The content is the same - text, associated pictures, links and category information. What are the noticeable differences between the page displays? What layout features are important to you and the display of your content? Post links to the gallery pages for the themes you are comparing, and a brief description of the differences (2-3 sentences), and your preference to the Weebly / WordPress themes discussion. .
 * 1) Themes - Popular blogging software includes WordPress and Weebly. WordPress is available as an "open source" application you can download and run on your own web server, or as a hosted service at WordPress.com. For these, the content of the site pages are stored separately from the format information by making extensive use of CSS functionality. A "theme" created with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) can be selected and applied to the site content. Other sources such as Bootstrap sell "themes" (complete CSS stylesheets) as well.


 * 1) Test drive - Twitter. Blogging in 140 characters. Read through the Newbie's guide to Twitter. Then search Twitter for some topics of interest. If you know hashtags or handles associated with topics and people, look them up. In the Test drive - Twitter discussion, post the contents of 2-3 tweets  that are interesting along with 2-3 associated hashtags and a brief comment about your Twitter experience.


 * 1)  Web Literacy - WRITE - Writing on the web enables one to build and create content to make meaning. Review the Web Literacy skills in the WRITE group. What is one thing that you aren't sure you understand? Look it up. In the Web Literacy - WRITE discussion, post a link to a resource where you found the answer.