Competition? psssssh

[OOPS...when I originally created this, I click save intstead of publish!!]


I have found many different portfolio websites for graphic designers...To be honest, the thing about these is that they are all original because they are created from the artist's perspective.

www.jmjco.com was a site that I really liked because of the style of the layout. This site was my "template" as far as the background/layout goes. What I didnt like about this site was the navigation and folders. When you click portfolio, it just poses a link, nothing fun or artsy...I think I did a good job of fixing that haha

www.chrisalbert.com was another site I enjoyed...though this is for a photographer and not a designer, I found it intriguing as I also value photography very much...I looooove love love the black style, as I used it in mine as well. I think black has such a professional and just beautiful look to it. So crisp. So nice.

Both of these sites come up under a "portfolio websites" keyword. I did not find myself landing on them with any other search, but rather found MILLLIONS of portfolio websites....I hope mine is found someday!!

THANK GOD!

In the words of Professor Katz...THANK GOD! The semester is finally over! And I am EXCITED to announce that I am DONE DONE DONE with the University of Bridgeport!

I was thankful for this course since after four years here I have not learned GoLive in any of my design classes. This course has given me a HUGE boost to what my resume looks like...being able to add GoLive and web publishing skills makes me SO MUCH MORE VALUABLE!

I WILL be using my website in the real world, as I will continue to update it as my portfolio to promote myself. I have pretty much finished the site, but I will need to continue to update it as projects come along. I also plan to add flash elements as I continue to learn the program.

I REEEEEEALLY enjoyed this class and the people in it. I was able to get GREAT feedback and have learned so much from not only the class material but also from all of you...so THANK YOU (and thank god its over!)

Adobe Help...

Overall, I was actually pretty suprised at how much information you can get out of that forum. Even problems I havent had yet, I know how to do things now just from reading other peoples problems.

I posted on the forum about my issues with the image mapping...the only response I got to that was that it was probably linked wrong and was coming out of my hard drive in my Mac browser...I think I have figured out the problem though...so go ahead and look at my site!! [NOT EVEN CLOSE TO FINISHED THOUGH LOL]

www.jessibornack.com


JB

Bruceclay.com

Overall, I found the website overwhelming. There is so much information on so many search engines. I am not an expert with all of this so, I felt as though it was waaaaay too much information. But, the way that the navigation is set up, it at least splits all the information into smaller segments.

Under the google, I found it really interesting that goggle.com is the most common mistype, and that it goes to a competing search engine. Things like that are good to know when creatin a website. Thankfully, I dont think a misspell of jessibornack.com exists as another major website.

I also found it interesting to see how much of an impact these sites hae on each other. Lycos for example, ended up turning into a yahoo! type site with directory categories like sports and news. Maybe one day, our sites will impact others?

I kinda found it funny when i looked at the MSN tab. It seems weird that one of the richest companies in the world produces one of the worst overall search engines. With less relevant results, users are obviously much more likely to use google or yahoo. Not to mention, that microsoft could easily spend money like yahoo and google to produce advertisement to boost their exsistance. What is microsoft doing with all their money? One thing is for sure, I will NOT be buying space or words here!

Overall, google is the winner. It seems as though EVERYONE should use google for adwords, search words etc, not only because they have more relevant results, but because of the volume of people using it daily.

Thats all for now...good luck with your website everyone!

JB

Pain in the Butt

I do not need this class to graduate. However, I have not learned the program in my major and I chose this class to help me widen my portfolio options. Web design is in demand as any company without a website is a nobody.

This program is HARD. I'm really struggling with it [for more reasons than one]. Im trying my hardest to get this goin. When I started, I found that I couldnt remember whether I was suppose to use a table for or the CSS column thing. Im so lost!! I keep changing my mind about how I want it to look also so I'm barely going anywhere, but I guess im goin, just slowly but surely.

GoLive

So far my GoLive experience has been very very minimal due to a devastating past week in my life.

As I am working back into it, I am finding that I am glad I took notes while watching the tutorial. I went to start my site and just kinda had that "a-duhhh" like what do I do? After reviewing notes I began to remember some things and I have been able to put some things together.

In case anybody did not know, there are a couple SIMPLE tutorials in the actual program. One of the first tutorials is on sitemaps. I found it MUCH MUCH MUCH easier to do the site map in GoLive...AND once you create your sitemap [they call it a diagram in GoLive] you can easily create all those pages and be ready to go!

I am finding the program very user friendly, but I am almost 100% positive that it is because I am verrrrry familiar with Adobe programs [photoshop, illustrator, indesign, etc] and the tools and menus are very similar.

I'm not too far on my homepage yet, but I'm getting there. Slowly but surely.

Until next time...

Gliffy.com Experience

On a 1-10 scale I would rate Gliffy.com at a 5. It seems the usability should be quite easy, however you learn it is not when you find yourself deleting the many things you do wrong. Here is a list of things I did not like about the website:

-Nowhere does it tell you to drag the object onto the page…you must learn from trial and error.

-The connector tools were very hard to use. I ended up using just the line tool instead because I could not get the connector tool to make lines look the way I wanted them to.

-When you open the drop down tool menu thing, the only way you can get the items to go away is by opening another group. I tried several times to re-click the name to make the drop down go back up (like it does in Adobe programs)

It is very much a trial and error site, and I suppose after your first try you go back and know how to do what you already did, but the initial visit should not be so hard. I would rather do a sitemap directly in GoLive, as I find it much easier to use.

So long for now.

JB