Campus Penguin Part 4

Questions have been aroused about what type of multimedia to be implemented into the site. One of the ideas that a team mate came up with is to ad a slider on the front page displaying various featured posts. Since our site is basically posting what you want to sell or finding work, a lot of interactive media is not really called for. Basic things such as optimizing images for the web and making a log in, have already been installed and basically ready to go. However, one thing did come to mind with a little help from a teacher, Sharon Kaitner. She mentioned something about a tutorial we had done in class about using jQuery to scroll to top. Here is an example of what I am talking about:

http://kgphojo.aisites.com/fall2010/intermediate_web_design/tutorial/

I think this would be a great addition especially if the website ends up being popular for students.

Graceful Degradation & Progressive Enhancement

So in Web land there are two things that will come up a lot. Graceful Degradation and Progressive Enhancement. So what are they? When I was doing some research on HTML5 and CSS3 for the redesign of my site, I came across an article on Smashing Magazine. While reading this article, I came across these two terms and this is a very good explanation for these two terms:

"Graceful Degradation is a widely used term which ideology is basically using the latest technologies first, and then fix anything that needs fixing for older browsers. We do this on a daily basis: most of us code for Firefox first, then fix Internet Explorer. That is Graceful Degradation in the practice.

Progressive Enhancement refers to the habit of building first for the less capable, outdated browser and then enhance for the latest technologies. We, too, use this on a daily basis. For example, most of the times we code a website we start with the markup and then apply an external CSS file where we add all the styling. That is Progressive Enhancement in the practice."

source

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/08/04/designing-a-html-5-layout-from-scratch/

Campus Penguin Project Part 3

So far so good with campus penguin. The site seems to be coming along well with a couple of expected snags here and there. This week, I ended up helping out with the finalization of the logo. This is one of the things that you can implement 1,000 times and still think of a new way to go. We all came to an agreement on the colors of the site as well as the design, which seems very strong. Further more my partner, Brent, and I researched more plug-ins we can use for the back end of the site to make it work better. Brent and I also spoke more about various things we should be able to do and have a few more things to figure out.  As far as weaknesses that we have been noticing are that even though WordPress (the main part we are using as the backend) is very well rounded, there are a lot of things that are just having troubles with. Some of the plug-ins may not work, and making them work can consume a lot of time.  In all, I think we will end up with a very strong piece that will be used in a good way for students.

Campus Penguin Project Part 2

The project our team is working on is coming out fantastic. We agreed on some colors and now are doing the fine tuning for our design. A few things came up when we met as a team last week, one being the size of the site and what we need to do to optimize it for all the viewers regardless of what type of browser or system they are using.

Campus Penguin Design Reaction

Above you can see our new design! As a team we agreed on the color scheme and are happy overall. There is a couple of points that we might change but overall we like the look. But what we like is what we like.