Oh well, I’m happy for the most part…

I can’t seem to fix the two pages with wonky images in IE7. In IE 6 they are OK, in Safari all is good, too, and Firefox is “practically perfect in every way” (to quote Mary Poppins).

Generally, I’m pleased with the way the website has come together and proud of myself for learning so much and coming so far in just a few months. I’m looking forward to starting on another project. This one will be far more complex, especially if I can make what I see in my head and what I can think of incorporating, materialize in the digital world.

But the real point is that I’ve learned enough to remove the fear of trying and now I’m ready to learn more.

Yikes! what’s up with some of my images!?!

OK, so I just looked at my website in IE 7 and boy…I’ve still got some work to do. So, it seems that I spoke too soon. But I’m hopeful that I can straighten things out this evening when I get home. They look like easy fixes, but we’ll see…

Oh, did I ever mention…?

…that the picture in the header of my blog is my own? It’s the service gondolas near the Doge’s Palace in Venice on a very cold and rainy day in December 2008.

I was proud of myself for breaking out of the unimaginative early blog design.

I think I’m finished

Well, after much trial and error, coding and recoding, I think my final web project is finished. It looks great in Firefox, in Safari it looks OK, tho there’s a couple wonky places that I can’t seem to fix. In IE it’s actually not too bad either, tho I’ve not yet checked it at work where I have IE 7.

I skooched the footnotes right just a bit, but I really don’t like all the empty space on the left-hand side of the pages, so I’m not going to move them in any further. And the images could be better, but given what I was working from, they’re pretty good. I really wish I could have been able to scan from the original photographs, but even if they still exist, there simply wasn’t time. I’m just glad I had some version of them to work with at all.

<<heavy sigh>>

So, seventeen pages of content with forty-five images. That’s what my masters’ thesis has been reduced to. I hope it’s interesting to anyone who might stumble on it someday. I’ll leave it up at least through the year…maybe longer. I thought about putting contact info up, too, but didn’t really want to encourage a Viagra-selling bot email inundation. If someone really wants to find me for questions, comments, criticisms (all of which I’m up for), there are a few ways they can do that and they’ll figure it out.

I’ve been really impressed with the projects my fellow graduate students have created. I know that I learned a lot and I’m a little proud of myself now. I think I’ll only get better and someday I may look back at this first web project and say “Yikes!” (kind of like I do when I come across something I wrote about fifteen years ago).  It’s been fun…stressful sometimes, but really fun. Certainly “better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick,” as my grandfather used to say. Great man, my grandfather.

Uugh! so discouraging

Just looked at my website in IE…several of my images are wonky and there are a few places where I have “issues” with my text…

stupid IE

on a lighter note – if you Google “Carmichael Battle Wyoming” I’m right there at the top with my “sandbox” and my final project websites. Yippee, right? I know. I’m probably the only one who will Google it this way. But I’ll take my victories where I can find them.

Searching my website

I think the only thing missing is a search engine feature for my final project. I don’t think we’ve talked about this at all in class (or maybe we did and I blocked it out – which is possible).

I definitely think it’s important but I’m not sure what my options are or if I should be worrying about it right now. I plan to leave the site up for a while, so maybe I’ll add the search in a week or two? I’ve looked at the Google search utility and I think it may be suitable. Only thing is, unless I want to pay $100/year, I’ve got to allow ads to appear on the “results” page.  Is that annoying to users? What will this say about my credibility? Not that I’ve “hung my hat” on the content of this definitely entry-level website – it is 10 years old, after all,  and seriously weeded down from the original. But I do want it to be a good website and reflect well on me, particulary since it’s my first such effort.

Anyone have any thoughts on this? I really think a website without a search feature is next to useless and will only drive a potential user away. Maybe all the ads will say about me is that I’m a fiscally challenged graduate student. What do you think?

Final is “done”…finally…I think

My brain is jello…I spent all day Saturday creating pages, footnotes, and links. And all day today adding my images, creating my directory and sub-directories, and just got done uploading everything. Phew.

I moved my old files around, so all my “project/task” files are on one server and my final project is on another.

My final is all right here if you’re interested. I may still add another image or two, and fix an image caption or two, but that’s no big deal compared with what I’ve been through, er, I mean, got to do all weekend.

I still can’t get the “skip nav” to work properly, but if I can figure it out, I’ll only have to change the main.css. Once I finally figured out how to reduce the opacity of the background image, it turned out I didn’t like having it under the header at all. Too distracting. At least, to me. So, that was a few hours wasted for this go ’round, but next time I’ll know, right?

OK. Now I wait for Tuesday’s “preliminary” review of final projects. I’m first up on the first of two nights…

But now I simply gotta get some reading done! I do have another class, ya know. But not tonight. Time for sleep.

Heavy Sigh

Wednesday evening I made most of the changes that were suggested to me in Tuesday’s class – thanks everyone for your help and suggestions! I say “most” because I still cannot figure out how to use the faded background image to fill behind my header and title and fade out down my web page. I’ve tried everything to find the right coding – I’ve Googled, I’ve read blogs, I’ve hunted in Stylin‘, CSS Zen and W3c, and everywhere else I can think of and I can’t seem to find anything that will make it work the way I want it to. So, after 4 hours more tonight, it’s time to set this challenge aside. It’s probably really easy…it the easy stuff that trips me up the most.

At least, that’s what I keep telling myself so that I won’t psyche myself out.

Now it’s time to turn to the many pages of content and images to finish up my final project. I’ve managed to trim my 80 typed pages into about 14-16 web pages, made up of much shorter paragraphs. And I’ve got roughly 20 images or so…maybe more. I don’t know. I just scanned everything because I’d rather have too many sources than not enough. There won’t be bells and whistles on this site. I’m saving those for my next digital project.

I hope this works…

Really Cool Use of Omeka…

I mentioned a few minutes ago that I was thinking of another project…I think this project would involve images, data exploration through graphs and maps, text (transcriptions, annotations, and related articles), scans of newspaper columns (if I can get permission from the original publication, still owned by descendants of the original owner – I don’t anticipate trouble there though), and probably sound and video. So, not knowing really much else about it, I was just checking out Omeka.

Look at this project created by a group of students in a digital libraries course at Simmons College. It’s about a year old, so maybe I’m late in “discovering” it, but I think I’m seeing it far differently than I would have last fall anyway. Clean, simple design, with high functionality. I’m a very inspired fan.

New Design’s Coming Along

…and I’d really like to know what you all think. I’m facing some challenges with my background image – although it looks great on my 2010 Mac, it looks a little less great on my husband’s 2005 PC, whether I use IE or Firefox. I can’t quite keep it from its wonkiness on this older computer.

And if anyone can help me with my linkages, I’d appreciate it. The link from my “Image” assignment to my “Design” assignment doesn’t work. Here’s how I’ve coded it: <li><a href=”http://mason.gmu.edu/~lcarmic3/../design/”>Design</a></li>

This is what I was told to do, since I’m asking it to go out of the “Image” folder, and back down to the “Design” folder. I’m sure it’s something simple. It usually is. I’ve double-checked my folder hierarchy in my “Site” folder and in the upload on the server. Fortunately, you can get to the “Design” page from my Portfolio “Home” and from my “Type” assignment.

So, here’s the “Design“…

Oh, and I’m thinking up another project, a Depression through World War II web archive based on something I was thinking about during Clio I. But it will be more complicated and since Professor Petrik advised against doing something new, it will very likely be an “after this class is over” project. But if I can get a skeleton design up before the end of class, I’d love feedback on that too.

Stay tuned…