Impending storm

Current mood: Enthusiasic
Current song: Watch me Shine

What's up everyone, I've been checking my blog once in a while and I've noticed my posts are a bit ...lengthy, so I'll just go straight to the point from now on. I promise not more than 200 words.

I arrived at Jeneen's class a little late today. Not so surprising as I always crash in late. But believe me I had an early errand to run, actually an early kitty errand. Diamond, the beloved diva and mother cat of the house, was all meow meow on me. In other words, she was hungry as well as angry. According to Rosalina (the new housemaid) we're not only out of cat-food but chicken, meat, fish or anything edible for cats. Yeah, right! like I would believe that ( I could have sworn I saw some chicken in that pot on the corner). I let it pass because I did not want to get caught up in unnecessary early morning argument with her. So I decided to run to the closest store and buy a dozen of tuna cans. It took me 2 traffic lights to arrive back home ( that equals 15 minutes, sorry Ahmed for using lots of numbers, check with Nora). And that was it, my justification for being late.

Lesson Learned:

• A man cannot say no to a demanding cute little kitty face, even if it makes you late to class.
• Maids are evil.

Okay, enough chattery and more serious talk. The impending storm that I'm referring to in the post's title is the presentation we'll be doing on the 8th next month. We just had a semi website evaluation game. Everyone contributed and said what they thought was good/bad about the website shown via the projector (except Yousef, I guess). Moreover, Jeneen kept saying "Why" everytime someone opened their mouth, not that it's a bad thing though. I kinda was in a little talkative mood, so I was very critical if I didn't like a bit from the website evaluated. And boy did I not like many things. Haha hehe haha ho

Crap, that's what I was afraid of; writing walls of texts. Sorry *runs away*

One more thing, I'll just post some points that will remind people what aspects they should focus on during their presentations:

1. Download time
2. Content
3. Design
4. Navigation
5. Topicality
6. Usability (HCI: Human computer Interaction)
7. Interactivity
8. Audience

So I'm off to search for a bunch of websites, in order to find the most appropriate one to utilize the above-mentioned areas. I'll let you know if I cam across any good ones. 'til next then.

Another day, another drama

current mood: workaholic
current song: Behind These Hazel Eyes

Hey guys, I just started the third week of this semester and allow me to say it's crammed with assignments attacking from all courses (Teachers are doing their best though, expecially Jeneen :P).

Not only that, but I'm also nominated to join an exchange program, which is basically a trip to St. Gallen University in Switzerland. We go there for 10 days and their students come to our college and stay for 10 days. Wait, wasn't it the other way around?

Anyway, I'm in the Web-Portfolio class right now. Jeneen just asked us to update our blogs, so here I am! One more thing relevant to this course; we are also expected to to do a website evaluation presentation. I remember doing one of these last year with (my collegue) Saeed AKA AOW. planning for it was fun. However, this time we are supposed to do it not just about any website of our choice but within the boundaries of portfolio websites.

To sum, as you can see we are still in the early stages of this course, in other words we are merely doing research about portfolio websites, looking for more examples, good ones.

I'll let you know how's everything going with the presentation, which will be held on the 8th next month.

Portfolio website evaluation

http://www.olawojtowicz.com/

This website neatly fits in the portfolio category as it represents a person’s work, achievements, interests and personal information.

I think Ola Wojtowicz’ website replaces a business card, because it showcases everything a viewer would like to learn about her. Here's brief evaluation on Olga's website that Ms. Jeneen asked us to do:

As you type the website in your browser’s search bar, a welcoming page shows up. I’m not usually a fan of this, but I could make an exception about this page. The welcoming page exposes a beautifully designed “ENTER” and an array of the awards logos that the website’s creator has won, just in case the viewer is not tempted enough by the charming appearance of the “ENTER” button.

Along with many others I just couldn’t resist, “Click”. A very jazzy, yet calm tune plays to get you in the mood (there’s a small Radio icon in the left hand corner if you want to turn off the music). The main page itself looked organized and not busy. Considering the site is totally done in Flash, nothing “attacks” you when you enter which is sometimes the case with other flash websites, but you are in full control of the page. Moving on to other elements, the main page is so easy to navigate that you can locate a small notebook on the ground. When you click it, it automatically opens up and comes to the screen as if by magic. The notebook lists all the important information about Ola Wojtowicz on one page, and a changing portrait of her is on the other side.

Ola herself is a designer so the portfolio itself is an essential place to display that, and it does. The gallery branches into more than one section including graphics, painting and photography. Whenever you hover the mouse over any of them, they change colors and in some cases the first letter becomes capitalized, so it’s visually attractive.

The designer made sure that every single page contains a moving thing/object to keep it alive and vibrant, and therefore keep the viewer interested. Interactivity in the website is simple, fast and easy to access. Just click the “CONTACT” button on the menu column and your Mac will automatically open the Mail program, allowing you to type in whatever notes you want to send directly to the web-designer. In short, I think the website completely covers every aspect of a portfolio website in a very engaging way and keeps the viewer fully interested and in my opinion make them a regular visitor to check for more updates. I say this speaking from experience.

So clicky clicky, go have a look!

My 1st post

This is my first my post!

The purpose of this blog to demonstrate the steps of creating a portfolio website. In other words, this blog will document the process of my work.

Furthermore, You are going to expect rough sketches, early/Beta designs, screen shots and more things concerning "Designing a portfolio website".

Oh I almost forgot, This blog is essentially an assessment which we will be graded for. This falls under the COMA 209 PORTFOLIO DEVELOPMENT course.

In case you are not familiar with the guy up in the attached image, it is Uchiha Itachi, whom I look up to. I'll keep you guys posted in a regular basis.