Narrative Site Update #7: Live on the Web!

A fantastic moment in time is finally upon us! CRASHLANDING has gone live!

Access the site HERE!

I'm very excited to finally have the site up and running. Though it is unfortunately still lacking some images, I hope that everyone will still enjoy the site. A lot of love and care went into making the site, and I feel I can be very proud of what I have accomplished.

I thank you for coming on this journey through a semester with me - Exploring Web Page Creation with Paige.

Narrative Site Update #6: The "About" Page

With just two days left before our exam time, the About page has been completed! I had to figure out a few new HTML tricks for this one; namely, getting the links in light-blue to open in new tabs.  The reason I wanted to do this is because all of these links take you off of my website and onto external places on the Web, so I thought opening the links in a new tab rather than users having to hit the "Back" button on their browser to return to my site was a much better fit.

There's just one thing left to do now: the actual scene pages! I should be able to get those done in time no sweat. Perfectly on schedule for what I'm wanting to get done! As such my next (and final) update should be me guiding you to where you can find my site when it goes live. I hope you've enjoyed joining me on my journey of web page creation, and are excited to see what I'm able to put out with the skills I've acquired since August!

Narrative Site Update #5: Character Biographies

After a lot of trial and error with a combined use of Dreamweaver and Photoshop, another page has been successfully completed: character biographies.

This gives the user more information about the three characters whose story they'll follow. As you can see in the screenshot above, the three images are greyscale in the non-hover state. However, when you mouse over the image, they appear in full color! This proved to be difficult to capture in a screenshot, so you'll have to wait until the website goes live to check that out.

Not only that, but the images themselves are actually links to a larger image, with a full-body portrait of the character as well as their name, age, height, strengths & weaknesses, and general role. By installing the FancyBox javascript tool to this page, the user is taken to this image without having to leave the character page for a new tab. What this looks like is shown in the following screenshot:

At this point in time, I'm unsure whether I will start work on the actual story pages or the About page. I'm leaning towards starting with the latter, as story pages will be more of a simple plug-and-chug since I've already got all the HTML and CSS for them in place. Our final exam is in one week, so here's hoping for a successful crossing of the finish line!

Narrative Site: ART APPRECIATION #1

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I'm incredibly grateful to have such a talented artist on my team! Here's a sneak peak at what Amanda has created so far for the story (scenes 1A, 1F, 2A, and 2F).

Narrative Site Update #4: The Homepage is Complete (Almost!)

The homepage is finally complete! (Almost!)

So far, the bottom of my homepage has been a work in progress, looking a bit rough around the edges. Now, I'm happy to present what the bottom of the page will look like, for this page as well as story-driven pages.  The text, which will be shown right below the image on each page, will give a description of what is going on in the story, and will always end with two options.  This is my introduction to the site, fitting for the home page.

Also shown is a functioning bottom navigation! No fancy images this time, just pure HTML/CSS text. The links all have rollover features as well, so they'll change color when your mouse hovers over them.

The homepage only needs one more thing: an introductory image! The image will be of the main characters' ship flying through space. My artist, Amanda, will be getting this to me as soon as possible, but we've both just been incredibly busy with other finals work, which is no surprise; college is a lot of work! I'd rather get half of the images by the end of finals from her, all fantastic quality, than all the images with rushed quality. I plan to update the site with the rest of the images beyond the time limit of this course, likely during winter break. So even after the site goes live, keep an eye out for updates!

The next portion of the site I plan to work on is character biographies - I'll be covering that in my next blog post.