Final Midterm Project Link

After many weeks of work, our site is finally ready to upload! And what a site it is... this one I am incredibly proud to be part-owner of!

http://artweb.stritch.edu/peruka/MidtermProject/

(Note: For an unknown reason, the North America and South America sidebar buttons seem to have lost their alignment when opened with Firefox. However, opening the site in Safari or Chrome should yield the correct alignment. Thanks for your understanding!)

Another Two Pages Complete!

Over the past few days I have completed adding information to two more pages: Europe and Australia! This leaves only 2 more to be completed, which are being handled by Monique (South America and Africa).  I'd say this is a fantastic success!

As you may have noticed, the "Jump To" link names are a bit different for Australia than any other continent page.  Since Australia is its own country as well as continent, I felt that I should get a little more creative with the names of these links.

Update Extravaganza!

With the map completed, the next step is to actually add content to the pages!

I've been hard at work creating a template for the content pages to follow, as to ensure a consistent look to all of our information.  Shown below in the template in its barest form.

Most of it is a lot of "REPLACE_ME"'s and "DO_THIS_THING_HERE" but I attempted to make it as straightforward as possible. With it, I have currently finished one page of actual content, as shown below.

A few things to note about this big update are:

1. A background! It's hard to tell here, but it's a standard dogtooth pattern.  I thought having the red background looked nicer than the default white.

2. Highlighted buttons! So you know what page you're on simply by looking at the sidebar.

3. The links on each page will correspond with the links in the sidebar and the color of the continent on the map.  Adds a pop of color but still looks refined.
4. The "jump to" links.  I've used a handy tool called Named Anchors to allow users to jump straight to any of the 3 recipes on a given HTML page.

EDIT: Shortly after I posted this update, I was able to finish the North America page as well. This leaves only 4 more continents to go!

Adding the Map

Thanks to Monique, we now have our world map on the home page! It doesn't link up to any other sites just yet, but that will be the next step in our process.  As you may be able to tell, the page looks a little bit different than what you saw in my earlier blog post, but it remains to be said that I am happy with how the page is turning out.  Now we just need to add in all our information to the country pages!

The Homepage Takes Shape

Finally, our home page is starting to take shape! Monique and I have been working on the design, and Will has been diligently beginning research so we can fill our website with some great recipes.

So far, this is what we have of our site!  We've spent a lot of time experimenting with the colors, but I'm personally rather happy with the cream and wine-red color scheme.  Monique will be editing a map to put in right on the home page, so users can navigate not only with the sidebar but by clicking on the countries as well.  Currently, all that lies in the home page is filler text, but we'll take care of that soon enough!

Navigation Map

Below is a Navigation Map, created with the help of a web tool called Gliffy, that shows how one will access the contents of our group website. (Which, by the way, we have officially settled on the title of: InCuiz! It stands for International Cuisine. Cute, eh?)

Looks pretty simple, right? That's precisely because it is simple! With the help of a side-navigation present on all pages, you can access any page from anywhere. Again, on each page will be three different dishes, but they will all remain on one page per region. We hope that it will be easy for users to navigate our page and be able to find a "taste" of what they might be looking for.

Another note on navigation: the brilliance of our professor, Bryan Cera, brought forth another great idea for the site, which is to have an actual world map somewhere on the page, with the ability to click on your region of choice as another way to access the different region pages. I am certainly a fan, so I hope we're able to implement this into our site.

Research Website: Proposal

As midterms approach, I am faced with a new challenge: a research website, using the HTML and Adobe DreamWeaver skills I have learned thus far in the semester.  Thankfully, I don't have to go it alone: with the help of partners Monique Morris and Will Spurway, we hope to create a useful website revolving around global food and how to bring popular global dishes into one's own kitchen.

Our site proposal is as follows:

1.) Declaration of research topic.  Food; more specifically, popular dishes from six different regions of the world (we have chosen to focus on the United States, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia). Each page will contain a minimum of 3 dishes, each dish as unique/different from the others as possible to accommodate multiple tastes. Some things we hope to include are: recipes, pictures, description, history behind the dish, and general taste.

2.) Organization of content.  We plan to organize our information and pages of our site by uploading them to one single Stritch account; however, we will each still be in charge of specific pages, as discussed in part three of the proposal.  The information will flow in a hierarchical method of navigation; we want users to be able to access any page from anywhere.

3.) Division of labor / responsibilities.  Our group will be dividing the workload as follows:

• Will will research dishes from Europe & Australia and create 1 web page per region.
• Monique will research dishes from South America & Africa and create 1 web page per region.
• Paige will research dishes from the United States & Asia and create 1 web page per region.
• The home page and works cited page will be a collaboration from all three members.

4.) Rough vision for layout, theme, navigation, etc.  Included below is a very rough mock-up of what we might like our home page to look like.

Please note that the title is subject to change.

• Header: Includes title and subtitle.  Possibly on background image, otherwise we are considering a neutral beige color.
• Title text: Something bold, possibly scarlet red?
• Body text: Lighter, near-white color.
• Side Navigation: Link to home page and 6 regions we are covering.
• Each region will have an expandable menu to access 3 different subregions; however all 3 will remain on the same overlapping region page (so these links will go to different parts of the same page).  Keep navigation on left of page.
• Content: Located to the right of navigation.
• Home: description of what the site is for, a welcoming to users, etc.
• Regions: 3 dishes per region References will be included within the content pages

It will be interesting to see how our plans take shape and what changes occur in the process. I will be updating this blog continually throughout, so please look forward to it!