Katy's Dreamweaver/Flash: January 2012

Monday, January 30, 2012

Button

I created a button from the video and ran it as a test. I made screen shots of each stage of the test and saved them, but I don't know what the "HIT" stage is for. I copied the button from Flash in the hit stage and saved it with the rest of the stages of the button just to show.

If you have created a button, do you know what the Hit stage is for?

Thursday, January 26, 2012

This is too much fun! I had to refer back to the instruction videos a couple times, but so cool!

I made the pencil video in flash then exported it to a .mov file, uploaded it to youtube and embedded it here!

I've added some of my own content to my Dreamweaver index page. Since I'm going to be recreating the ITS website for Tompkins County, I'm using current content and will be reformatting and hopefully updating in a positive way as I go along.

The problem with knowing a little about what I'm learning is that I want to do more than what is indicated in the lesson. I'm sorry if I get a little ahead of myself...

I'm still working on getting my web address available to everyone to see...

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

TempITS

I got permission from my boss to use our company web server to host my site for this class. I'm glad he is letting me do that. First I won't have to pay for a domain name. And second I'm focusing on updating the Information Technology Services website for my company anyway. Only drawback? I don't have outside access to upload information to the website, I will have to do that from our internal network at work, so even if I am doing stuff at midnight, I'll have to wait until the morning and upload from work. I guess I can deal with that.

So, I started my "home" page... Got this far:

Two column liquid with header and footer...

As you can see, I haven't added any of my own content yet. It is coming...

Please forgive me if I seem a bit "Gun-Ho" about this. I really enjoy this type of thing and this is the first time I have actually had the opportunity to take a class in web design. I've created web sites with other programs, but I have never had any official training. Besides, this is sort of relaxing for me. I can do this while other stuff is going on around me and I get so into it, I can't even hear the "could-be distractions."

Saturday, January 21, 2012

Flash... Aaaahhhhh....

Watched the first Flash assignment. I have a lot to learn here, but it looks like it is going to be fun. I created my own Flash workspace and called it Katy's Workspace.

Katy's Workspace

As you can see, I moved the toolbar, reduced the timeline so it is out of my way, and moved and stacked the color panel and swatches panel. I am not sure if I will leave this as my workspace or change it later on, but this was what was directed in the training exercise, so this is what I did.

Recently while watching the Cartoon Network or some other network similar to that, my grandson, Jeter, and I watched how cartoons were made. While listening and watching this Flash assignment, the instructor talked about 24 frames per second and I had visions in my head of creating my own cartoon! LOL! I don't know if that is realistic or not, but wouldn't that be fun if my grandson (who is 4 years old) could help me create a cartoon for us to watch together? Maybe I'm getting ahead of myself, and I'm not going to tell him about it because I don't want to get his hopes up before I know I can do it, but it was a fun thought. I even already have the idea - have had for a couple years...

Monday, January 16, 2012

Basic HTML Source Provided by Dreamweaver

Here is my screen-capture of a basic html source supplied by Dreamweaver to get me started. I have had some html in the past, but not much so some of these tags look familiar to me, although I see a lot of stuff that doesn't look familiar (mainly the web stuff that apparently indicates where the standards or something are locate!

Definitions:
The <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC ...> tag allows the browser to display the html page correctly.

The <html> opening tag indicates that the page is in html and all of the code needs to go between this tag and the closing html tag which looks like this: </html>

The <head> tag has information that the user will not see, but the browser uses to display the page correctly. Within the head tag is the <meta> tag and the head tag is the <title> tag.

The <meta ... > tag contains information telling the browser that it will be receiving text as html and the characterset that will be utilized in the page.

The <title> tag displays the title of the page at the very top of the page either in the window heading or on the actual tab in the new browsers that allow the user to have many pages open at a time. The title must between the two title tags the opening <title> tag and closing </title> tag.

The <body> tag indicates the start of what will be displayed to the user. Everything that the user is to see must go between the opening <body> tag and the closing </body> tag.

Thursday, January 12, 2012

Let's Get Started!!!

Got my Dreamweaver "Learn By Video, Core Training in Web Communciation" today. Started watching. Most of what I have watched so far I already know. I have learned about html tags and such in the past so I am hoping that learning exactly how they work and working with them will come easy to me. I've never worked in Dreamweaver itself, but I think I will be able to get it OK. I like the WYSIWYG format and the split screens.

I've actually blogged before. I created a blog when my niece was waiting for her double lung and liver transplant and it was through the blog that I kept everyone updated. After her successful transplants and she returned to health she took over her own blogging in Myspace and not on facebook. My original blog is at http://princepack.blogspot.com. It is still there, but the most recent entries are from when my daughter and son were in a really bad accident. Go check it out, there are pictures of the car they were in and even though I was so scared (my son was in the hospital 7 days, and I stayed at his bedside the whole time), I made sure the blog was kind of light hearted.

I'm hoping to learn some more about web design in this class for two, or maybe more, reasons. One I've been tasked with updating the web site for my department at my Systems Analyst job, and two, I would like to start a blog as a pastor to be able to post for people to read inspirational devotional type entries once every couple weeks or so.

Let's get it started, uh huh!

(P.S. This is a photo of my son - the one who was in the accident - 3 years after the accident! We were in Colorado at the Royal Gorge Bridge Park).

Does anyone else have any prior blogging experience?

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Introduction

Hi! I'm Katy and I'm just getting started with Dreamweaver & Flash for college. I'm attending Empire State College full time and I also work 28 hours a week at one job, 10 hours a week as a pastor, and I have a family to tend to. The good thing is that my children are all grown up and all I have to really take care of are my husband and our 3 dogs and 1 cat. Check back soon, there is definitely more to come...