| I finished my first week at J&J 2009-06-08 |
A few input methods already exist for small, hand held devices, such as the mini QWERTY keyboard, the standard cellular phone number pad, or touch screen. But these methods can be cumbersome and slow at best. Check out the newest predictive input technology called “Swype” which allows a user to trace a path without lifting one’s finger to create a word. The technology recognizes starts and stop of the finger and interprets this as input.
I was asked to make a few changes to the Vails Gate MySpace page.
I made a few changes to font size, font color, table width, contact table font and color, and the page’s background image. Even though I was asked to make simple changes, the boxy layout reminded me the typical MySpace page: boxed text on crazy backgrounds that no one can read. So, I set out on my search for easier-to-read MySpace layouts and came up with a few that I find really bright and fun, but also easy to read.
Two web sites offering MySpace layouts that I found to be the most helpful (offered the code for a layout with no strings attached) were Createblog and Ultimate Myspace.
A good way to learn how to make layouts like the ones above is to download the code for a pre-existing layout and then add it to your own MySpace page if you have one. Then download Firebug for Firefox and use it’s “Inspect” tool to figure out the name of elements. For example, if you have a box on your web page and you can’t determine if it has a parent box, use Firebug’s Inspect tool to hover over the box and gradually move the mouse outward to determine if there is a parent. Once you know the names of different elements you can add or modify elements of your own.
One of my favorite web sites in the web design community is Open Source Web Design (OSWD), which offers a place for web designers and developers to submit their designs for users to download for free. It is a great resource for getting design ideas and a way to learn HTML and CSS by thumbing through submitted code.
Some of my favorite layouts I have found so far are shown below:
