Extreme Makeover: Homepage Edition End Result

Hello everyone,

Remember when I said I was making a website that looked like a company site but would have the content of a high school website. Well that remodeling of the school site is complete and it looks very good. As you can recall, I took the Morgantown High School website and tried to remake it so that it looked a lot more like the Android company website.

I first tried to focus on the layout of the Android site and how I could make that similar site in Dreamweaver. I didn't use tables like most sites are set up but rather divs. These divs were probably the hardest thing that I had to do on this site because it required me to go into the code and find small details that I usually don't look for. It was a good experience though because it prepared me to mess with divs again in the future. After I set up the basic layout, all that was left was the easy part and that was putting in the content.

Below you will see the old high school website, the Android website, my new school logo, and the new high school website that I made:

New School Logo

Old School Website

Android(Company) Website

New School Website

How to find it in on the Web Server: Kincaid Alex > Quarter 4 > Xtreme Homepage Makeover > Xtreme Homepage Makeover.html

Extreme Makeover: Home Page Edition

Hello!

I am getting ready to start out a new project that involves taking a poorly designed website and redesigning it based off of a well-known website. I will be doing this to a school in West Virginia and making it look like the Android website. You can find the links and screen shots of each site below and make sure to check back to see the finished project!

Thanks,

Alex K.

Morgantown High School: http://www.edline.net/pages/Morgantown_High_School

Android: http://www.android.com/

Parallax

Hello ladies and gentlemen,

I know it has been awhile since I have posted something on this blog but I have been pretty busy with my eMagine project. With senior year winding down, we are learning a few last web design techniques that can be helpful in the future. Today, I want to talk you you guys about a concept called parallax. I will be dividing my input into certain categories, and these can be seen below.

Parallax in Web Design

Parallax in web design is used to give the background of a website an interesting effect when the user scrolls in a certain direction on the site. The background of the site moves at a different speed compared to the rest of the page to create a visual effect that allows for creative storytelling in a variety of ways. Web designers can use parallax in their website to tell a visual story and create a site that has depth using the layering factor.

What You Need to Create a Parallax Site  

The software that you need in order to build a parallax site is the right kind of HTML and jQuery. There are also ways to create a variety of different versions of a parallax site. One of the most important factors to have in creating one of these sites is creativity!

Issues With Parallax Sites

Like a lot of great website designs, there is always something that is wrong with the site. It may not have to do with the design or content but rather, as seen in parallax sites, the behind the scenes work. They are not compatible with responsive or mobile design and their is no internal page linking throughout the website. Also, when the page has a bunch of information and pictures on it, the page can slow down and cause impatient users to leave.

Like any great website design, the site only works if the functionality works well and the content is presented in a manner that is easily understandable. Parallax sites are great and present information in a fun, creative way. I will leave you with some great examples of parallax websites and keep checking back for more great stuff.

Alex K.

Some Great Examples of Parallax Sites

Mario Kart History

Talks about the history of Mario Kart in a cool, creative track style.

Ben the Bodyguard

A man that is supposed to "protect you iPhone" to keep important info safe

Mr. Alan Turing

Some of you may or may not know who Alan Turing is but he is important all the same. Being a mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst and computer scientist, Turing used this knowledge to develop the Turing machine, which is assumed to be the model of general purpose computers. He is considered as the father of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence and set the premise for the future of a computers. He recently came up in the news, after the House of Commons opted for a posthumous pardon which was signed on December 24, 2013; 59 years later after his death.

Alan Turing was born on June 23, 1912 in London, England. From the day he enrolled at St. Michael's, his headmistress and parents knew that he was incredibly intelligent. He enjoyed more of the mathematics and science, which upset his teachers as they wanted him to put his emphasis more on the classics. Turing headed off to King's College to continue his education and he had a great impact on the school; becoming a "fellow" at the college. His great career all started when he started making Turing machines to reformulate Kurt Godel's limits of proof. The machine can be used to simulate the logic of any computer algorithm, and is particularly useful in explaining the functions of a CPU inside a computer.

After the Turing machine, Alan Turing's career skyrocketed because of World War II. He worked at Bletchley Park where he helped to break German ciphers throughout the war and eventually had to created the Turing-Welchman bombe. A bombe was a electromechanical machine that made it easier to break Enigma and was enhanced by Gordon Welchman. The only problem with the bombe was that there was too much code to break and not enough bombe around to break the code. His group wrote to Churchill and soon enough over 200 bombe were in operation at the end of the war.

After the war, Turing went to work on the ACE (Automatic Computing Engine). He had to go through various obstacles that included where to build the ACE because Bletchley Park was not secret enough after the war for Turing to build such a secretive project. But in 1948, Turing worked with his former undergraduate colleague, D. G. Champernowne to began writing a chess program for a computer that did not yet exist. The program faced off against Turing's colleague and lost but the program trumped the old program known as TurboChamp. The "Turing Test" was a huge contribution in the artificial intelligent department and still is used even though it's been around for over half a century.

However, the main reason why Alan Turing was recently brought up in the news was because of what happened in his personal life. Turing had an affair with another man, Arnold Murray, which was illegal in the United Kingdom at that time. The relationship could have been kept a secret if Turing hadn't gone to the police after a burglar robbed his house. After going on trial and being convicted, he chose to go on hormonal treatment instead of going to jail and stayed on that treatment for about 2 years. On June 8, 1954, Turing was found dead by apparent suicide caused by cyanide poisoning. While he died almost 59 years ago, the House of Commons in England opted for posthumous pardon which got put into play December 24, 2013. But before that, Prime Minister Gordon Brown posthumously apologized for the prosecution of Alan Turing for just being a homosexual. This was a big deal because homosexuality is still a big controversy today; 59 years later than that tragic event.