As a general comment, I just want to say how great everybody's sites were. It is amazing how everyone was able to pull together such great sites. I felt my site was lacking after browsing through everyone's sites. I had fun with the blog assignment, and I want to give everyone a big round of applause for their sites!!!
Chris
My favorite part of Chris’s website is his landing page that says ‘You can’t know if don’t click somewhere’. I think it is a great way to engage the site visitor. The image and text combined make me very curious to enter the site. The only recommendation I have is to make the quote on the Philosophies of Teaching page, “No ideas but in things,” Williams Carlos Williams. I think if it were larger it would be a great intro and emphasis for the page.
Jessica
I love the pictures and personal dialogue throughout Jessica’s site. It has an enormous emotional impact, and I think that the background color choice really helps play into that. I have so much respect and admiration for Jessica for being so honest and open on her site. I don’t think I could be so open, especially since I knew my classmates were also going to be reading through my site. The one change I would recommend is changing the font color on the book reviews page. Right now it is two colors: 1 book review is light green, the other is dark blue. I like the two different colors for contrast, but the green is little hard to read on the screen.
Sharba
I think Sharba’s site is very well put together. I love all the comments in the banner on each page. I think it is a very engaging site. I was very interesting in reading the text on each page and moving throughout her site. The one thing I would recommend is for Sharba to put a picture of herself on the Me page. Since we learn so much about Sharba, I think it would be good if we could see a photo of her and maybe of Calcutta.
Dominic
Dominic’s site is very well designed. It takes a great web designer to be able to pull off a blue and orange color scheme! I love the landing page and the page layout. I also love the page names and personal comments throughout the site. This is a great personal site because Dominic gives so much information about himself. The only comment I have is that it might be good to put a navigation links to each page at the bottom of each page since some of the page are long and require a lot of scrolling.
Shawna
I love how Shawna’s site has the bright color tabs that drop when you hover over them. You can tell how much effort Shawn put into her site. I think the thumbnail banners at the top of the page are a great touch, and it’s very accessible. This is a great professional site, and I was struck by how much fun I was having navigating around her site! I think it was a mixture of the colors and the thumbnails. My comment for Shawna’s site is that it would be good to add some into text for the sample pages. Maybe a quick overview of what each sample is or if there is any special story behind a particular sample.
Adrian
I love how Adrian created a Flash-based website. I think the flower in bottom right-hand corner is a great element that is eye-catching and interesting for the reader. I think Adrian made a bold move choosing black and orange as her color scheme. It takes skill to use these colors effectively without them looking too much like a Halloween theme. Adrian did an excellent job of using this color scheme. I would suggest making the font size on the home page a little bigger.
Carie
I think Carie did a great job on her site. I especially like her biography on her Instructor page. She gives great information about herself. I wish I had a site like this, especially the podcast on passive voice when I was an undergrad in the beginning technical writing class! This is a great resource for students, and I think that Carie’s students will get so much information and help from this site. The only comment I have is that if the Syllabus page could be a web page version of the PDF syllabus with a link to the PDF syllabus. I think having the PDF syllabus is great, but it would be a useful tool if there could be a web page version too. You could link to major assignment descriptions.
Melody
Melody did a great job with her site. It is very impressive. I especially like how she linked to other pages, such as the Gardener’s Rake, on her biography page. I think it helps the visitor get to know Melody a little better and really get to know what her hobbies are. The only thing I would suggest is maybe having a page specifically for samples of her work. I know there are some links throughout the site that take us to her research, but I think it would good to have separate samples page for ease of searching.
Rebecca
I think Rebecca did a great job adding personality and fun to her professional site. I liked how she has pictures of herself on every page. It shows her talent as a professional, but still lets the visitor get to know about her on a personal level. This is an excellent mixture or Rebecca as a person and Rebecca as a professional. The only thing I would suggest changing is the hosting environment just because Geocities pops up all these extra menus. However, I do not think this is too big of an issue. The strange this is, I didn’t notice much when I was in an IE browser for class on Monday. I didn’t really notice it. But I noticed it tonight when I was in FireFox.
Brett
I think Brett has a great landing page. The oPhone is a great concept and idea. It is very creative, and I know it made me want to enter the site to take a look around. I think it is an informative site with a lot of good information. I like how there is a mix of personality with professional content. I think it is important to liven up the material! The only suggestion I have is making the top menu with the name of the site and links a little bigger. It seems small in comparison with the rest of the page. Or maybe separating the site name from the menu and making the site name bigger to put more emphasis on Brett.
Monica
I think Monica did a great job on her site. I love the usability of the site, especially how on the page links you can click the text or the box below. It makes it really easy for the user to navigate around the page. I think it is an engaging site too with all the visual stimulation that occurs on every page. The only change I would suggest is to fix the text on the home page with the Left-brain, right-brain text. Since it was justified, there were a lot of huge gaps when I opened it, and it started to run on the MW graphic.
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Thanks for the comments, Ashley. I agree with you about the justified text - I really like how justified text looks but I need to figure out if I can make it work on multiple browsers - it looks much worse in Internet Explorer than in Firefox or Safari. I'll definitely change it and fix the placement of the graphic so that in IE it doesn't run into the text.
ReplyDeleteA little larger, eh? (I'm sure Williams would certainly approve...) I'll give it a try and see how it looks! Thanks for the feedback, Ashley.
ReplyDeleteI'll probably be moving the site from Geocities - the pop-ups also drive me nuts. They're much less annoying on a widescreen monitor, particularly with high-resolution - they end up kind of shoved off to the side on their own. I designed it on my work computer, which is like that - but when I view it on my personal computer, it looks AWFUL. Definitely got to move it.
ReplyDeleteAshley, Thank you for the suggestion to create a HTML version of my syllabus. I'm going to try to implement that this week. My students have access to that at turnitin.com and WebCT (yuck!), but I really want to encourage them to access documents on my website rather than hopping from site to site! :-)
ReplyDeleteThank you for the comments. The green text in each book review is actually a long quote from the book. I will look into changing the color for the block-quote tags in my style sheet.
ReplyDeleteAshely,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your thoughtful suggestions. I am actually planning to do my podcast on Calcutta. As far the question of incorporating my own photograph goes, I will have to wait till I find a decent one.:)
~Sharba