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Using Media & Graphics on the Web
We went over the history of the early web, where seing an image on the web was very uncommon, and would take a long time to load and display.
Different formats where developed to help reduce the file size of different images. For example, Jpeg is used for photos, and png for simple graphics, and svg for vector images.
Styling of the image can be done in html, however most of it is done in CSS.
You must also give an img an "alt" tag so that screen-readers can tell the user what the image is of.
The size of the image also needs to be considered, as a smaller image is required if using a mobile device, and a larger required if viewing on a desktop or projector
HTML5 can also do video without the need of a plug-in like flash, however, not all browsers support all types of codecs, so you will need to supple multiple versions so that any browser can at least read one of them correctly.
Again, file size must be considered with video, even more so than with pictures because of the much greater file size.
Design
The next week was design, where we learnt about good website layout, and we learnt what we should be taking in to consideration when working on the design of our website. For example...
- Who is the client?
- Purpose
- Competition
- Navigation
- Presentation
- Layout
- The device that will be viewing the page (mobile/desktop/touch screen/avalible processing power)
Standards
Over this week, we were taught why standards are required in most cases and why they exist, and why there are so many different types of standards seemingly to do the same job
This applies to the web because although the task seems simple (give information from one place to another), there are many different scenarios and problems that we need different standards for.
For example, there are many different video codecs available. This is because some of them specialise in low latency (for streaming) some for low bandwidth (for mobile devices), and some focus on quality (for Cinema/Broadcast quality).
Productivity & Efficiency
We were shown how to use atom.io and how to customise it so we can work faster. Everyone will find their own editor with the features they prefer, and some users will prefer certain features available over others, which is why there are many different editors for many different people.
For example, I use notepad++ because of its fast load-times, auto-saving, spell check, very good multitasking, wide range of language support (with text highlighting), easy and intuitive interface, and text auto-complete.
Christmas Week
This was a week for us to discuss plans for our website coursework, and have a look at some of the website examples given to us, so we can see how they work and learn from them.