Gallery viewer

Well, this week I intended to talk about the logo but I think this should be properly discussed with the team first. Besides, we still need the opinion of the creator of the original logo before deciding this. For all of those reason, I think it's better not to post it now. So, instead, I will talk about another feature of the site, the gallery. In the meeting last friday, me and Khang discussed a little about how the site viewers view the image. Well, the discussion mainly is about wether to make the gallery in Flash or not. I suggest that we should also find an alternative solution (which will use something like javascript) as a back up plan. We scan through some sites but haven't found anything interesting, yet. Guess what, I spent the weekend (no, really, I'm not lying, well, it wasnt the whole weekend but it took like two hours swimming through all those javascript sites out there for a decent image viewer codes, and that's a lot of time). Anyway, in the end I found these two great examples. Although I'm not sure wether it gonna be useful or not but I think it's worth a visit:
The first one is from Guyon Roche. The code is a little complicated because it feature some animation (looks great). Here's a screenshot but you should go to the link:


The second one is from Dynamic drive. This one simpler and I like it better, I have already seen some other sites use this style. The link also feature example, take a look if you like:


Of course, we will have some compatible issues with old browsers if we use these styles.

Some features for the site...

This week our team has taken a trip to some of the websites available out there, which we think do have some quite interesting features that are simple enough to add to Vinamation website but still create good impression on the visitors.

We would like to employ this style found in Outspark website: http://www.outspark.com/fiesta. If you hit "Login", there will be a small panel popping up allowing you to enter your information, meanwhile, the other parts of the site are "faded" into the background (which means their opacity is decreased).

Now how would we do that? Easily with javascript and the aid of CSS. We'd simply create 2 more divs on the site, one for the panel, the other for covering the entire screen. Let' call the first one "panel" and the other "fader":

<.div id="panel"><./div>
<.div id="fader"><./div>

Now we'll create a javascript function that can alter the opacity and the display properties of those 2 divs:

<.script style="text/javascript">
function fade() {
document.getElementById('fader').style.filter="alpha(opacity=70)";
//OTHER CODE TO ADD MORE EFFECTS AND TO MANAGE THE APPEARANCE OF THE 'panel' DIV
}
<./script>

The purpose of this script is to make the 'fader' div (which covers the entire screen) appear, but only with an opacity of 70 or so, that would give the effect of everything fading out; at the same time the 'panel' div would be made visible (display = "block"). On this panel we can add anything we want (links, images, textboxes, etc.)

Then we can incorporate this function to a link on the site to make it work.

Summarization

here are some important points that we have done this week:
- Group proposal did collect and submit on friday
- General arrangement for each person's role in the next progress of project
- Contact with client about next meeting (problem, talk about this later)
- Planning and scheduling when and how long this project will be finished.

Problems:
I have just contacted with Tom about our next meeting. But we got some problems for the time meeting. Because when Tom is free, then we are busy and vice versa. So until now, we are still not unified about the time.

Collecting content for the website, we still can not get that until next week b/c Tom will have to talk sth with his artist on Monday before send it to us.

I also got some problems with using basecamp [sigh.............] maybe I need a tutor for it [LOL]

note: if.... Tom can't arrange his schedule for our meeting next week, I think perhaps we should change our schedule a little bit ----> approving for our mock-up, structure, wireframe and collecting any other infomation, resource should be delayed.

Vinamation website progress

We're done with the draft of the grant chart for the whole group, details will be posted on BaseCamp some time later after we're done with them. In general, we'll begin working on the html for the main pages (home, contact, company info, etc) which should take about half a week or less (depending on our individual schedule), after that, a lot of effort should be put on the artist cafe and site gallery, which are the main and informational sections of Vinamation website.

This is how I'm going to implement the site's functionality:

for the artist cafe, there will be a flash menu (which I talked about in the previous post), but chances are that we'll make it completely in flash, not just a flash menu that links to different webpages to show information about different artists.

for the gallery, depending on the amount of information from Vinamation, we'll make it in PHP SQL or Ajax XML, or both, if we can manage to 'make both ends meet' :D. The menu will be in flash too.

As discussed earlier, we'll include 2 languages for the site, En and Vn. This will be done with PHP. What I'm thinking now is whether it's advisable to add some more skin ( or at least 1 more skin ) to the site, and to build a lite version (without flash) so that people under most conditions can access Vinamation at ease, waht would you guys think about this?

The mocking(-up) bird

Hi! there you go, the mock-up! Not bad right? Told ya white, black, and yellow good made a great combination (did someone say grey? 'cos I heard someone say grey just now). Yup, a good combination (Is it just me or some one is shouting "liar"). Anyway, Khang came up with quite an interesting idea about the background. He wanted me to make a set of abstract backgrounds and he will make it randomly appear each time the pages reload. However, I think it's better for each page (each section to be exact) to have a background incorporate with it. With(out) that idea in mind, I came up with this first abstract background. It has a "v" ("v" for "vinamation" or "v" for "vendetta") shape that also looks like wings. Did anyone notice the logo? yup, new logo! yay! well, it's not that great just something I created out of the blue since I didn't have the real one with me when I make the layout. There's two version of them. I'll post both and talk about them next week (why next week? because it worth a blog post, duh). Oh, and notice the part of the "v" that stick out? It represent the idea of creativity like "thinking outside of the box" or something like that (what? really? I didn't notice when designing I just thought it would be fun and... oops!). Oh anyway, that's all thanks for reading this post.

Colors!

Sorry for posting so late, I was busy playing with my ps ... er ... I mean photoshop, yes, I was busy working with photoshop. The problem is, after the first meeting with our client, I have been thinking about the color template used for the website. Since he said that he want a unique color and the current one have been by some other company. Well, the truth is, he didn't said he want to change but I think it might be better if we can come up with some different color that might haven't been used by any other company. The mood is quite clear now, funny, creative, innovative, professional. Right now, for our website, I'm thinking about a combination of grey and a light shade of yellow with a white background (or a dark one, I just want to make sure it's not too bright, there's some examples below). Yellow would be nice because according to color in motion , it means creative, playful, expanding which is pretty much describe our client. It may be a little kiddy, though. Here are some examples I found on colorlovers :

This is yellow by COLOURlover: (a little too dark but may be it'll look good with grey)


Belgium Streets by Libbywalters: (Does not look as much like yellow anymore but still a nice color to consider)


Bubbles haircolor by mm184nomore: (I like this color but may be a little too bright but I think it will blend well with grey)Almost gold by smixili: (err... I think I like this one)

Of course I still need to create a layout and try these colors on before I can come up with the final decision but this is some of my first thought thank you for your reading.

Sketching up, guys!

Okie, so here's what we've got: a meeting with the client, who gave us decent information just 'enough' to make a website which 'suits their needs and tastes' (no offense heh :p), then some researching on-and-off-line, we've come up with some general ideas on how the site should be wireframed and agreed on some of the form and functionality matters.

Followings are the first sketches:





The Artist Cafe' should be done following the idea of 'defile fashion bars and lounge" website, created by lumen studio [www.lumenstudio.net], illustrated in the book 'web design: studio - icons' (Ed Julius Wiedemann), p. 116, that uses a banner (or menu?) with shadows of different people in different poses... Anyway, we'll try to create s menu of the similar kind, which will show the artists' shadows (probably taken by us), where we can view anyone's profile by clicking on his or her shadow.

The Gellery section contains, of course, products created by the studio, together with their descriptions, this normally requires a database of php-sql or flash-xml, yet since our client doesnt specifically require it, we might as well do it on pure html. Though, we'll probably consider database processing in view of the need for 'professional' and 'easy to update' website... :)

That's all for now. Any suggestion / objection / adjustment that needs to be dealt with should be carried out asap. We've got time constrain on this! :)

Best wishes...

Vinamation project - warm up

the situation is that we did meet the client, Mr Tu Nguyen, on Wednesday. We had a comfortable meeting between both group members and client at highlands coffee :)
Mr Tu Nguyen is very joyful, friendly, enthusiastic and patient to answer all the questions. So we were really easy to get some useful informations for our project.
We intend to complete our proposal earlier two days for checking, collecting and combination
Now project is definitely in progress

...It's very interesting to work with two talented, hard working members. So I completely believe that we will have a great project with these guys ...

until now, we got no problem for this project (client is easy to contact, members are creative!)

Hello word from Khang

Hi all :)

First I'd love to show my gratitude for our leader, ms Xuan, who has created this blog for the team DXK in the Vinamation website project - DIM3 at RMIT Vietnam

Then, it's simply a 'hi' from me to other members of the team, and of course, to our teacher, ms Tuyet as well :)

Hope we'll come out with a job-well-done project =) See you guys around! :)