Dreamweaver…

When to write code by hand

Why would you ever want to write code by hand? Well theirs a few reasons, the first and foremost one comes from the ease of addition. Hand written code is easy to modify later while generated code tends to be a mess, hard to read and nearly imposable to edit without a WYSIWYG editor. The second major point comes from the ability to jump right in to a new tag or layout method while the generated code requires that the program first know how to do it and secondly that you know how to find its hidden location. The last point is personal as I get an amazing amount of satisfaction from successfully writing a site; however I’m probably the odd man out on this one.

Problems that effect Dreamweaver

File Trees

Based on previous classes I’ve taken and taught, everyone has issues with file management when working within Dreamweaver. Things start being placed randomly and stuff disappears because it was stored on the D drive instead of the C drive for whatever reason. Because of this I highly advise to generate all necessary HTML documents prior to opening dream weaver. To go along with this, set up a dedicated image directory where everything will be located for the site. This will prevent a messy root directory and simplify later modification.

Messy Code

WYSIWYG programs are notoriously bloated in their generated code and when deleting sections will commonly leave behind large swaths of code that will slow page loading and greatly increase the potential for formatting issues.

“Live View” and WYSIWYG are incorrect

I have had many a sit be displayed incorrectly by only Dreamweaver in its live view or any view for that matter. As such I highly recommend previewing any changes in an actual web browser. Also because of this I don’t have high faith that it will give proper visual editing to more complex web site designs.

Solo Teaching Take 2

I don’t know if it’s just memory miss serving me or the second time around went tremendously better than the first despite its slew of issues. It really has surprised me how much fore planning it takes to run this class and even then some things you just never thought about till it came up.

Below is a breakdown of the general happenings form that session:

At 5:50 I showed up to prepare for the class, just to discover that I had left my note book with the schedule and notes for class at my apartment. I immediately scurried back to my apartment, grabbed the book and hurried to class but by then I had already lost my prep time. It was 6:20 and only had enough time to get set up and prep the attendance sheet. Talk about a bad start...

Attendance went well, people were responsive and we only had 1 straggler.

Before breaking them off in to groups for think Pare Share, I asked the class how many did their homework and a whopping 5 raised their hand... I panicked a bit inside, 5 minutes in to class and we were already derailed. I stalled for a minute deciding what to do next and had the 5 share their answers to the questions with the class. I can’t say it went terribly, but it wasn’t good... I had one student that was fine with blabbering a convoluted thought about what she saw; however the other 4 were near imposable to get a peep out of.

Once that finished I began demonstrations, starting with the audio effects demos. These went over ok for the most part, however I ran in to a few bumps and stalls while going threw it (some things were in a different location) most of this reared its head in my lost scramble threw the effects trees looking for the one I wanted.

After that I bumbled over to the video position, crop, scale, and rotate tools. This went over without a hitch and they seemed to really like it.

The last point I went to was color correction/grading using the color panel in FinalCut. To say the least, it was a disaster finding it... I probably fumbled for 5 minutes looking for its obscure location... (I’m sorry but aftereffects/PremearPro have better layouts) once it was discovered they got the utility of the tool quickly and it seemed to like it.

After that I told the class to get started on their self-portrait videos and they stalled, apparently none of them had read their assignment. (can’t really knock them personally, I didn’t do that when I was in my intro classes) which is what lead to my rediscovery of my inability to look at assignments (I had noticed it prior but forgot about it), I managed to get one of the male students to open it on Moodle that ways the assignment could be read aloud for them. But the assignment left them with questions I could not easily answer in my half asleep state. So I told them to work on their found footage for a bit as I thought it threw. I had no demo materials so instead I gave them a few specifics from the previous iteration of the assignment and assignments from this semester on what to do.

I got the behind group going with a green screen and camera along with the extra instruction they required. It was interesting how little they seemed to know about using a digital camera, at least a SLR. (Well, tripods even... it fell over twice.)

As class progressed students started to grab the camera and green screen to get some new footage of themselves for usage in the portraits; however there were a stubborn few that wanted to do it at home, leave early, or not record any at all…

By about 9pm we had lost only 2 students, one of which claimed to be done (she refused to expand on the portrait when it really needed it) and the other had a really impressive set of found footage so I was easer watching him leave.

At 9:30 a large chunk of the class had either completed their work or was done with what they wanted to complete in class so I allowed them to leave early. I stuck around till 10pm and there were some students that were still working after I left.

over all I would say this session of solo teaching went better than the one I did in the fall semester, however there was still lots of space for improvement and some glaring oversights on my part with regards to the notebook and Moodle aces capability’s.

Final Exam Idea

The final exam should logically cover every piece of software and cover the majority of the actions and methods used within the class. However because we toughly covered Photoshop with the midterm I’m open to dropping some requirements that are related to Photoshop.  As such I propose that they build a webpage that incorporates found imagery and video/GIF’s. The page could use arrangement principles covered in class (landscape, still life) or focus on a personal thing like the video assignments.

• Minimum 2 pages, 3 found images to be manipulated, 1 video as either video (assuming we cover that, or just hand the code snippet) or GIF.

This would expose their ability to work with the set of programs taught thought the semester as they will need to use Photoshop, Dreamweaver and Final Cut for at least 1 point of the project.

Ideas for movies

RIP a Remix Manifesto http://vimeo.com/17822690#

Presspauseplay http://vimeo.com/34608191

Everything is a Remix http://www.everythingisaremix.info/everything-is-a-remix-part-1/

Revised Guide to Image Formats

Download

First Class Predictions

Talking a look back at my notes for my impressions of the first day of class from last semester it seems that we did well in not losing what we had from it, people seemed more talkative by the end of class and understood that the class was going to be focusing around teaching applications. From the old bad list, it seems that we skipped a few of the things outlined on it for inclusion to clear up or stream line the process. The first point is the art server, however that has become a mostly non consequential point as it is longer a primary conduit for the class. The demo material was spot on with giving examples of what was expected and the last point of forcing Photoshop in to its default state was primarily solved by having everyone change it over to the same layout.

Given the change observed from this first day and what I would call a positive impact on the proficiency of the students in their first assignment and general ability with the OS (a lot less questions on basic functions) I would say that the new structure of what is presented and how seems to be effective so far.

On my predictions, keeping with this short project and short lecture style, where the students get in class time to practice what was shown prior, should result in an overall more coherent group on the established assignment goals and on the usage of the application. This group wormed up to Photoshop a lot quicker than the previous and I believe that’s entirely related to the presentation of the material (while more were familiar with it, those that weren’t were still following along quite well) given that Photoshop was the hardest getting student to understand in the previous semester, I feel that we will have little trouble moving through the rest of the applications (Dreamweaver/HTML and Finalcut Pro X).

The biggest potential hurdle to overcome that I see in the later applications falling on the file management aspects of it, as Finalcut is a hassle to move around with and Dreamweaver/HTML is very sensitive to the structure of the directory. If these two things can be well covered on day one of their introduction then there should be little to no problems later with files missing and things breaking.