Web Design

For this assignment I have decided to design and produce a single web page on myself, including my hobbies, with images and links to external sites. Enclosed is the design process for the page and details of the production of the page. I will test the web page using two web browsers to ensure compatibility on more than one platform. I will also include an option on the page to email the author of the page, myself.

2.1 The Design Process.

I have decide the content of the web page will be myself, it should include details of my hobbies, family and a brief description of my past, to help with the design of the page I decided that the content will be displayed on one page where you can scroll down the page to view all the information, I decided on this against using multiple pages, as there is not enough content to really justify using more than one page, which if use would make navigation of the site unnecessarily complicated.

I decided to embed a music file which I felt represented by taste and style, the file will be played when the page is loaded without the viewer having any option over this. I have assumed that the user has an operating system and appropriate software to play MP3’s as most windows operating systems incorporated a media player which can play media of this type

I also decided that the page would not be written for a specific display resolution but could be displayed correctly on any resolution with the test wrapping accordingly to the size of the browser and the resolution output.

Once I had decided on the design of the web page from the sketches I then started to write the code for the site.

2.2 Page Production & Testing

For the web page I decide to write the code using HTML version 4.01 as this is the latest version and supports more features, although I have not made full use of all the features it supports like scripting and multimedia content, I felt it was necessary to use the latest version to ensure it would be compatible with all the latest web browsers. When deciding this I did not take into consideration users with machines over 4 years old or running any other operating systems other than windows XP SP2, while the page may be displayed correctly on other operating systems it is not know what the results will be.

I used notepad to write the code for the page, using internet explorer 6 to test the code stage by stage through the production of the site. I had not decided on a colour scheme at paper stage as I thought it would be better to implement colours in the production stage, this would allow me to see how they would look in the browser and to make the appropriate decision from there.

Testing of the web page was done using internet explorer version 6 on a windows XP professional machine with service pack 2 installed, I found that the page loaded correctly and music was play without any error once the page had loaded. I use Mozilla Firefox as the second web browser to test the page. Again I found that there were not problems with this web browser with all the links working, the pictures loading and the sound playing.

There is one small issue with the site regarding the link at the bottom of the page which enables you to email myself, this link assumes that you have correctly installed and configured email clients on the pc the is bring used to view the page, is the user only uses web access email then the link will not work.

I have not tested the web site with older versions of internet explorer for backward compatibility or other operation systems other than Windows XP SP2. There may be some issues with the embedded music file but this is currently unknown.

3.1 Conclusion

To conclude, I have designed a web site containing one page using HTML 4.01 written using notepad and taking reference literature and the web relating to web design using HTML 4.01. The site contains both text and pictures with links to external sites that I have no control over. The page has an mp3 file embedded which will play when the page has loaded. The music file is not set to loop and will play just once. The page has been test on two web browsers and I have found there to be no problem.