For my digital histories essay, I wanted to create a website. Through Weebly I thought that this would be pretty straight forward because you can place texts and images where ever you want them with a click of a button. I thought I would go a step further and speak to a friend of mine who does digital media and see how he goes about creating websites using different programs. These programs entail Photoshop, Flash and Dreamweaver. He is a university student studying at the university of Hertfordhire and his name is Chris Tucker, no not the actor but yes, the web designer.
The program he used for his first website which was about his 'past, present and future,' and therefore was quite personal to him, was designed in Photoshop. According to him, Photoshop has two good qualities in creating a website.
The way in which you use Photoshop is fairly simple. Also when placing imagery on Photoshop the images are in the same position once uploaded online.
However, like all things it has its bad qualities too.
Firstly, the page is perceived in a picture format and therefore text can not be embedded in the HTML. This means that when uploading the website online Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) cannot function. SEO is when search engines place a website at the top of the list because it has the highest number of words relating to the search query, or in some cases websites pay to place their website first. He said, that not having this would halt promotion of the website if he decided to use it for a business. 
Secondly, the fact that the website is internally an image rather than being uploaded as separate image and text entities means that an error would cause the whole web page to be taken down to be repaired rather than just that section.
From looking at the website you can see that it is very minimalistic. This is mainly because it depicts his personality as an easygoing guy. However, the contrast of a grey scale back ground with colour pictures really captures the eye. The layout is very simple and easy to use, but to be fair it is only made up of three interlinked pages. Moreover, I think that the text could have been slightly bigger and situated in a light black frame because personally the the thick black border sounding it emphasises the small size.
The second website that Chris created was an invite to a fictional birthday party. This is my favourite out of the three and he used Flash instead of Photoshop to create it. once again he incorporated his minimalistic style yet used animated colour objects. I feel that the grey style design he used for this particular website is not entirely inviting for a birthday party. Similarly, he has not added a cover page stating that this is his birthday invitation. That said, the website contains three pages which I feel is appropriate for an birthday invitation. He also used a different font for the title which also gives a stylish appeal. He adds much more information this time and uses a light grey box rather than an outline, this is good as it doesn't close off the text. The only other thing which would make the website complete would be by placing the website in the centre of the page.The highlight of using Flash is ...
The animation features. This made the website more interactive and as Chris said, it brought more 'to the character of the website.' The balloons and the birthday badge were animated to come on the screen, quite like how animation in power point is used. What's more, the buttons at the top of the page (links to other pages within the website) are animated to show a white ring around it when the cursor is near. This application is not available to the other two programs, thus giving flash that edge.
The downside to using flash...
Flash is a video based program which means that people will have to wait longer for it to download, especially if they have poor Internet connection. Also flash is not compatible with phones.
Chris found this website the most time consuming. He said, that the process was difficult and the smallest fault would stop the website from functioning. This is a major problem compared to Phototshop because at least with Photoshop the correction can be made and uploaded again, but with Flash this is not the case. In addition, SEO is once again affected as the whole site is embedded in a video and prevents key word searches.
Finally, Chris used Dreamweaver for his last website and found it the most convenient. The design has changed more than the other two because this time he has used a brown scale instead of grey. Also he has a tribal like logo which appears four time at the top of the page. A scroll bar has been enabled within the website rather than being on the far right out side the margins. In addition, he has a separate page for contact information rather than being displayed on the homepage. Consequently, the website has two extra pages and the reason for this is because structurally, it contains a style sheet which make it easier to add more pages and keep them in place.
Lastly, even though animation could not be added, unlike the other two it managed to separate the text data from the image. This meant that SEO could finally be operated.
One disadvantage from all these wonderful features is that if you make an error with the margins and padding at the beginning it is extremely difficult to rectify, which means blocking the whole creation process.
Overall, Chris stated that he would prefer Dreamweaver as it had more benefits such as being less time consuming than the rest. However I would have to disagree, it may be less time consuming but the animation was far more effective. As these these three have shown, Chris has a lot of potential to uncover in future websites. As far as I can see, the use of colour has finally come out and is only the beginning.
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