HTML what?

Although there is web-authoring software available, there are multiple advantages to knowing html code. For example, it is good for web designers to be familiar with html code when something does not appear the way they want it to on a website. It is very frustrating when an element of a page does not do what you want it to, but if you are fluent in html code, you can go back into the code and decipher what is going on. A problem can be fixed much more quickly if you can go in and pinpoint an error in the code, rather than tinkering around on web-design software until the problem gets fixed by trial and error. Also, if you can read html code, then you can use things from other websites, such as a background color that you like. So although software such as Expression Web makes designing a website much easier, knowing html code can help you from getting stuck at any road blocks.

Power Point Evaluation

I really enjoyed listening to eveyones powerpoint presentations! One of my favorite presentations was Abigail's presentation on Art. I really like the background that she used, with all the clouds flying in, and I thought it was very clever how she put her screen-shot into a cut-out of a cloud. The various examples of art that she used in her presentation were very interesting and I really enjoyed learning about the spacial aspect of art. I also really liked Stephen's presentation on the Dell Magazine Award. The beginning of the presentation was very well executed with the various pictures and music. I really liked learning about this science fiction award and Stephen explained the magazine very well. I also though it was really cool how he submitted his own work to the magazine.

Searching the Internet

With search engines such as google, answers to most of our questions are just a push of a button away. But after listening to Chris Nolan in class, I now realize that we must be skeptical of these websites we obtain our answers from. In order to obtain more credible results, there are multiple ways we can manipulate a search engine such as google. I learned that by going to the advanced search tool on google, you can limit a search for a particular type of source, such as .edu or .gov. There are many other useful tools available such as google scholar, or google books, that may have more worthy results for an academic setting.

Chris Nolan also described how google comes up with the display order of the website on the query page. Google calculates relevance by using an algorithm. I suspected that relevance was calculated by how many times a certain word or phrase appeared in the article/website, but I was surprised to learn that how many times other sites link to a certain website gives that site more weight in ranking. So just because a website is at the top of the list on google does not mean it is relevant or has accurate information.