My intention with Project Two was to build on the knowledge I had gained in Project One, as well as to incorporate what I had learnt in the second term of the course. Although I wanted to improve the design of my website from Project One, I did not want to get carried away and include things simply because that was another technique ticked off the list. I would rather my website look official and like a real website than have it look complex with videos playing as soon as you open a page, since this aggravates me on public websites and I don't want to annoy people! Equally, I know that I am the kind of person who will easily get carried away and include far too much detail if given the time or opportunity. This is why I didn't start my project too early - I would never have got any revision done over the Easter Vac!
Since the specification for Project Two is that it should be inspired by my academic studies, I decided to choose Weimar Film as my theme, since this is part of the Ge6 paper that I am taking, which I find extremely interesting, and I am thinking of doing something film-related for my dissertation next year. Thus Project Two has been interesting for me to produce, as well as counting as revision (in my book anyway)!
Since I enjoyed making the film that we did in the second term so much, I really wanted to create something for the second project. Inspiration was my first stumbling point, since I didn't know what I could create that would be appropriate to the cinema of the Weimar Republic. I then considered including a copy of sections of the three films that are studied in Ge6, however I soon realised that this would not be possible either, since I would definitely be breaking copyright laws! Including audio proved to be a similar problem: the films that my website is about are silent films, so no audio could be taken from them anyway! Even if I had managed to record some of the music that is played during the silent films (in Rutmann's Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Großstadt music plays a key role, for example), then this would also have caused copyright issues.
In Project Two, I have used a Cascading Style Sheet, which is something very new to me and which does not feature at all on my Project One website. I am very pleased with myself for having mastered Cascading Style Sheets all by myself. One slight error that I did make, however, was to choose purple as the colour for the link which enables you to view a page in a different language. Choosing purple has meant that the link is the same colour when it has never been clicked as it is when it has been clicked. This is clearly not a major problem, which is why I did not change it, but is nevertheless not ideal.
My main problem occurred when I tried to be brave and use Frames. Initially, I was very cheery as I thought that I had achieved it without problems - I was smiling to myself about how professional it looked. Then reality struck and I noticed that the link to the alternative language version of the page would not work: the link did not change the whole page, but merely the information in that particular frame! Feeling very defeated, I fiddled some more with my many pages of frames code before realising that my efforts had been in vain. I recalled hearing others complaining about this problem with frames, and that frames should not apply simply to one page, as I had wanted them to, but rather to the entire website. As changing the entire website was not the effect I had wanted, I changed the entire website to tables, using the Cascading Style Sheet for the fonts, background and extra styles, which is how my Project Two currently looks. My attempt at Frames can be viewed below. Although it didn't work as it should, I am very proud of my attempt, since I solved all of the problems by myself, including realising that the data that needed to go into each frame had to be a separate document. Another problem I overcame with Frames was how to get the title into the banner frame, which was then followed by the problem that I then had the title both in the banner frame and in the main frame! As you can see from the links below, I resolved this problem.
If you don't click on any of the links, it works fine!
After persevering with Frames for some time, I think I would use them in a future website project. The main problem that I encountered was that I didn't want my project to look the way a frames project would, not that I couldn't have solved the links problem (eventually).
Another problem that I solved through trial and error was changing the style of tables and lists using the Cascading Style Sheet. As can be seen, I have not changed the style of every table, as I left the books table in the default font, but in most parts of the website, you will hopefully notice that the font of lists is the same as that of the paragraphs that surround them.
On the whole, I am very pleased with the appearance and content of my Project Two. I feel that it will definitely be of use for me and that it should hopefully be helpful for other students too. I am very happy that I managed to solve so many problems by myself and that I seem to have mastered the logic of basic websites. My only regret is that I have not included more information. I had hoped to include more pictures, since I always find websites that have no pictures very boring. However, I started the project by researching links that would lead to further information, since this is really what the website is about - functionality rather than visual appeal alone. It would also have been good to include more information about Weimar Film, but I had saved this for after I had completed the Cascading Style Sheet and other 'fiddly bits', which ended up taking much longer than anticipated. Equally, my knowledge of Weimar Film doesn't really go much beyond the information included on this website at this point in time, so including more information would have taken longer for that reason too. Given the chance, I would like to include perhaps a plot summary of the three Ge6 films as well as more images and general information.
Last updated: Tuesday 24th April 2007
Maria Slater
Pembroke College
University of Cambridge
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