OCD Site Evaluation OCD INT1032
The Brief
We were asked to develop two websites, one using Flash technology and one using traditional HTML & CSS design methodologies. These sites were to contain reviews of 5 different sites in the same genre. These reviews were to be marked using a "star rating" system, with details of how this conclusion was given.
Proposal
In following the brief, I decided to develop two sites using the aforemention technology, but determined I would use a self-contained site for my HTML version rather than incorporating it into my portfolio site. I decided to review the Search engine genre, as I felt it incorporated sites a typical user would interact with every day.
Preparation
I prepared by first analysing a large amount of potential genres, including general news websites, gaming websites and e-commerce sites. I wished to focus some of my final piece on interface usability, so decided search engines provided a good basis. I then visited as many search engines as I could find (both popular and unpopular) and decided on 5 to include in my review.
Review Sites
I created two sites, the first created using HTML & CSS technologies (and a bit of Javascript), the second using Flash.
Conclusion
I feel overall I have completed the brief, and enjoyed the process of doing so. Creating the HTML site was particularly entertaining, especially experimenting with Javascript animation libraries. The Flash site was more difficult to get to grips with, as I find Flash's methods of displaying large amounts of text inherently underwhelming, and methods of displaying data from external sources was problematic (mainly with the caching of data). On the strength of this I intend to broaden my knowledge of Flash so I might attempt a more fully-featured site in future.