And the lower level page....
To be honest, I had no idea what to put on this page. I looked around at some other camping websites and saw what sorts of things they advertised.
I like the way that it turned out. I like the color and I think that it fits well with the rest of the page. I also really like the tree image that is used on it.
I feel as though the font looks appropriate here. If it were a real site however, I would put some sort of link on it- in order to "reserve campsites" straight from the message.

I think that it looks fine on my full website. I like the way that it looks actually... but since I had some issues with the slices... it does not fit exactly where I would like it to be. It is slightly more to the right then I would like. This is because the slice that it is replacing, was a large piece of the site (not just the image where it should show up.)

Fire!!
Next came the animated gif file. The instructions were pretty clear on this one. It took me a little while to come up with an idea for the animation. Again, what does a camping website lend itself to? The example 'wheel animated gif' looked awesome on screen... just by rotating the simple image.
For awhile, I was trying to figure out some kind of animated gif that would not involve a photograph (like Mari's animated that was like an 8bit picture). Yet.... I ended up using a photograph. I like the way it turned out though! I put the fire photo that I got from the internet into photoshop. I used about 7 different layers, each time using the burn tool to change the image a little more. It sort of makes the illusion that the fire is glowing (and that smoke is coming from it).
I didn't find it too much of a challenge to transform this file into an actual animated gif in fireworks.
Also, it wasn't too hard to attach this, along with the banner, to my homepage in Dreamweaver.

Once I finally got the html into Dreamweaver (index2.html), things began to snap into place much quicker.

Tent Tips

It took me forever to find a quicktime movie for my website. What kind of movie can you add to a "camping" website?! I find quite a few home made movies of people camping (which obviously was not what I was looking for). The Professor suggested a short clip from the Blair Witch Project or something along those lines (people in the woods...). All that I could find in this area though, was the trailer for the movies.
After awhile I find a movie that would work. It is a short quicktime video explaining a step included in properly setting up a tent. I figured the content was about as closely related to the website as I could find.
It's a little bit bigger than I wanted, but it will do just fine.

details

Once I finally got the html document to work in Dreamweaver, I had to set all of the appropriate attributes (such as the black background). This wasn't too difficult. For each of the small detailed parts of the project, the packet that we received in the beginning of the year was very helpful. They were just simple things to set...
Next comes the additional content for the page (movie, lower level events page, animated gif, banner...)

Wireframe

So the wireframe proved to be more of a challenge than I had expected. I had thought that it was just the first step, but it is the building block for the way the entire site is set up. It took me awhile to decide how I wanted the lay out to look and what kind of image to use. I used two images of young people participating in sports.
Once the wireframe was finally created in photoshop, I opened it up in Fireworks. I did not find it difficult to create slices over the wireframe or to create roll-over behaviors in Fireworks, but exporting the file into html format posed as a problem for awhile. I was trying to make too many slices, making it more confusing. Finally, I was able to simplify the slices enough to make it work. Someone mentioned to me that Fireworks likes things to be lined up like a grid... which was very helpful.

Right now, we are working on making the "wire frame" for our websites.
I have taken inspiration from my reference websites. Firstly, I would like my remote roll-overs to be like the navigation on surfingthemag.com. When you put the mouse curser over the part that you want (ex: "home") it will change to one of the accent colors, allowing you to know where you are. My color palette is simple- monochromatic background (dark grey with black font) with blue and green acting as accent colors. I would like the navigation on my redesign of the website to be much easier to use. It should be simple, ledgible, and not so cluttered.
Also, like on many of my reference websites, I would like to have a large image on the screen... just under the navigation. I find that on my reference websites, this catches the eye. Also, having a picture instead of a bunch of text makes the website look cleaner (in my opinion).

Powerpoint and website

Last class I presented my powerpoint to the class. There were some aspects of it that really worked and I enjoyed, however I also recieved some very helpful critiques. Since my icon is made with a font that is not found on most computers, I ran into some difficulty trying to get it to work on the main computer in the class.
I learned that... well, firstly it would just be easier NOT to use fonts that are not in most computer... but also, that if I want to do this in the future, I will have to use photoshop (making the text with the unknown font almost like a picture) to make the pieces of the powerpoint.
The other thing that I learned through presenting, was to test out my powerpoint before I actually present it. This, of course, is helpful information. I ran into the common problem, in which the background screen of my powerpoint looked fine on the regular computer, but showed up very very dark on the overhead projecter. I was aware of this issue going into the presentation, but I guess I had not lightened it enough. Regardless, a test-run would have solved this problem ahead of time for me.

So... we have printed out our powerpoints, everyone has presented, and we are beginning to layout the framework for our new website. I am still in the beginning stages of the layout... but here is the existing website that I am redesigning- just to give a taste of what it will NOT look like (hopefully!).