Our trek is nearly done!

Photo credits: Background - "The Tent" by Jacob Walter Veggie Man - Courtesy of Jane Barrager

"Our trek is nearly done! Farfalle, Muttshroom, and I have had a fruitful adventure camping around the world for the past year. Some places were filled with people, but in others, like the one in the postcard, we've been the only campers. Muttshroom is terribly friendly and loves being around people because they make a fuss over him, so campsites like this one aren’t his favorite. But he doesn’t fret for too long because he knows that in a couple of days we'll be on our way to new a destination! Be well!"

Usability Tests

The issues that came up during the usability testing for 10 rolls of film and a bit more:

• At the site's Home page, one user was tempted to click on an element that wasn't linked to a page
• The sound clip found on the next to the last page wasn't clearly labeled
• The navigational menu along the top of the site wasn't clearly distinguished
• All users noted that there was no contact information in case they wanted information about the artists
• When viewing the galleries, the photos' labels were not immediately recognized
•  At the site's Home page, I had a shooting arrow directing users to the galleries, but one user found it distracting

Overall, the users' experience was positive, save for a few technical issues which I have since corrected.

Design Tool & Design Web Page

Blueprint (http://www.blueprintcss.org/) is a web design tool that "aims to cut down on your development time" by providing the user with "a solid foundation to build your project on top of, with an easy-to-use grid, sensible typography, useful plugins, and even a stylesheet for printing."

Entheos (http://www.entheosweb.com/) offers website templates, custom Web design, and free resources. Just to test it, I clicked on 'Flash animated' under the 'Templates' tab. There are 631 flash animated templates to choose from, ranging in price from $25 to $69. I only clicked on a couple of the pages, so the price might go up, or down, depending on the template.  

Design Tool & Design Web Page

For those who want to make a tartan for their website, Tartan Maker (http://www.tartanmaker.com/?page=index) is the web design tool for you. If you know color wheel codes by heart, or even if you don't, you can get pretty creative with different tartan designs.


Like Wix, Webs.com (http://www.webs.com/) allows users to create their own websites for free. It houses more than 300 "professionally-designed, customizable templates", however if you wish to have access to increased web and video storage capacity, and Google and Facebook adwords, it costs. The least expensive Starter package goes for a monthly fee of $3.75; the $7.75 is the cost of the Enhanced package, and the Pro package costs $16.66. 

Design Tool & Design Web Page

My Fonts: What The Font (http://new.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/) is a web design tool that let's users search for a font they may recognize by sight, but not by name.

Notepad.com (http://notepad.com/) offers basic design help. It has a cool little turquoise colored character, complete with stylin' sunglasses, and goatee. The site offers a list of helpful tutorials on how to apply HTML tags, codes, and tables, among other things, such as information on just what HTML is and how it works.

Design Tool & Design Web Page

Brusheezy (http://www.brusheezy.com/) provides free Photoshop brushes for users building a website, but the site also encourages artists to contribute and discuss their work, creating a sort of artists forum. 

Finer Design (http://www.finerdesign.com/) is a Web design and development site. With it's clean, sophisticated look, and extensive portfolio, it looks to be a well-established site. 

Design Tool & Design Web Page

Wonderwebware (http://wonderwebware.com/), is a web design tools site that offers, among other free tools, a screen ruler that allows the designer to measure in pixels, millimeters, centimeters, and inches. There is a screen capture utility, and a tool that converts text to HTML. It's a pretty straightforward site without a lot of frills.

Web Studio 5.0 (http://www.webstudio.com/), is a design web page site that offers a 30-day free trial, which includes access to all of the sites features and functions, tutorials, tech support, and hosting "so you and others can see your website on the internet." A seven-minute video provides a quick tour of how to use the site. It's all point and click and seems fairly easy to use.