4 Survey of Art History Websites

Client: Allegheny College Art History Department
Deadlines: February 2005, March 2005, April 2005 and May 2005

Project Description:

After my previous web site development for the Far Eastern Art Class, I was re-commissioned for four new sites for the Survey of Art History class that was held during the spring semester. This time I was taking the professor’s class at the same time that I was being the webmaster for the course. Once again, the client requested that I place the images on a password protected website for the students to study. Creating the websites became a routine exercise, but I challenged myself to create better websites. In the project solution section, I describe some of the skills I learned as the improvements that resulted.

Project Solution:

Starting with the first website, I learned about how to control the contents within a table by using the alignment and fixed size delineators. This allowed me to correct a previous problem of bouncing imagery when a student cycled through the carousel and encountered images with various dimensions. This site served as more of a color and animation exercise for me. I chose to keep a color scheme of monochromatic blue, which was easy on the eyes and allowed the images to stand out more as a focal point.

I became familiar with the creation of animated gifs using a combination of Photoshop and Image ready programs. I kept the animations simple, respecting the loading time of the page for slower connections. I was mindful that the animation should be a nice complement of the page and not become the focal point of the entire site.

For the third site, I chose a different blue color scheme with a grey tint. This made the page seem more relaxing than the others and boosted the potency of the images of art work.

On the forth and final site, I learned how to use frame sets within the current page. This allowed the viewer scroll to have a separate scrollable pallet of thumbnails that would open the image to the right elevating the need to have several separate pop up windows. This was much more convenient and manageable for the student.