Final Project: Portfolio

Investigate
      At first I was devastated when I was assigned this project. I was still only half way done with the previous project, the year was rapidly drawing to a close, and the teacher had already said he wasn't going to assign a final project. We were given the option of either using Flash or Dreamweaver to make a website cataloging our work in Multimedia throughout the year. I had watched a friend try making a website with Flash earlier, and thought it looked difficult. I also made a vow to never use that accursed program ever again. That being said, I dove right into the entirely new program that was Dreamweaver. The only thing I looked up before starting on the program was the teachers example of how tables could be used to make a website.
 
Plan
      I didn't really need to spend a whole lot of time planning for this project. I figured it was simple enough, and given the limited amount of time I had to complete it, the sooner I began the better off I would be. I decided that I would make a large chart a few columns wide and give each assignment I completed over the year a row to itself. I would then add a bit more to the table to make it more visually appealing and website-esque.
  
Create
      The first thing I did upon opening Dreamweaver was find the insert table button and use it. It asked me how many rows and columns I wanted. I knew that I would be able to edit it later, so I started with 3 rows and 10 columns. Once the table was made, I realized I had mixed up the two, then reversed it. I merged the three segments of the first row to make a small title cell. I then simply started from the beginning of the year and posted up every major tutorial and project that I did over the course of the year. I gave each item a title, a quick description, and then the image itself. I ended up with something like 23 projects. Once the portfolio itself was done, I realized that I still needed to decorate the project and make it appear more like a website. I looked at the Yahoo site and saw that it had a bunch of advertisements on the side. I added another column onto my website, and found a couple of large banners that fit well into the spaces. It was starting to look more like a real website. I added a column on the other side and filled it with text, just to look interesting. I added a title for the website up on top, and finally added color. My portfolio website was finally complete.
    
Evaluate
     All in all, this project was a success. The website looks good and is believable. It is also a good catalog of all of the work that I have done in multimedia throughout the course of this year. This is especially impressive when one considers that I have never used Dreamweaver before and I didnt look at any tutorials for it. Still, I did not think it was a very enjoyable project. By this point in the year, I was pretty burned out, and the teacher made it sound like we weren't going to have to worry about a final, especially since there were only a few class periods left and we had barely started a project the week before. It was also tedious having to hunt down every project from the year and fit into a table. I also hated Dreamweaver. It was really clunky, and miserable in general. If I could have done one thing differently, I might have used a few less projects from throughout the year. A smaller table would have been easier to work with.


Bibliography

- Wegscheid, Shaun. "Multimedia." Technology. Blogger, 16 Apr. 2012. Web. 15 May 2012. <http://sw-multimedia.blogspot.com/search/label/multimedia>.

- Ace, Murray. "How to Move Tables in Dreamweaver." HighDots Forums. VBulletin, 22 Mar. 2006. Web. 25 May 2012. <http://www.highdots.com/forums/macromedia-dreamweaver/how-move-tables-dreamweaver-170247.html>.

 -"DREAMWEAVER TABLES." DREAMWEAVER TABLES. Web. 25 May 2012. <http://www.awdsf.com/courseware/dreamweaver/dreamweaver2_tables.htm>.

 -Yahoo! Yahoo! Inc. Web. 25 May 2012. <http://www.yahoo.com/>.