Week 11 - The Value of Subject Matter Experts

I am learning the value of Subject Matter Experts, or SMEs (rhymes with sneeze).

As a technical writer who is fairly new to the field, I work with SMEs every day. In the strict sense, for my job, these are the business analysts and developers, but they are also my fellow tech writers in the office. I work with such a supportive, knowledgeable group of writers!

A few things occurred to me this week with regard to this project: a) I'm running out of time, b) building everything twice in "live" and "sandbox" environments is a time suck that I can't afford, c) I need to get help from a SME.

It's already week 11, and I have to present this Nicole at the beginning of week 14. Yikes! As worthwhile as it is to work in a sandbox environment, I was wasting time. I got more and more comfortable with Dreamweaver, and I'm very, very careful about "putting," and "saving" and working in only one index.shtml at a time.

Here's an example: I worked for an hour on a beautiful header graphic, uploaded it onto the site, and was not able to see it for another hour before I realized all that work was stuck in the sandbox and not actually on my live site. That's when I decided to scrap the sandbox.

I have spent so much time trying to learn HTML this semester that I lost sight of my project for a couple weeks. I don't have to know the ins and outs of HTML or be an expert in HTML. As long as I know enough, or can access the code, to make this project the best it can be, that's all I need.

If this semester was meant to be about learning HTML, I would have kept digging into the HTML books. But it wasn't!

This semester was meant to be about presenting my lovely tea research paper in a new and unique way, using technical writing skills and tools.

And as a technical writer for a software development company, I don't need to know the code behind the software. I only need to know enough about its functionality to write about it for the end user.

As a technical writer, working cooperatively with a SME to get the information I need is what I do.

That's when I decided to call in a SME of my own. My SME knows HTML, and I know how to pay attention to which code does what, how to copy/paste it where it belongs, and how to alter it for my needs.

When I described this realization to my SME, he gave me a patient smile and said, "I wondered how long it would take you to come to this conclusion." And then we got to work.

I asked, "How do I get a shadow to appear underneath all my images?" My SME gave me the code, showed me how to get it to work on one page, and I copied it onto every single graphic throughout the site.

I asked, "How do I prevent my internal and external links from appearing with a blue line underneath, and how do I prevent them from changing color after the page has been visited?" My SME gave me the code, showed me how to get it to work on one page, and I copied it onto every single link throughout the site.

I did this for dozens of coding situation throughout the project, and it is FINALLY started to take shape!

Week 10 - My Other Class?

"I have another class?" I remembered I have another class this semester when a deadline for a paper started looming toward me.

I never really forgot, since I've spent a part of each week on the obligatory hoop-jumping activities associated with it. But much of this week was spent working on that.

I spent another chunk of time working on the website title. I got sidetracked by playing with fonts, finding new fonts, adding color (a nice, greyish-blue might look nice), and before I know it, hours have passed.

This is what's on there now (it extends to the right of the text). I like the font, I like the flag, I like the colors, but I think it could be a little more interesting:

Still a work in progress. I threw a quick screen capture of the menu bar and wrapper color into Word to play around and make sure the colors look ok together.

I'm not finished with the text, fonts, or spacing (why can't I get Word to do what I want it to do?), but I found a temporary blue-ish color that tells me I'm on the right track:

One of my planned deliverables is a style guide listing the fonts, sizes, colors, throughout the website. Right now, I have hexadecimal codes and font names scribbled on a pad of paper next to me. Most are scratched out and have been replaced with something new.

Style guides should probably been the first thing I created, but since I'm not building this project off of repeated, set standards and styles, it too is an iterative process. When I like it, I jot it down on my paper. Now I know the style guide will likely be one of the last things I draft up. 

I'll keep working on the website title. And since I'm using lovely, but weird, fonts, it'll have to be a .png file in the header rather than text styled with a .css. That way, it will look exactly the way I want and no one will have to download any fonts to view it.

I'll be happier when it's finished, but for now, I need to move on.

Week 9 - Open Source Code

During the past few weeks, I have spent a lot of time working with images. I always imagined this project to be rich and layered with a lot of visual texture.

Some websites look great with clean, bright palette and crisp text. But this project is about 17th-19th century British tea. I want the user to experience a period look and feel, accomplished, in part, with vintage images. 
 
So... weeks of finding, scanning, renaming, and saving image files into folders I set up for each page on the website. I don't know how, or if, I'll use all of this source material, but some really lovely background images, little bits and bobs that will do "things" on the page later on, and great images that support the content.

Speaking of the "content," I am struggling to figure out how to turn the information from a 20+ research paper into a website. I am not interested in having a bunch of text blocks laying around the site, requiring the user to read, read, read.

In an effort to detatch myself from my research paper, or, rather, from the format of my research paper (comfort in the familiar), I pulled out the "meat" and organized it into a bullet lists for each "page" of the website. From here... we'll see.

In the meantime, I had a lot of housekeeping to do in Dreamweaver as well. I had to create files and folders in Dreamweaver to match the layout of the webpage. Having all of this built ahead of time, before the actual content is loaded onto the website, helps me stay organized.

The home page has a background image in it now. I'm not super thrilled with the size of the Camellia sinensis plant overlaying the map (it's too big), so I'll have to play with it.

One thing I always planned on, was having an image carousel on the home page. I wanted it to rotate through several images that live on the interior pages, thinking the movement will give a little life to the home page.

I found what is actually called an "image slider." I don't know what the difference is between an image slider and carousel, but found one that didn't have as much of a modern look to it. This is where I discovered something called "open source code." Free code you can copy and paste into your project - so cool - but... not exactly the easiest thing for a novice to work with.

After downloading the CSS and HTML files for the image slider, I was stuck. What the heck do I DO with these now? I called in a SME, a subject matter expert from work that I was sure would point me in the right direction.

I learned to pay strict attention to my file structure and file names in Dreamweaver, rename some of the location names accordingly (that came with the open source code), pay less attention to the HTML code itself, and ignore the Java script for now.

After renaming the images I set aside for the image slider, I finally got them to show up. There's some work to do yet on the little buttons, but accomplishing this much was exhausting, so I'll stop for now.

Week 8 - Jumping Into the Sandbox

I imagine there comes a time in every website project where one has to stop playing with content, images, in this case, and just start building already!

For me, this is the scary stuff. This is where I have to dive into the unknown--website creation in general, and Adobe Dreamweaver, specifically--and splash around until I get something--anything--to work they way I want it to.

I had a teacher once (Nicole) that said something to the effect of "You really can't break anything. Just dig in(to the technology) and see what it does." uh... I prefer the hand-holding, coddling methodology, myself.

Editing images is fun, but trying to do something I've never done before and make it look as fabulous as the vision in my head... a little stressful.

I took inspiration from some coworkers at 3M (I learn a lot when they're on conference calls) and created a "sandbox environment." My website, this honors project, is located at one URL, but I decided to create a second URL to use as a test environment.

Working with dual environments may be a little more work in the sort run, but the last thing I want to do is get part of the website looking all fancy, do something wrong, and have it blow up or disappear. So, I set up an identical project in Dreamweaver and uploaded it to Dreamhost, and now I breathe a little easier.

The upper and lower navigation bars were the only things on the website at that time. Since both nav bars are used site-wide, the first thing I did in the sandbox was to build a CSS file to make them pretty.

I made the nav bar color from copying an eyedropper of color from an image I'm using on the home page, selected a generic font family, for the time being, and played with the size until I figured out how to make it match the width of the page.

Isn't it beautiful? 

Week 7 - Frames, framework, and the iframe command

I learned a new trick with Photoshop. Actually, it's might be very basic, but I'm not terribly strong in Photoshop, so it's a fancy trick for me.

I created some nice, period-type frames for the website, and they'll be used, predictably, around select photos. It's a small way to add more visual texture to the pages without a lot of clutter.

I took digital photographs of a few frames around my house and uploaded them to my computer, which is easy enough, but I wanted to delete the contents of the frame, the center part. I want to copy/paste the frame onto another picture and drag/size the frame so it, well, frames, the picture underneath it. The only problem was, I didn't know how to delete sections of a photo.

This is where YouTube is my friend. After a quick search, I discovered the Background Eraser Tool and jotted down a few notes. Yes, the background eraser tool was sitting right there in the toolbar the whole time, but Photoshop can be a little intimidating. Here's how to do it.

1. Select the Marquis Selection tool (the icon of a box made out of dashed lines).
2. Click and hold, and then drag to select the area of the photo that you want to erase. The highlighted area will show with a "marching ants" border.
3. Select the Background Eraser tool (the icon of an eraser with scissors). This may be nested within another eraser tool.
4. Adjust the brush size with the square bracket keys on your keyboard (next to the letter P). As long as your area (to be erased) is still highlighted with the marching ants border, you can use a large brush and erase fairly quickly without erasing anything outside the border.
5. Click on the area you want erased until complete. You should see grey/white checkerboard underneath.

It worked, and the "empty" frame can be dragged over a picture. Here's a little snapshot of the test, which shows the photo under the frame, a red layer under that, and a second frame peeking out from the side.

It's little things like this that please me.

Speaking of frames, I learned about the "iframe" html command.

I've been building the framework of the website, which currently consists of a temporary (read: unattractive) navigation bar across the top, an incomplete nav bar on the bottom, and not a whole lot in between.

One link on the lower nav bar, which I think is called the utility nav, is "Blog," and on that page, I used this iframe command:

 <iframe src="http://ucdenglishhonors.blogspot.com" frameborder='0' width="1050" height="600> </iframe>

As I wrote to Rodney a couple weeks ago, all good companies have a link to their blog on their company website, so mine should too. Now, the Blog link on any page in the website will show this blog... and now this blog shows the HTML code that shows this blog.

...how meta.

Week 6 - SDLC and the One-Person Shop

I found this funny comic online.

I definitely have a grand vision for this project. I just hope it doesn't end up being a Dali-esque, deflated tire dripping down a tree stump. As a "one-person shop," it is all up to me.

Source: http://ramsis-hi.wikispaces.com/SDLC

Week 6 - FrameMaker book: Prospectus, Design Doc, and Project Plan

My work and my homework are beginning to blend! I am a technical writer now and plan to continue as a technical writer after I graduate (11 more weeks, 11 more weeks), so, to me, is an exciting thing!

I stayed after work for a couple hours yesterday and converted my project Prospectus, Design Document, and Project Plan from Word into a FrameMaker book. I already spend many hours a week working on document conversion at work, so why not turn my project documents into a Frame book?

I created a book chapter for each document, and, thinking ahead, I can add other project deliverables to the book as additional chapters. I used a basic cover page (with a temporary title) and applied some paragraph and character styles to the content. Some of the content references information in other chapters, i.e., See Project Plan, and I'll create additional cross-references as I add more information.

At this point, I've decided not to change the content in these first three chapters or to retrofit the content to the project as I make changes to the website design (app-to-doc). There may be some value to preserving the original intent and comparing it to the actual project as I go.

I'm approaching this project as a small "product release" and applying basic SDLC processes, which includes iteration. Change from original intent to final outcome are inevitable; because I am creating an interactive website, I feel this is appropriate.

Nevertheless, I may rearrange the content in these document, or reformat numbered lists to bullets, or vice versa. As a technical writer, I want it to look nice!

I need to do a little work to the Frame book. I notice a couple blank pages at the end of each chapter, which I want removed. I want to create and apply a template to the cover page to center the text, which is something I need to know how to do anyway as a regular Frame user. I will also (eventually) create a table of contents.

I saved the book as a .pdf so it can be easily viewed, and I will update it here, periodically, as I make changes.

So much to do. But we now have a time and date scheduled for the Oral Defense, so... wow!