evaluation of Ibook

When i started using Ibooks author i found it quite confusing to start with as i hadn't used pages or keynote, although i did pick it up quickly. looking at my ibook i am really pleased with the outcome. A few people had mentioned that maybe the colours where to powerful/bright but comparing it to my volcano theme i feel this colour theme couldn't of worked any better. Using bookry was really easy and i found the widgets to be really fun and interesting. it helped to have the widgets integrated instead of having to go out onto the internet to watch a video etc... and because the ibook is aimed toward 16-19 years i also incorporated games that i made. The spot the difference game i found the image and then placed it into photoshop to make slight changes that weren't to obvious to the player and having people test this game  i have accomplished the task of not making the game to easy. the image galleries where easy to incorporate and i tried to find HQ images so the user would feel they were looking at HQ images. i changed the background a few times and added ink splatters which i created in illustrator which i feel work really well against the background breaking it down and giving it the feel of lava splats. on my ibook i have a black banner at the top which when crit came along people mentioned to move the content out of this black banner and keep it as a title banner which when i played around with this i did agree and feel the ibook has a cleaner feel to it. overall i feel i put alot of effort into my ibook and im prou8d at what i have achieved. Also i feel the funfacts page at the end just finishes the book of nicely and hopefully people will remember it. 

i didnt have many issues at all but some issues i did have where 

• sizes of my content when there was aot on one page
• finding the right size text so it was easily legible
• kept developing on my background
• kept changing the picture frames tiles until i chose 2-3 final ones

deadline

the deadline for our work submission is this friday 24th may. i feel i'm in a good place for this deadline, i have completed my ibook to a standard i am happy with and i have also made sure to document my research on my blog and also in my sketchbook. i've also created an assets register to show where all of my content is from i just need to add where i got all of my images from on the asset register. i'm still having issues with my website 

1. no scroll bar
2. my background image disappears at mobile size
3. some of my images a broken
4. nav bar gets crowded before dropping into a menu bar
5. menu bar has no drop down

these are just a few issue i'm having buy hopefully george is going to help me. 

Crit feedback

During crit on monday 20th may i put my ibook up on the screen some of the comments i recieved where

•  good choice of widgets
• good choice of imagery
• a mixed response to my colour design
• the black border on the top should be kept clear
• the user could be unsure of where they are in the book
• to many styles on the pages

looking at all of the points raised on my ibook i have been making changes. personally I am really happy with the colour scheme of my ibook so I have kept this the same. some of the changes I have made are to add title pages so the user knows exactly where they are at all times. also I have changed the table of contents to be a lot clearer and also added chapter title pages. I think these changes have benefitted my ibook and for the better and for the comment about to many styles on the ibook I didn't find this the case so i have left them as they where. 

Css validation

So far because my website has a lot of problems george has been helping me to try and get the basic structure to work properly because i don't have a scroll bar for my website so i haven't been able to validate it yet to check and see if it is ok to use. Due to this hopefully when i can get all the problems fixed and i'm happy with my website then i can validate it and hopefully it will be ok. 

assett register

i've created an assett register for all of my content and images. with my images i have layed them out then put the website link underneath. all of my images where taken mostly between the 1st and the 25th of march  before the pitch. i wanted to have a lot of my content ready so i could start building my ibook and website early. 

A lot of my content is sourced from multiple places but all of my written content is from geographical websites and also places like the BBC. 

i haven't added any jquery or scripts in my assett register because i haven't used any as i've been having a lot of problems with my website i wasn't able to get that far. 

user testing

I created a user testing questionnaire for my ibook which i spoke to kate about and she helped me with the questions i was putting in my questionnaire. so far i've had a few people test my ibook and the results have been put in my sketchbook along with my other draft questionnaires. 

this is a small screen shot of some of the questions i have been asking users about my ibook and there are also sections they can add additional comments. some of the comments i have received i did agree with so have made a few slight changes. and i think these changes have improved my ibook for the better. 

update

This is the background i have designed for my Ibook and also my website. on my website the background will stay the same but on my Ibook the ink patterns move on the pages to keep it interesting. i wanted to keep my ibook and website looking similar but i also wanted them to have differences so you're not looking at the same thing twice. i can't get this background on my website yet so i don't know if the ink pattern needs moving or if it even fits with the website style. 

update

This is a screenshot of my website in development. using this website on a mac i found swiping your fingers to the right on the touch pad causes this arrow to pop up on the left of the screen, i found this rather interesting and i'm unsure of wether this has happened because of my CSS because other websites i've visited this hasn't happened. I haven't put my font choices on my website yet because I still need a lot of help with this. The font choices i made were found on font squirrel. 

i've chosen to use 3 different fonts to emphasise different parts of my website and Ibook. The top font is called 'stardos stencil' and is being used for titles. the second font is called 'aaaargh'  and this is being used as my main text font due to the fact it is large clear and also contemporary. because the target audience age is 16-19 i wanted to use modern, fresh fonts. the last font is called '1942 report' and is an american typewriter styled font but it is legible as well. a lot of the typewriter fonts are unclear but i wanted a quirky font to use for labelling. 

website deveopment

Today i have been linking all my pages together which i have ben finding really difficult to get my head around. i didn't realise each .html had to have its own .css i thought you could link all the .html's to one .css regardless i have created my basic website. one of the troubles im having is the background images won't work on the background and for some reason i cant scroll down my pages which means half of my page is cut off. i also need to work out how to reposition my images so they fit neatly on the page and look like more of a gallery. 

compared to the ibook which i found quite easy to get the hang off i do think the website has been a really difficult project for me to get my head around. looking at interactive websites gives me creative ideas but my skills aren't up to the standard to create anything like that. i have stuck to the wireframes i first created with a small few tweaks but the final website will look the same near enough. 

the colour scheme has stayed the same thought the ibook and the website and also the font choices have stayed the same. i still need to learn how to put my own font choices on my website because at the moment i'm using ariel. 

some other problems i have are 

• my webpage cuts off and i don't have a scroll bar
• my background image doesn't work
• some of my images don't work
• my mobile device menu doesnt drop down 

website development

so far on my website i have added my images in and i just need to centre these. i have also added a navigation system and made the webpage responsive. i need to add my image background for my website yet but i'm still changing it on illustrator. my images where meant to be round and i made these in photoshop but for some reason they wouldn't work in my coding. i tried using them in all different formats (.JPG .PDF .GIF) but none of them would work so i need to come back to this problem once i have the main structure finished. 

Ibook Background development

since "finishing" my ibook i have been looking over it frequently to see if there was any small details i could add to improve the look of it. i noticed the background looked very formal which i didn't want, and also the scrolling text boxes looked very formal so i played around with some effects on Ibooks author and created a scroll bar for people to understand that you can scroll through the text. on my background i added a ripped paper effect and added a black box behind so it looks like i've ripped it. also i thought the red was very blocky and needed some smaller details, i crated an ink illustration in illustrator and used this for my background. its meant to give the idea of falling ash/ spitting lava but i chose to keep the black theme as it contrast best with the red. the bigger ink splats can be seen as small pumice stone which falls when a volcano has erupted (it's a mixture of gas and lava) 

interactive design

My ibook has quite a lot of interactive elements. these are only a few that i have added. The ibook's target audience is 16-19 so i wanted learning about volcanoes to be interesting to them instead of being like a text book. on each page i've tried to keep the elements different so each page is interesting and different. all of my videos are from youtube and they consist of news footage and also geographical companies and also  a documentary from the bbc. I've been using bookry to find a lot of widgets to add in and i added a google maps widget which you can see a satellite view of mt st helens which i think is quite interesting to see especially the size of it. 

I feel i've used a sufficient amount of intereactive design in my ibook. 

This website was my original inspiration for my website the black and red theme is also the colour theme i wanted to use and on  their website they have added a patterned lock bar at the top which i where i got the ida to put one on mine. i originally wanted to used round navigation images on my website but for some reason the wouldn't load into the website so i had to use the original square images. i created the images in photoshop using a clipping mask. 

these are the navigation images i created. although one of them is a different eruption than what i finally chose. my website has had a lot of problems with navigation so i think trying to add these in created more problems which is why i chose to use the square images. 

website develpoment

on my website i have been adding photos on my homepage - firstly i wanted to create round images that could also be used as navigation but i changed my mind to leave the images just as images. when i tried adding these into my css they wouldn't work, i tired various images which did work. i saved my images out as PDF, PNG and JPG but neither of these options would work, i don't know if it is because i made the images in photoshop?
i'll need to ask george for help to find out why this isn't working. i've also designed my website so that paragraphs first letters will be larger than the rest of the text. i also need to finish making my pages on information then i need to link them to  the homepage so people can use the navigation to get to them.