Activity 304: My example of advanced CSS styles

An exmaple of my style sheet is posted on the internet. www.dillonhoa.com. It might not be up yet. but it will.

Activity 302: Learning about CSS

So How do we use CSS?

Firstly in the HTML file, you must declare the CSS style sheet as a link. You can declare mutliple CSS sheets and say which one is the main one.

Secondly in the CSS file, the syntax is relatively simple. Any tags you want to overide you keep in a {}. Within the {} you can change things like text colour, background, size etc.

Activity 301: Advantages and disadvantages of CSS

So what is CSS for? why bother and why do we use it?

CSS has in recent years taken over web design. It offers a lot of dynamic websites. Things like corners and style of the webpage can be all changed using CSS. Gone with the old fashion blue underlined link and in with the new CSS styled links that is more inkeeping of the look and feel of the persons web design. Another advantages are that different CSS style sheets can style one webpage and therefore allow different look with just one html data.

However, the disadvantages of CSS is compatibilty of different web browsers and devices. They interperet CSS differently and some do not support all parts of CSS tags. So as a developer, you must consider what to use. For example, rounded corners in boxes are done differently as is the drop shadow.

Activity 205: Using Multiple Style Sheets

What a difference a 0 makes. Unfortunetly web browsers must have their own style sheet to display basic html pages. But for the more advanced, CSS have to fight against the web browser’s style sheet and its own. However, there is a saving grace called reset sheets. When imported, it sets the web browser to have all 0 values and in effect gives you full control on how the CSS should appear. Many frameworks use such technique. An example of a industry standard is YUI or yahoo user interface http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/. YUI is a framework that uses CSS and javascript to build rich websites. There are a lot of tools in YUI that the designer can utilise.

Activity 204 Cross browser compatibilty

This is an interesting activity as rounded corners are were a trend and new websites are coming back to sharp corners, however rounded corners are a great design tool. It allows the rounded corners to be dynamic and background images dont have to be pre rendered to get the same effect. Mozilla firefox, chrome and safari are compatible with rounded corners using their own CSS reference but IE has troubles. However, IE 9 will have full CSS compatibility (finally).

There are ways around this browser compatibilty. Pre rendered images with rounded corners. This is alright if the background is basic (i.e. white background). But when different resolutions are viewed, they may distort and fail at the end result. The other option is adding an extension file on the server. This will let IE6 be able to do rounded corners from ‘behaviours’. http://www.htmlremix.com/css/curved-corner-border-radius-cross-browser

But when making CSS, one must consider putting all different codes to cater for all web browsers.

Move over Myspace, YouTube is coming

Myspace has always been the one to choose when starting a new band and to upload music and be seen. But lately youtube has taken a lot of the share with the ease of uploading videos and the mass publicity it has been getting. After Google acquired YouTube, the amount of funding YouTube had shot up and easily taken itself to be a household name.

Also with Myspace being so overcrowded with new bands trying to make it big, youtube seems the place to go.

Youtube statistics…well possibly

I have found it is rather hard to get statistics of the usage on youtube. It seems the statistics I have found were from 2006 which is rather old and probably not valid now. However, through some more searching, I have found a blog of some statistics that were researched by the blogger done in 2008. A lot more relevent and up to date. What I found interesting was the categories that the video posts contain.

As a break down, march 17th 2008 78.3 million videos existed on youtube and on average 150,000 new videos everyday are being uploaded. But the most interesting fact is the category of the video that is being uploaded. The top share of the videos were music videos at 19.8% which is 15.5 million videos of the 78.3 milllion!

Update: Through related posts found on wordpress after I posted this, there was a link that says 20 hours of video gets posted up on youtube every minute! thats a lot.

Sellaband: How it works, why invest?

Sellaband is a very unique idea. It is a great start for bands to make it big and to get fans on board. As soon as you release that first album you almost guarantee you have a fair few fans all ready to buy it. Sellaband also helps promote your band as you gain your way to stardom by presenting yourself in a professional manner. Lastly, its free.

How it works is fairly simple and it makes the fans and band themselves invest in the band. This investment, if it makes it to the target, will have a return through sales made in 5 years when the album is released. More investment means more returns. So maybe it’s time to invest into that cool unknown band.

Sellaband to sell a lot

There are many reasons why a band should join up sellaband. Not the fact that it is a great way to help jump start your band with funding from the dedicated fans out there, but now that Amazon.com is on board to help sell your albums you have made from sellaband. Albums that are sold in this way also get passed down to the fans that helped you get there. How nice.

Start selling without a record label

It is possible to sell your music through Myspace called SNOCAP even if you are unsigned. This is good news indeed for new artists and hopefully with more sales, someone will notice you. However, I do find it hard to believe that you could just make a living off just that.