February


	Journal of Experience - February

Total hours in project as of the end of January - (54 hours)

Tuesday - February 2, 1999

3.5 hours - Now that I am finished with all of the chapters in the textbook, "Fusion 3.0 for Dummies," I am about ready to begin doing some things for real. I spent the evening publishing some practice sites. I felt like I needed more time in this area, because I have never done this before. I had trouble publishing with copied web sites from the Fusion samples folder. Some things are not working. I need to work on this publishing idea a little more to understand it and get it working properly.

Wednesday - February 3, 1999

5 hours - I created and organized my web site with all of its pages (in the site map page). I had spent a considerable amount of time over the past few months planning and gathering material that I felt was relevant. Now I have a blue print of what I want to create. I imagine the final project will look somewhat different than this original blueprint, but the wonder of Fusion is the amazing ease at which you can mix and move pages in your site without to much trouble. I also created the style I want to use for my project web site which included, fonts, colors, backgrounds, banners, site style lines, and buttons, both primary and secondary. I created my home page, introduction, and religious education pages. Currently I have 24 separate pages on my web site, but that might change and expand before I'm completely finished. Tonight I lost track of time and really got into what I am doing. I am amazed at the options that Fusion provides, and the flexibility it gives to a web author compared to Netscape Composer.

Thursday - February 4, 1999

3 hours - I continued tonight creating content for my website. I created inputted information and completed the objectives of CES, and the Commission of CES pages.

Saturday - February 6, 1999

3 hours - I started creating actions on the pages I had already completed. This was fun, but the actions in Fusion is limited unless you use an outside program called shockwave which the text reccommends that you use. I completed inputting content for Unit 1. Now I'm ready to start with Unit 2. I want to try to keep everything looking as uniform as possible throughout the whole site. This was one of the recommendations the textbook had for web authors. Make everything look like it belongs.

Monday - February 8, 1999

2 hours - Continued creating pages and inputting content in Unit 2 now. The Gospel Learner, the Role of the Holy Ghost, and the Role of the Student.

Tuesday - February 9, 1999

2.5 hours - Continued organizing and inputting information in Unit 2. Readiness, participation, and Application pages. This is a very simple process, but very time consuming.

Wednesday February 10, 1999

2.5 hours - Tonight I had trouble getting dyna buttons to work. They wouldn't work in the preview, or publish editions of my site. They are a nice feature to add to a page, but are something I can live without if I can't get them working. I'll have to have Dale look at these. I continued creating and inputting information for the following pages: Unit 3 - Gospel Teaching, preparing, what and how, and classroom control

Thursday - February 11, 1999

1 hour - Input information into Prepare page, also update and changes minor things throughout site.

Friday - February 12, 1999

3 hours - Creating and inputting information into What and How, and Readiness activities pages.

Saturday - February 13, 1999

3 hours - Changed and added information to the Decide what, Decide how pages

Monday - February 15, 1999

3.5 hours - Created and inputted information into understanding, process and application activities pages.

Tuesday - February 16, 1999

4 hours - Reviewed entire site, spell checked everything, and changed buttons for all pages. Began Unit 4 - Teaching Skills, scripture teaching and study scripture block pages.

Wednesday - February 17, 1999

3 hours - Inputting information into maintain order, eliminating distractions, questioning and class discussions pages.

Friday - February 19, 1999

4 hours - Inputting information into visual, audio, writing exercises and group work. I also previewed the entire site, spell checking again, and editing so that the entire site has a uniform look to it.

Saturday - February 20, 1999

5 hours - Created and inputted information for the following sites: teaching resources, writing exercises, journal, and summary. I also continued to edit and touch up entire site in order to maintain a uniform look to the entire site.

Tuesday - February 23, 1999

3.5 hours - I found tonight very difficult and frustrating. It is extremely complicated to manipulate and change styles in fusion. Unless you are selecting one of their pre designed sites, it is very difficult to create anything authentic that you can call your own, without using their material. I met with Dale and he previewed what I have created so far. I need to make my site uniform across all pages, which I am trying to do. This should be a much simpler process.

Wednesday - February 24, 1999

3 hours - I can't see some of the buttons I have created once I publish or preview my site. I don't know why but I finally fixed the problem by scrapping the style of button I was using for something else that did work. I hate not knowing why it isn't working. I have another suggestion for Fusion. It takes so long to load up the program between your working site and a preview site that there is a lot of down time. Could they create away of speeding up the loading site by just loading the changed assets since your last preview rather than the entire site every time you want to look at it. This would free up a lot of down time for web authors and make it more convenient to use.

Thursday - February 25, 1999

4 hours - Tonight I was trying out additional buttons and banners to use on the site and checking them in preview to see if they'll work, when suddenly the computer froze up and I lost everything I had this evening. The backup folder isn't working and I hadn't saved any of my material. I came very close to destroying this computer I'm working on. Fortunately it's not mine and I was able to control the computer rage I was feeling. Dale had warned me about this very situation and that I should make it a habit to consistently save my work. Again I learned the hard way, but from now on, I will make a save every fifteen minutes so that I don't have to lose an entire evenings worth of work.

Friday - February 26, 1999

5.5 hours - Tonight I did what I did last night except I saved it every fifteen minutes. I can't figure out how to get pop up messages to work. I don't even know if this is a feature that Fusion allows you to do, but I would like to use it if I could figure out how to do it. I went back through the text and couldn't find anything that helps me. Also, some of the buttons that previously were working in my site, now aren't and I haven't touched them. One of the things I don't like about Fusion is that it is writing html and doing things behind the scenes that you don't know about, and that is my guess as to why it doesn't work for me sometimes. Also, lately as I am previewing in Netscape, it will shut down unexpectedly without any warning, and I am uncertain why. This has just recently begun and I don't know why. I wonder if it has anything to do with the file size. This site is taking up a lot of memory, almost 35 MB.

Saturday - February 28, 1999

4.5 hours - Today I added animation and changed things on all Unit pages. The animation I find interesting, but limited. I can only get animation to load on to my page in straight lines. I would like to get some pictures, or buttons to fly around the screen rather than in or out in a straight line. I still am uncertain how to do this and don't know if Fusion will allow me to. It doesn't seem like this is an area that Fusion will give me much flexibility. I hear from some that Dreamweaver has much better options when it comes to creating animation on ones pages.

Total hours on project as of the end of February

54 learning Fusion in textbook.

68.5 creating site in Fusion using tools I have learned on my own