Class message board

This message board offers students an opportunity to make a comment, join a discussion, ask a question, get in touch with somebody, or just whine--as long as you don't mind doing it in public.

Note this is is a moderated message board. That means you submit class-related comments to the instructor, who will post them daily (Monday through Friday, except breaks) on the class web site. It goes without saying that obscenities or libel won't be posted. Nearly everything else will, however, including criticism of the class or instructor, no matter how gratuitous. Say what you wish, or what you dare.

Comm 260 Message Board
Fall Semester 2007

Posted by Ross Collins (ross.collins@ndsu.edu) on September 4, 2007:
I hope to use this bulletin board in a different way this semester, by giving students the opportunity to gain extra credit points responding to questions I post on the board. One point extra credit for correct reponse; two points if you include a web URL for more information on the topic.

Question posted September 4: In what ways would an RSS feed help build a web community, and in what ways would it possibly not be effective?

Todd Holdman (todd.holdman@ndsu.edu) on Tuesday, September 4, 2007: Funny you should bring this up. I was thinking about my RSS reader of choice:http://www.google.com/reader/view/ and how RSS is becoming the online community builder of today.

I promotes web community by bringing you content. . . meaning you don't have to go get it. A person can read hundreds of feeds from one source instead of visiting all of those pages.

One way that it could be ineffective is if the content is mediocre. Than, a user would associate your web page w/ lackluster content.

Andrea Weber (andrea.weber@ndsu.edu) on Thursday, September 6, 2007: An RSS feed would help build a web community by establishing an easy place where a user can get updates and all the textual information they need from that site in one place without manually searching for each thing. The users of that community would benefit because of the ease of being able to check information frequently. A negative thing could be that RSS feeds can be confusing at first. I am in the process of still figuring out how to use them. I had a Xanga webblog in high school and remembered seeing the RSS option of reading the updated blogs. Today I have been attempting to play around with the MSN.com RSS feed. It is pretty nice because I can choose what sections I want to stay updated such as World News, Entertainment, and Sports.

Sadie Mogck (sadie.mogck@ndsu.edu) on Thursday, September 6, 2007: A RSS would help build a web community by allowing a feed that can keep people up to date on news, sports, and entertainment from their favorite sites automatically. The user doesn't have to go to the site to access the information. This can also be a downfall. By people not actually going to sites this minimizes the hits on the sites links. http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/index.html

Question of the week: Take the HTML quiz! Not mine--the official quiz of W3C. Finish the quiz, and tell us what you think.

Andrea Weber (Andrea.Weber@ndsu.edu) on Monday, September 17: I did the quiz twice. The first time I missed quite a few and the second time around missed four. The questions I missed had to do with elements I don't think I worked with in CSCI 116, which is where most if not all of my HTML knowledge came from. The questions I missed had to do with drop down lists, check boxes, and text field areas. The quiz is helpful to test your knowledge of fundamental HTML knowledge.

Todd Holdman (todd.holdman@ndsu.edu) on Tuesday, September 18: This quiz is HARD. I'm going to study for Thursdays quiz. The answers are tricky.

sadie mogck (sadie.mogck@ndsu.edu) on Wednesday, September 19: I didn't think the quiz was just too hard...but it wasn't easy! I had done most of my studying for our class quiz before I took it but some of the answer choices were still confusing.

Randi Vennes (randi.l.vennes@ndsu.edu) on Wednesday, September 19: Initially this quiz was really overwhelming, and it showed in my score of 50%. The second time was a lot better and the only things I missed, were things we have not talked about in class.

Ross Collins (ross.collins@ndsu.edu) on Thursday, Sept. 20: I took the test this morning. And got 80 percent. Okay, so I also forgot a few tags. But that doesn't mean you should!

Eric Sanders (eric.b.sanders@hotmail.com) on Thursday, September 20: RSS feeds are nice, I subscribe to a few. It draws in an audience of a web site almost daily or at least within the frequency of of the RSS feeds. It is easy to read the updates and as a result it helps build a strong online community of followers.

Grace Sium (grace.sium@ndsu.edu) on Sunday, September 23: I took the HTML official quiz and I thought it was helpful, I may be using that as a study tool all semester. I hope their is a CSS quiz too.

Stacy White (stacy.white@ndsu.edu) on Tuesday, September 25: September 4th Question: I have learned from working in an advertising firm that one of the biggest problems is keeping a customer or a prospective customer engaged in the product or website is one of the hardest things to do. We actually talked about this article at work, because we have a email type marketing program we use. It is a form of RSS that is consumer driven based on their action on the email. We also talked about the negative side effects, which could be overwhelming the consumer or giving them the wrong impression. But a lot of our clients use this software and service we provide. Here is the article we discussed: http://www.webwiseone.com/node/43

Stacy White (stacy.white@ndsu.edu) on Tuesday, September 253: I took the HTML offical quiz and didn't do as well as I expected. I thought I would of done a lot better than I did... I guess I will have to refresh 'big time' before the test.

Jayme Lassle (jayme.lassle@ndsu.edu) on Sunday, September 30: So, I thought I knew a lot more than I did...actually I didn't know much! I took it several times before figuring out all the answers. Now I feel like I know a lot more than I did.

Ross Collins (ross.collins@ndsu.edu) on Monday, October 1: Question of the (more or less) week: Debug the CSS script below.

{ h1 font-face: georgia; font-size: 12 pixels; font-color=plum; }

Jayme Lassle (jayme.lassle@ndsu.edu) on Tuesday, October 16: h1 isn't supposed to go in the { }, but outside instead and pixels shouldnt be wrote out but instead px and font-color and plum shouldn't have an equal sign between them (=), but a colon instead.

Randi Vennes (randi.l.vennes@ndsu.edu) on Wednesday, October 17: h1 {font-family: georgia; font-size: 12px; color: plum;}

Todd Holdman (todd@plainsmediagroup.com) on Thursday, October 18:
h1 {
font: georgia;
font-size: 12 pixels;
font-color: plum;
}

Trevor Hendrickson (trevor.hendrickson@ndsu.edu) on Thursday, October 25: h1 { font-face: georgia; font-size: 12 pixels; font-color:plum; }
Css doesn't use "=" and the tag you want to edit needs to be out side the {}

Grace Sium (grace.sium@ndsu.edu) on Thursday, October 25: h1 {font-family: georgia; font-size: 12 pixels; font-color: plum;}

Ross Collins (ross.collins@ndsu.edu) on Monday, Oct. 29: What is a "bitmapped image?"

Roxanna Moen (roxanna.moen@ndsu.edu) on Tuesday, October 30: A bitmapped image is made of pixels on a grid. They are number based and resolution dependent - you can't add or subtract pixels without loosing some of the quality of the image.

Sadie Mogck (sadie.mogck@ndsu.edu) on Tuesday, October 30: Bitmapped images are images made up of pixels-tiny boxes of individual colors. Bitmap images are based on resolution usually referred to as dots per inch or dpi. Being resolution dependent makes the images difficult to resize without altering the quality of the image.

Eric Sanders (eric.b.sanders@ndsu.edu) on Tuesday, October 30: h1 { font-family: georgia; font-size: 12 pixels; font-color:plum; }

Randi Vennes (randi.l.vennes@ndsu.edu) on Tuesday, October 30: A representation of a computer image displayed as a set of colored points (pixels) in a grid.

Andrea Weber (andrea.weber@ndsu.edu) on Tuesday, October 30: A bitmapped image is an image that is made of collections of pixels. It stores images as dots of color information rather than shapes. I am in a digital media class and we usually only save in .psd or .jpg format when using Photoshop rather than .bmp because of file size and compression of images. We also do a lot of resolution changing for printing images and a .bmp format would change the quality when changing resolution.

Todd Holdman (todd.holdman@ndsu.edu) on Tuesday, November 6: a bitmapped images is NOT vector. meaning you can't scale it up. it is what it is

Grace Sium (grace.sium@ndsu.edu) on Thursday, November 15: A bimapped picture is based on thousands of pixels in a grid pattern. They take more space and RAM memory..

COMM 260 Web Sites that Suck 2007 nominations
Post your favorite sucker here with explanation of why it's bad!

Natalie Wolff (natalie.wolff.1@ndsu.edu) on Tuesday, November 13: I think this site is bad. It's grainy (yeah, I get that it's supposed to be sand, but it looks bad), the "enter" link is annoying, and the scrolling bar is distracting.

Andrea Weber (andrea.weber@ndsu.edu) on Tuesday, November 13: I think www.msnbc.com does not have a good layout anymore. It used to be my homepage and I would usually spend a few minutes looking around at all the headlines. Recently they changed the layout and I am not a fan anymore. There are too many links, too much scrolling to find top stories compared to before, hard to follow flyout menus, and what seems to be a lot more advertising links. This could be just me resisting change, but I don't like this new change.

Randi Vennes (randi.l.vennes@ndsu.edu) on Thursday, November 15: This is the link for NDSU's Counseling Center. http://www.ndsu.edu/counseling/index.shtml
The font is really small and therefore hard to read. Black font on a white background is also very uninteresting.

Stacy Jo White (stacy.white@ndsu.edu) on Tuesday, November 27, 2007: for the question on Thursday, October 25:
h1 {font-family: georgia; font-size: 12 pixels; font-color: plum;}

Stacy Jo White (stacy.white@ndsu.edu) on Tuesday, November 27: Bitmap-based images are comprised of pixels in a grid. Each pixel or "bit" in the image contains information about the color to be displayed. Bitmap images have a fixed resolution and cannot be resized without losing quality of the image. Common bitmap-based formats are JPEG, GIF, TIFF, PNG, PICT, and BMP.

Stacy Jo White (stacy.white@ndsu.edu) on Tuesday, November 27: This is an interesting site to check out. They let you know they are the worst and show you what not to do. I only use around 6 websites daily and I use them because I like them so I don't have many that come to mind which are horrible to work with. But check this out... it is interesting. http://www.angelfire.com/super/badwebs/