HTML/CSS MIDTERM ESSAY Q's
Choose one color and tell me as much as you can about the "psychology" of that particular color.
Red: The color red has a reputation for stimulating adrenaline and blood pressure. Along with those physiological effects, red is also known to increase human metabolism; it's an exciting, dramatic, and rich color. Red is also a color of passion. Nothing says love like painting a wall bright red on Valentine's Day for your sweetheart, as seen in Figure 2.1. The darker shades of red, such as burgundy and maroon, have a rich, indulgent feeling about them—in fact, they can be quite hoity-toity. Think about these colors when designing anything for wine enthusiasts or connoisseurs of fine living. The more earthy, brownish shades of red are associated with the season of autumn and harvest.
In The Principles Of Beautiful Web Design Jason Beard says that there are five main ways to create "emphasis" in a design. Name as many of the five as you can.
Placement Continuance Isolation Contrast Proportion
Explain the difference between the "title" element and the "title" attribute.
The "title" element is an HTML element that is found in the <head> of your document. It gives the page a title. Search engines give a lot of importance to the text placed in the title element, so it is important to make sure your title is descriptive. The "title" attribute is an attribute that can be placed on an element, usually the anchor or image element, that creates a pop up "tool tip" when someone rolls their mouse over the element.
What does HTML stand for? Also, explain what the "HT" means and what the "ML" means.
HTML stands for "HyperText Markup Language." The HyperText refers to the fact that you can create links in your text that go to other web pages or websites. The Markup Language refers to the fact that we use HTML to "mark up" our text by adding elements that give out content structure.
Explain what we mean by "above the fold" and how this relates to web design.
Above the fold is a term that dates from the days of newspapers. It refers to the fact that most people will see the content that appears before the "fold" in the paper, therefore it is the most important area. In web design we can not count on a specific place that the "fold" will appear, due to the fact that different people may have different sized monitors, different resolutions, etc. Therefore, while we can aim to place our most important information at the top of the page, we can't guarantee, like we can with a newspaper, exactly how many people will see how far down the page without scrolling.
Explain what "alternative text" is and how and why you would use it.
Alternative text is descriptive text that you add to an image via the "alt" attribute. It is used for two purposes: 1. for visually impaired visitors where some type of device may be used to read a website aloud, the alternative text serves as a description of the image; 2. if a web browser is unable to display an image for any reason, some of them may display the alternative text in its place. You should always try to be as descriptive as possible with your alternative text.
An "element" is composed of three parts. Please name the three parts and give me a concrete example.
An element consists of an opening tag, some content and a closing tag. An example might be: <p>This is a paragraph.</p>
Explain the similarities and differences between an "ordered" list and an "unordered" list. Name things they have in common and things that are different about them.
Both "ordered" lists and "unordered" lists create HTML lists. An ordered list uses the <ol> element and an unorded list uses the <ul> element. Both lists use <li> elements to hold each item in the list. Ordered lists number the list items with numerals, lettters or other characters. Unordered lists simply place a bullet or similar character in front of the list item. In both cases these characters can be changed using CSS. Both lists are block level elements.
Tell me as much as you can about the GIF image format. Explain what it is best used for (and why) along with any features and capabilities it has.
The GIF format also work best for images with a few solid colors, and images with lines, like logos, clip art, and small text in images. GIF can represent images with up to 256 different colors. GIF is also a "lossless" format. GIF also supports transparency, but allows only one color to be set to "transparent." Files tend to be larger than their JPEG equivalents. This is the only format that supports animation.
Tell me as much as you can about the JPEG image format. Explain what it is best used for (and why) along with any features and capabilities it has.
The JPEG format work best for continuous tone images, like photographs. They can represent images with up to 16 million different colors. Is a "lossy" format because to reduce the file size, it throws away some information about the image. It does not support transparency. Files are smaller for more efficient web pages. It does not support animation.
Tell me as much as you can about the PNG image format. Explain what it is best used for (and why) along with any features and capabilities it has.
The PNG format work best for images with a few solid colors, and images with lines, like logos, clip art, and small text in images. PNG can represent images with millions of different colors. PNG comes in three flavors: PNG-8, PNG-24, and PNG-32, depending on how many colors you need to represent. PNG compresses the file to reduce its size, but doesn't throw anything way. So, it is a "lossless" format. It allows colors to be set to "transparent" so that anything underneath the image will show through. Files tend to be larger than their JPEG equivalents, but can be smaller or larger than GIF depending on the number of colors used.
Explain the concept we today refer to as "the rule of thirds." Where did it come from? How is it most often applied to web design?
The rule of thirds is a simplified version of the golden ratio as first proposed by the Pythagoreans who observed a mathematical pattern that occurred so often in nature that they believed it to be divinely inspired. A line bisected by the golden ratio is divided into two sections, one of which is approximately twice the size of the other. Dividing a composition into thirds is an easy way to apply divine proportion without your calculator.
