My own progress and development

To tie it all together from my perspective, this course has given me a glimpse into what is possible with web design, and where I might be able to fit web design into my future career. I've seen that web design has become an increasingly democratic medium: 10 years ago, really sophisticated design was only really possible for experienced designers, but in the intervening years software like Dreamweaver and Frontpage has really democratized the process, building on interfaces that resemble programs like Word that many people are already intimately familiar with. It makes the transition that much easier- certainly for me.

I'm already focused on adding to and improving the two sites that I now have online- I might really integrate the two eventually. I'm able to show my work online, and allow people fairly easy access to it without having to mail out demos. This has already made my life considerably easier. Likewise for teaching, moving many of the course materials online means savings in time and paper, and gives the students easy access to these materials at any time and from anywhere. I've already seen areas this semester during my student teaching where having a class website would have been useful (I wasn't really allowed to start one, and I'm not sure anyone would have been able to maintain it after I left). Nevertheless, any future position I have will include an online component, even if it is really only for supplementary materials. I can see including basic web design instruction in any music technology class I might teach in the future. I personally want to try to stay current with Flash and Dreamweaver, picking up as many new skills as I can. Whether this is in class, or simply through reading/researching, I'm not sure. I'll see this coming year. Most importantly, I want to really continue to grow as a web designer (even just for personal uses), and continue to explore the possibilities of combining my love of music with the online world.

Thanks for everything Chianan and Dr. Gilbert!

Kai

My classmates' sites and blogs

I'm just visiting some of my classmates' sites. Here's what I like about some I've seen:

• Ying-Ying - The layout of La Flute de Cherry is very easy to navigate, and I especially like the idea of using a personal site as a guidebook for a visitor to the city. It adds a nice personal touch, and allows your friends to experience the city from your perspective. Websites are uniquely suited to this sort of thing, since menus for different categories are instantly accesible from the homepage, and it doesn't require you to flip through countless pages. A lot of the links are not working, though. Might want to check on that.
  
• Eva - This site is nicely put together, and very easy to navigate. I really like the homepage image, as well. The design works very well, it's simple, but comprehensive. Great use of the picture viewer, as well, for viewing the selection of student album cover work. I'm also impressed by the music technology program that Eva's developed at Brandeis. I'd love to do something similar!
  
• Maria - This site is so beautifully designed- it's so clean and mod looking. I love the smoothly moving, minimalist aesthetic of the Flash animation. Great fonts, too. I particularly like the cursive font (or is that her signature?) that she utilizes for her name. Looks great, whatever it is. It's great the way the text appears gradually, with the picture coming up last. A lovely site, without being too slick. It would be great to see how this site develops in the future.
  

Thoughts on the class

Based on my experiences this semester, the first thing that comes to mind that I've learned is a basic understanding of Flash animation, and a good introduction to using Dreamweaver. While Flash is a fairly user-friendly program, it was still valuable to have a formal introduction within even the confines of a class to get going properly. Likewise, having the feedback and exposure to the work of others (and their process) while using Flash and creating other web projects was extremely valuable to me. More than anything, this class has given me a pretty solid foundation that I can build on for future web authoring. It's difficult to stay current, though!

Similarly, I feel that my knowledge of web authoring has grown a great deal. I compare where I am right now, and what I feel I can accomplish, with where I was at the same time last year. Last year a bought a "Dreamweaver for Dummies" book just so I could get a handle on the basics and design a basic music site for my reel, which is called Amirbar Music. While I still use that site, I'm already planning on overhauling it this summer based on what I've learned in this class about Flash and more advanced Dreamweaver functions. This class has empowered me a great deal to take over the responsibility for my own presence on the web, and shown me what is possible.

The best part of this class was the hands on exposure to web authoring on a weekly basis. Watching Chianan work on projects, and be able to follow along at the same time was extremely helpful. While I wouldn't say I've mastered any of the techniques that we worked on in class (especially with the Flash action scripts), the exposure was enough to show me what I need to work on and look at in more detail. This class is great as a survey. Frankly, I wish I had been able to take this class first, in lieu of taking Tech Trends. It would be nice for the department to offer these advanced classes for grad students who enter with some real familiarity with computers and music technology. While I didn't really know that much about web authoring when I started last year, I feel like I would have been up to the challenge of starting with this class. Likewise, it would give Chianan more flexiblity to offer an even more advanced class as a follow up, OR provide the opportunity to do an independent study on web design in Music Ed/Music Tech with Chianan which could really delve into the more sophisticated techniques that are in use today. I don't know if scheduling-wise that's a possibility, but it might be an avenue that could be explored in future years. That having been said, the content of this course was great. A great exposure to web design and Flash, and useful tool in my belt, I think. I'm glad I had the opportunity to include this type of class in my Masters degree.

How Flash is useful...

Flash gives a web designer tremendous flexibility and freedom for designing animation in a fairly user-friendly way. While I've only scratched the surface of what the software makes possible, I can see some very apparent uses:

• Combining animation with static text - I used this sparingly in my index page animation, but Flash lets the designer combine any kind of text with animation in a truly dynamic way. You can move blocks of text around, fade text in and out, or keep the text static with animation moving around it. Using animation and movement can transform even mundane images and pieces of text into something much more eye-catching and interesting.
• Creating dynamic music players - I can already see how I can use the jukebox function in class. If I have a listening list for one of my classes, I can create a jukebox player with Flash that can be posted to a website, which students can then access at their leisure. This would have helped me this semester with my strings class, where we distributed CD's of the works the students are performing. Posting this music (abiding by fair use laws, of course) would obviate the need to make these CD's, saving time and money. Likewise, biographical information about the composers could be included and updated on the pages with the Flash player, giving the students a multifaceted view of the works they're performing.
  
• FlashPaper - I've made ample use of this feature on my site. The ability to post documents for easy viewing, without the need to download them, is tremendously useful. For my graduate portfolio at NYU, I posted four of my string orchestra compositions using the FlashPaper format. Once they were laid out in Dreamweaver, I included a MIDI file for each, so that anyone visiting that link can listen and scroll through the score online. Very useful. This function could be used in music class in many different ways: for posting scores and recordings for students to follow along with, or versions of individual parts, etc.; for displaying student work for others to see; or for displaying any class documents for that matter. Flash is a remarkable piece of software. I look forward to learning more about it this summer, and continuing to improve my site with it.
  

The end of live pit orchestras?

I had to blog about this, especially after I read about this in the New York Times Arts & Leisure section a few weeks ago. It's a program that reproduces an orchestra, albeit with software. The difference this time is that this virtual orchestra is not playing off a CD, but rather from a laptop so it can respond to cues, changing tempos, etc. It's meant to "augment" live players, but apparently it can be used to supplant them instead. The musician's union in NYC is understandably upset about this. It's unclear what something like Notion will mean for the classic B'way live pit orchestra over the long haul. Will (p)it slowly disappear? Let's hope not, although frankly this is an excellent option for schools. Considering how limited budgets are for hiring professional ringers, and how students either lack the time or expertise to play the really good pit arrangements, having something like this makes a lot of sense for a school music director (to whom it is being aggresively marketed, I might add...) Say you have 5 really top players in your school, but lack some other crucial elements. You can mute the tracks you have covered, and let the others play. Voile! Yeah, it's not in the spirit of a live pit, but as someone interested in music technology in general (and composing and conducting in particular), I'm fascinated by this software. What do you all think? For more about Notion (and to listen to demos, click here.

Comparing browsers

While I'm still very fond of Firefox, I'm willing to branch out a bit as far as browsers are concerned. I'm not sure what initially turned me on to Firefox- possibly it seemed faster than Safari, for instance, and I just got used to using it. Either way, Firefox has all of my bookmarks saved, so I've returned to it time and time again. That having been said, it doesn't actually load the fastest (including my homepage, www.amirbar.com), contrary to what I initially thought. When it does, it adds annoying graphics to certain pages, such as a blue rectangular box to the center of my "clips" page. I've noticed that Flock does this as well. Camino, which looks like a glorified version of Safari, is a slow loader of my homepage as well (which I use as sort of a test case). The .mov files and other graphics I have on the page load more slowly as well. In contrast, I've been very impressed by both Netscape Communicator and especially Opera. All of the newest browsers have the tab function, which is extremely useful and allows quick and easy switching between multiple pages. Flock automatically loaded all of my Firefox bookmarks when I made it my default browser, which was nice. The interface is excellent on all of them, though. Flock might be my favorite in this respect. I like the cool blues and space-age looking design. It makes Firefox and Safari look kind of clunky. Accessing major pages and high-traffic sites, like the New York Times and CNN are easily accomplished with all of the browsers. Viewing Flash animation looks pretty good on all of the latest versions of each of the browsers. By this point, they've hopefully ironed out most of the kinks.

Web 2.0 Campaigning

This I had to add to my blog. Listening to WNYC this morning, they had a piece about '08 campaign websites, and their increasing interactivity and sophistication. They mentioned that the John McCain '08 website offers something called "McCainSpace", modelled (obviously) on the MySpace concept. It allows supporters of the senator's campaign to design their own websites (and presumably some content) within the senator's own campaign space. One can then interact with other McCain supporters online, creating a web profile for oneself. This accomplishes...maybe, fundraising, networking, etc. It makes the senator look hip and with it. Suffice it to say, I have NOT actually joined this service. Nothing against McCain necessarily, but I do not want at this juncture of the campaign to be considered a "supporter" of any particular candidate. I receive enough spam already, and I can only imagine the deluge that I'd be in for if I actually create a McCainSpace page. Cute idea, though.

flash buttons

I've been experimenting with Flash buttons, which are very cool. I'm still having a bit of trouble with loading and just "playing" the sound, as opposed to loading it every time, but I've gotten around that for now. I made a small jukebox, including the tracks "Midnight In A Perfect World" by DJ Shadow and the track "Bang" by Blur. I also included a panic! button to shut off all the sounds, and short animation in Flash to try to integrate the buttons with keyframe motion. I didn't add any tweening for now, but I'll experiment more with that later. I'll try to upload this as a link on my new homepage,
kaigross.com, so that anyone can check it out online.

flash flash flash

Still working on my Flash animation project, although I have a basic idea for an opening animation for my homepage. I've finally registered my new domain, which I've been lucky enough to get under my own name. If there is another Kai Gross in the world, he doesn't have a homepage under that name. Lucky me...anyway, this is a .jpg image of the final shot from what will be a very short and simple Flash animation for my homepage.

I like to keep it simple, out of necessity. I'm a minimalist. There are graphic designers in New York who specialize in Flash, I've heard. I'm impressed by what can be done with this great program. I've barely even scratched the surface. I've realized that Flash animation is everywhere on the Net. It's simple and reflexively malleable for animators. Very cool. Now I'm going to watch the Super Bowl. I don't care who wins. Bye.

Two interesting sites

In thinking about an interesting link to post to my newest blog entry, I remembered that the students in the Mark Twain Intermediate School strings program, where I'm currently student teaching, are planning on attending a concert by the duo Black Violin, two really fascinating performers from South Florida who blend hip-hop with classical violin. Black Violin won the Showtime at the Apollo talent contest a few years ago, and are now widely sought after performers and studio musicians. Their story is very interesting, and you can read about it in greater depth on their website, www.blackviolin.net

Black Violin is pictured above.

A website that I particularly cherish, and one that really reveals one particular possibility inherent in the internet, is Metacritic, a sort of clearing house for content reviews in all different sorts of media, from music, to movies, to video games and to books. It immediately provides for the user a color-coded "score", indicating whether the compiled reviews were generally favorable, lukewarm, or negative. It also provides links to some of the reviews of a given work, allowing the user to instantly read as many reviews as desired before deciding to see, or purchase something. I love it! It's so useful!