Friday, 14 June 2013

UNIT 28 D2

Overall when concluding the overall effectiveness of my website it came to my attention that there were a few areas of which it could be improved as to make it more beneficial to the film club itself.

If I was to have the chance to once again improve the film clubs website again to make it benefit the film club I would do things like making it more accessible, such as making the links to access the rest of my site more obvious by making them bigger and putting an Ephesus on them thus making them a lot more visible to the user. By adding a sub-heading on the side panel and placing it with my buttons it can add to the user friendly interface and help those with limited I.T skills and make it more accessible.

On my trailer page I have put a trailer for each movie to make the users experience better allowing them to see a general look of a films style and critical response. This would allow the users to not need to use sites like YouTube to locate film trailers or related content. I could have also made the thumbnails of the films more visible and larger, as currently I use period movie posters. This would more clearly show what was on offer and help to create a more user-friendly environment. Within the reviews page I could have actually added reviews instead of simply adding links to sites that contained them, this would overall create a more professional site and a better experience for the user as they don’t have to site hop to get info.

For the films page I could of added pictures around the time table as in finished view it was a simple list and did not look professional or nice. This would allow the users to be more interested in each of the films on show. I could put more information on my home page allowing the user to know more about the film club. Making the first impression of the site a good one.


The way my page is set up allows it to be easily expanded upon and is simple to modify and add to, encase the website takes off and need to expand the option to edit and change things which would still allow it to function as it could allow the website to have a function which allows the user to search the movies by genre allowing it to be easily used or a simple drop down  menu which would act as a filter, this would be a great improvement if the website was to expand and be able to show more than 11 movies and make a better site with a plethora of useful information for users to access.  

UNIT 18 D2

for this task I will be concluding and the effectiveness of y database this will be in comparison to its original intention.

Some of the features that I have included in my database are simple queries, macros, reports,task dedicated forms like the payments form the registration form and able to create a new member into the database as these are the major aspects of a database. 
Also this includes validations which basically stops people from accessing data if they had spelt critical information incorrectly and an error message will appear, saying a phrase to the effect of "your too young to enter" these are present in most aspects of my database.

http://milney95.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/unit-18-p7.html, this link takes you to a page where I tasted all aspects of my database and shows the effective testing of various components like the macros and input masks. 

one of the features in my database was a query, this is basically when you can search manually for a film or review. Then all of films or star ratings that you have searched will appear in a single table with all of the available data like the title, star rating, comments,particular film/ star rating. It is like the search engine of the database.
The screenshot below shows an Query in action and the overall process, that someone uses it to search for aspects of a film.


Macros have been induced into my database. A macro is basically to stop a potential member from missing out any fields in the registration form and therefore making an error message appear saying to fill out the empty fields. Basically adding a macro helps to get all of the potential information that is necessary to create a new member like their first-name, last-name which will generate an automatic username with a few numbers and 3 letters from your first name and 2 letters of your last name, your address, town, county, postcode and your date of birth and all of these are essential for creating an account and the macro helps to stop any necessary fields being missed out. This helps to stop false inforation being produced and to stop members being created for illegitimate reasons.          
The screenshot above shows the macro in use and how it stops users leaving critical fields out in the signing up process. 

It was noted that the addition of a simple switchboard would greatly help so that a new member can navigate the database more easily, this includes a payments form for when a member wished to get a film. 

The above screenshot shows an switchboard into the database which is integrated to a database and these are just some of the improvements that I could make to my database 

The screen shot above that shows my payments table and it shows that I have created a payments form and it also indicates the payments I have included an append query and this basically allows the members to purchase certain items and it basically links with the members table that I was given to import into the database allowing an overall smoother transaction.  

Overall, my database works effectively because I have imported and exported data into tables such as when new members are being added to the system. I am adding in new members into the members table then when a new member is created then it would add to the members table, also when there is a registration the correct input masks and protocols are properly in place so that no information can be left out and that the correct error messages show up. so to round it off overall my database is effective and shows a correct way of operating and runs to spec 

Thursday, 13 June 2013

UNIT 28 M2

When creating my website there were many techniques I used to create my website and make it interactive.

For navigation, I have linked all of my pages together by using hyperlinks, also I have made sure that all of text that I have written is easily legible and easy to get to as well as the easily visible buttons on the left side which are ised to navigate each of the hyperlinks.  

Hierarchy is a tool that separates every part of the page from each other and from the most important parts of the page; this will include Text, Size, Font or Shape. For example using the “FILMS” button and this image is a focus point and it will go on the home page and all the other pages this is a critical section as it itself Is hyperlinked. This will help the user understand what the website is for sure and it should be bigger than the rest of the text because it is the main banner and it will try to get other users attention  it itself is a very important and critical to the user’s experience. This separates Headings from Sub-Headings because of the size, shape and colour of the heading and with the sub-heading such as the background colour and the heading colour on my page, these help to ensure that it is easier to navigate around the website if there are sub-headings and therefore acknowledging the hierarchy structure and also making the side buttons easier to distinguish and therefore easier to tell as more important.

The HTML Forms are mainly used for making the language barrier between pages while on the internet, also it is used for every website that is on the internet and while I was creating my website I used this language to embed links to specialist review sites and the actual trailers used on my website as well as a PAYPAL button to my payments page of my website for users to pay with.
For the video and sound elements included within my website ,as in the trailers  for my website I have used a high quality of sound and video.

UNIT 28 P2

When considering how my website will operate there are many factors that will effect a user’s use of my website, these are not issues with the site it’s self but issues with the user’s actual personal computer system or landline connection, a summary of potential issues are listed below.

-Web server capacity
A Web server is a program that, using the client internet provider which connects to the World Wide Web's Hypertext Transfer Protocol, this then serves the files that form Web pages to Web users (whose computers contain HTTP clients that forward their requests). Every computer on the Internet that contains a Web site must have a Web server program. The leading Web server is Microsoft's Internet Information Server it is the most widely installed and used server. A common way that you could increase the capacity of the web server is to upgrade your server to a better server, this is a common debate with most tech savvy people on which is best as most people hate internet explorer so must switch to servers like Google Chrome or Firefox.

-Bandwidth 
Bandwidth or the other term Data Bandwidth are common terms that are used to refer to measures and they represent the available or consumed data in the communication resources such as your internet or download speed and they are expressed in Bits Per Second, like for example:, kbit/s, Mbit/s, Gbit/s. The size of the bandwidth can affect the connection speed of the internet so the higher the bandwidth the better the performance and often the higher the cost.
-Executions 
Executions within computers and software programs are simply the process by which a person’s computer or any machine can carry out certain instructions of a computer program.
When the instructions are given by the user by typing or other means they trigger in the program a sequences of actions on the machine and those actions produces effects that are according to the instruction and the semantics of the instructions in the program this could be running Google or opening a Word document. In some cases programs for a computer may be executed in a Batch Process without someone interacting with that program or a user with type commands into an interactive session of an interpreter such as start-up actions or Auto functions.

-Download Speed 
Download speed form the User side is how long it would the selected webpage to load, photos to load or things to download once requested. The measurements for the time it would take to load the page and the speed of the page are completely different issues as some webpages have more content than others like pictures and videos. For example having slow internet connection or having a computer that has a lot of information stored on it is more likely for it to run more slowly than it should and maybe causing the webpage to time out or crash, and so it’s best to get the best connection possible and even if it has to cost more to run but it is more likely to give you much more, quicker and stronger download speed making a better use of the computer. If the download speed is running slowly because you have be downloading too much you can make this better by getting a new processor or a better connection.
-Cache Memory 
Cache Memory is in the short term used for the RAM that the CPU can access easier and quicker than it would with a normal RAM chip.  The CPU will use the Cache Memory to store the instructions that will be required to the run the applications/programs the user wishes to use. You can find larger caches and that will operate at higher specific speeds, also these are now considered to be the core of the CPU your pc uses. Other caches on the other hand can be simpler and differ and also they will be slower when used. Your computer will start to run more slowly because the cache memory is getting too full like trying to stuff a suitcase, you can improve this by simply gaining a better cache memory bank.

-Processor Speed 

Processor speed is the speed of which the microprocessor gives out instructions to the rest of the system. The CPU has got a fixed number of ticks (basically time) in which it has to operate the instructions, so the faster the clock the better, this leads as the more instruction it gets and can be executed in good time. For example 2 CPU's may have the same clock speed but it may not perform the same as some will run faster than others and some will have faster microprocessor like the differences between computer systems, which means that a single calculation can be performed in just 1 tick, but when the technology advances some of the Microprocessors are not even what is known as Superscalers, which means that they can produce more than one instruction per clock cycle. If you wish to increase the speed of the processor then you can upgrade your processor and you could clean out the history that is on your computer for processors a simple way of looking at this is like instead of using an Intel i3 processor you can upgrade to an Intel i7 for overall increased processing speed.

Monday, 10 June 2013

UNIT 28 D3

Following on from the excellent work creating the database for Kingswood School’s media department, you have been asked to plan, design and create a website for all the film reviews to be displayed. There is also a need for film trailers to be displayed on the site so the user can view and select the film prior to purchasing the ticket. The website also needs the functionality to be able to allow users to pay for films and add reviews after they have watched the particular film.  The website needs to feature two-way interactivity as well as being multi-age.
-BELOW ARE SCREEN SHOTS OF MY WEBSITE AND DESCRIPTIONS OF HOW THEY FIT THE TASK-

 This page fits the defined purpose as it shows the correct dates and information about films and showings. It provides a correct and age friendly easy to navigate home page with easily visible buttons it is as the brief says "interactive" and "multi-age" as the house style is appealing to all age groups and follows the schools own uniform colour scheme.
 the payments page I designed and created was as the brief stated "functional" and easy to use when paying for a movie rental, the design follows my house style and creates a professional look. It features the design critical "two-way interactivity" and is simple to use.
 My review page was in line with my house style and was eye-catching as well as fully interactive and was able to link to other sites for comparing reviews and allowed users to give feed back on the professional reviews on the films being shown.
 This "film" page show effectively and clearly the information about times, dates and locations of viewing for films and shows in a manner which users of all age could understand and easily extract regardless of technological understanding
In this "trailer page" it shows as the brief states a full page of film trailers which are featured in the site. As with all other pages it allows a varying degree of quality in video for some older systems and a easy to use "two-way interface", which is age friendly 

UNIT 28 M3

After completing my website, I allows several of my target audience use the website and test it out and give user feedback and critical evaluations on the overall effectiveness of the system and its pros and cons.
From this data I was able to come to the conclusion that there were 2 areas my website could adapt and change to become a more appealing system to my target audience.
1. The color constancy on the pages, that it doesn't follow a house style.
2. The reviews page has a click to view button which lacks functionality.



 PROBLEM NO.1

PROBLEM NO.2




UNIT 28 P5

PAYMENTS
                                                                    HOME PAGE
                                                                         FILMS
                                                                        REVIEWS
FILMS