Web Design & Sound Resources
Below is a list of resources for completing your web site and sound projects, including links to download the free software we will be using in class.
Web Design
W3 Schools online web tutorials
CSS Zen Garden
“CSS” stands for “cascading style sheets,” which is an approach to designing webpages. If you are interested in learning about style sheets and the design of webpages, this is a useful site—but it is also highly useful for considering how much the visual design of a site can affect our attitudes toward what we read. Click the “Select a design” option on each page to see the same alphabetic text presented in widely varying arrangements—and click the “Next designs” link to see listings of even more arrangements.
Before and After: How to Design Cool Stuff
Color
The Hex Hub (Hexadecimal color codes)
ColorSchemer Gallery
This site provides sample color palettes. You can view the hexadecimal code by mousing over each color.
Color Scheme Generator 2
Another tool to help you develop pleasing color sets.
Sound and Image finders
Free Sound
This is a great resource for free, non-copyrighted sound effects and short music tracks.
Sound Examples
Five Minute Fears
Just in time for Halloween, here are some short, scary audio stories.
This American Life
TAL is a public radio program that broadcasts shows incorporating various genres including interviews, short stories (fiction & non-fiction), and news magazine style journalism. You can listen to past episodes on the website and subscribe to the podcast or listen live on 91.5 FM KUNC the local public radio station to hear current episodes. If you visit the website’s “About Our Radio Show” page you can learn more about the program’s history and purpose. Here’s a taste:
One of our problems from the start has been that when we try to describe This American Life in a sentence or two, it just sounds awful. For instance: each week we choose a theme and put together different kinds of stories on that theme. That doesn’t sound like something we’d want to listen to on the radio, and it’s our show.
So usually we just say what we’re not. We’re not a news show or a talk show or a call-in show. We’re not really formatted like other radio shows at all. Instead, we do these stories that are like movies for radio. There are people in dramatic situations. Things happen to them. There are funny moments and emotional moments and—hopefully—moments where the people in the story say interesting, surprising things about it all. It has to be surprising. It has to be fun.
Radio Lab
And, be sure to check out other episodes of Radio Lab if you liked the one we listened to for homework.
StoryCorps
Listen to more interviews like the one we listened to in class on 11/8. The website describes the project this way:
StoryCorps is an independent nonprofit project whose mission is to honor and celebrate one another’s lives through listening.
By recording the stories of our lives with the people we care about, we experience our history, hopes, and humanity. Since 2003, tens of thousands of everyday people have interviewed family and friends through StoryCorps. Each conversation is recorded on a free CD to take home and share, and is archived for generations to come at the Library of Congress. Millions listen to our award-winning broadcasts on public radio and the Internet. StoryCorps is the largest oral history project of its kind, creating a growing portrait of who we really are as Americans.
Software Downloads
Audacity
Audacity is a free, open-source program for editing and recording sounds; this is the program you learned to use in class. Go to the “Downloads” page and be sure to choose the correct version for your operating system (choose the “stable” version and NOT the “beta” version). Also download the “LAME MP3 Encoder”; a link to this is listed under “Optional Downloads” on the download page. You need the LAME MP3 encoder to create MP3 files.
KompoZer
This is the free, open source web authoricn program that we will use in class.
Aptana
This is the computer programmer oriented web authoring program also available in the classroom. If you are comfortable coding by hand in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, then you might be interested in this program. If you are new to building web sites, KompoZer is what you want.
Gimp
This is the free, open source image editing software available in the classroom. The download and installation for this program is more complicated than the previous three, especially if your computer is a Mac. Read the instructions carefully before downloading.