Evaluation

Throughout the project I feel that I successful managed my time well and stuck to my project plan. Each week I would set myself mini deadlines and tasks to complete with the ebook.
In terms of the research, I was relatively pleased with the amount of sources in which I obtain my research from. However, for a few of my topics (such as life in the information age: jobs) I found it difficult trying to obtain news articles related to the topic. Other than that, I fell I managed to gather a wide range of sources.

With this project one of my main aims was to include a wide array of multimedia in the ebook. In it I included multimedia such as flash components (movies and navigation system) and audio files. One of the most successful parts of the multimedia for me was the screen capturing flash movies. It basically captured everything I did on screen and I was able to add in captions at appropriate point about what I was doing. I did have however minor difficulties with the movies as at first the “progress bar” would not load with the movie. This was resolved by altering some file structures.

With the flash components I was particular speculative as in the past I have encountered problems with it. In this project it started well using flash with me not having any serious problems with it. The problems however occurred at the end of the project.
After me re-naming and moving files around with dreamweaver, all the flash components stop working which meant there was no real navigation around the ebook. This is one of the main disadvantages when working with flash components as such vital parts of the site (i.e. navigation) because they hold a large risk of not working rather than using basic images. As well as the navigation system not working, the rest of my flash multimedia (i.e. videos) stopped working as well. It was a very strange problem as normally when you update files and folders through dreamweaver, it automatically updates them.
The way I managed to solve this problem was by copying the ebook onto another computer and re-defining the templates. When I was doing this I found out that somehow the flash components were no longer looking in the correct files. Fortunately, the problem was solved just before the final deadline.
When I next come to producing a project using flash I will make sure that my file structure is in order before I implement the flash components to help avoid this problem from happening again.
To help make the ebook more user-friendly, I have included a vast amount of anchors in each page. What this enables the user to do is click a link and it will take them to a certain point further down the page. I have structured it where by each major section is sub-sectioned (e.g. e-commerce, sub-section: Amazon). At the top of each page there are links to each of the sub-sections. The idea of this is to limit the scrolling that the end-user has to do. Also, the website has be designed for computers with a resolution of 1024 x 768 as that is currently the most commonly used resolution. In 100 years time I would like to think that the ebook would be received as something with a “fresh” design that enables a simple insight into what life “used to be like”.

User feedback:

A few people were kind enough to give me some user feedback on my ebook.

 “The flash animation is good because it makes the navigation very clear and easy to use. The only concern is for older people that may find that the text on the site is a bit too small and hard to read.
The images used to support the text may also all be a little too small to be able to read them in detail.
 The page layout is good and easy to make sense of.
Overall the website is very good and easy to use”
Tom Atkin

“The site looks very clean and crisp. I can navigate my way around it really easily, I particular like the fact that I can find any part of the page without having to scroll all the way down. Also, the flash movies are really effective and clever as it shows exactly what’s going on.
However, you may have wanted to make the font a darker colour (like black) as in some light I have trouble reading it (so might mother people). Also, on some of the pages the pictures are not very big and there is lots of text, perhaps have bigger pictures or simply more of them.
As a whole I really like the site and I fell it portrays the information age very well.”
Tristan Al-Shehab

I thank these people for taking time in giving me feedback.

It seems apparent that if I were to do this project again I should look into the font again as quite a few people seem to be suggesting forms of alterations to it. I may either change the colour of the font used or use an entirely new font altogether. Also based on the feedback, I would probably include more images to support the text and make all the images larger for easier viewing. Another improvement I could make is to have a “next” button linking through section on each page. This would again minimise scrolling as all the user would have to do is click their way round the pages.