chemistry website

hargi · 23 Aug 2006 at 10:01

hi off to make a website for students about chemistry so not the most intresting of subjects, but i need to make the site appeal to them 16-18 age range, want to use CSS to. Any ideas ?
Was thinking of using like a backgroung image but is this a no no with CSS
TIA

Augmented · 23 Aug 2006 at 10:25

CSS is quite okay to use with a website about chemistry

. Are you asking for design ideas?

Using background images is fine too, but using a huge 2Mb bitmap as a background image would be a bad idea. Background images are best used for tiling patterns e.g. gradients, wallpapers and for decoration. In fact, anything that is not relevant to the content should be added to the page as a CSS background image. Images that should be placed within the markup (with <img> tags) are those that relate to the rest of the document e.g. graphs, figures, article photos.

hargi · 23 Aug 2006 at 10:28

thanks any design ideas would be good too

happytechie · 23 Aug 2006 at 13:00

3d models of the chemicals in question that can be rotated look good (Java or VRML for this)

Rememebr that if you want to teach people things interactivity and resonsiveness are key, if people have to think rather than just read they learn better. With the age groups you are talking about remember that the average GCSE student has an attention span of about 12 milliseconds so try to keep 'em interested.

the more interaction that they can have the better, a mix of moving images, sounds and text will work best. I did a fully interactive tutorial website for 3D structural Biochemistry for my MSc project a few years ago so shout if you want any help. think about tests at the end of each section and a free form of navigation thorugh the site to avoid linear paths.

tbh designing how to best put across the information will take far longer than actually building the web site. Do you have the information to present in your head or are you going to be stealing from a text book?

HT

hargi · 23 Aug 2006 at 14:06

sorry you get me wrong.
The content of the site will be from the student themselves it will be checked to see if it is correct buy there teacher, im just incharge of the design and uploading the stuff.
The breif i got was, they want a site that the good ones can supply the content to help the weeker ones,
So like give solutions to certain questions and help on past papers,
I think its a bit of a open site really so can grow, he only problem is its got to be hosted in our VLE so we cant use php or asp. So mainy Html and Css think we can get away with javascript to. just thinking of a template that i could populate later

hargi · 24 Aug 2006 at 09:55

Bump
The sergested colour scheam is using
Teal #5f9b81
Beige bfb578
Orange ed784a
and this logo

Augmented · 24 Aug 2006 at 10:33

You would be best to come up with some design concepts first, and then ask for opinions on them here. Doesn't need to be a complete site, just a photoshop mockup or such. There's not much people can do other than creating the concept for you.

Just start with something basic. Put the logo in the top corner and use a three column layout. Content in the middle, navigation on the left and related items on the right e.g. "pages related to organic chemistry".

hargi · 5 Sep 2006 at 09:14

Happy Techie do you have a link to that site that you made,
also how did your tutorial website go,
Think were going to go along the lines of molocule of the month or something similar with lots of information about it and hopefully some 3d models

happytechie said:
3d models of the chemicals in question that can be rotated look good (Java or VRML for this)

Rememebr that if you want to teach people things interactivity and resonsiveness are key, if people have to think rather than just read they learn better. With the age groups you are talking about remember that the average GCSE student has an attention span of about 12 milliseconds so try to keep 'em interested.

the more interaction that they can have the better, a mix of moving images, sounds and text will work best. I did a fully interactive tutorial website for 3D structural Biochemistry for my MSc project a few years ago so shout if you want any help. think about tests at the end of each section and a free form of navigation thorugh the site to avoid linear paths.

tbh designing how to best put across the information will take far longer than actually building the web site. Do you have the information to present in your head or are you going to be stealing from a text book?

HT