Brief
Following the tutorials shared in the previous step, take some time to:
- Sketch wireframes for your site, and test them with users if you can. (Testing is optional.)
- Create and apply a master page for your Adobe Muse site.
- Add a navigation widget to your site.
- Add one other type of widget to your site, e.g, a contact form, slideshow, button, etc.
- Share an image of the wire frame.
Reflection
To expand on the starting point from last week, I have created a wireframe for all the pages of the website I am going to construct for this course (see attached image). To generate the wireframes, I found a free resource: https://wireframe.cc/ (nothing to do with Adobe), and you can do everything you need for the AGP Web Design week 2/3 task without having to upgrade to the paid license. To create a new page wireframe you simply open the site up in another tab. You can even save each page by just clicking the Save button and copying the URL (that’s how it saves and recovers your wireframes). It’s an excellent tool. I then screen-grabbed all the wireframes and assembled them into one large image in Photoshop.
In terms of the website, I have actually managed to upload it in a sub-folder of my actual clients site: http://s584403783.websitehome.co.uk/staging/index.html
There you will see the home page (developed for last week’s task), but the site now includes full navigation, created using the Menu Widget and the Contact page featuring the Simple Form Widget – which actually works! It doesn’t email my client, it just sends an email to me.
I have been very impressed with how Muse operates. I love the simplicity of things like the Menu Widget. Unless you wish to create a more bespoke solution, then the ability to have it automatically create global navigation is awesome. It will even create the secondary navigation if you wish! I just think the way Adobe have given Widgets the ability to be edited as one or individually is an inspired approach.
The Simple Form Widget was even easier to add to my site and removes the need for any front or back-end coding. I was amazed it just worked on my site, especially considering I uploaded this site into a sub folder of an existing site!
I am becoming very fond of Muse. Even though I am an experienced web designer and developer, for simple projects, and for learning website creation, I am going to recommend Muse to all beginners and even those wishing to create more engaging experiences. I have always been very wary of WYSIWYG web site creation tools, as they usual promise loads but never deliver. I have yet to find fault with Muse and I actual enjoy using it.
Check out the link above to see the site in progress.