Team 56 was very serious about 2008 website and our first priority wasn’t about building a simple website. As we are known, we actually took the website to the EXTREME and dedicated all our time and heart in making a great website that will not only represent us, but representing FIRST and the FIRST community. Our team never won a website award since 1997 and our mission this year was not to only win an excellence award or a regional award. We wanted to win the championship website award and we worked very hard to try to achieve that goal.
Our team had a pretty good website last year, but that wasn’t enough for us. We wanted to improve it and make it EXTREME. At first, we look at almost all other FIRST websites and we realized that we had to make something special. And that special thing is to have a great design for our website that represents who we are as well as what is FIRST all about. We wanted to have something original and work hard to try and achieve our goal.
We could have used a web temple that is already made or we could have used a php website that is already made up that is ready to go. But what will be the point of this. Basically nothing because we didn’t earn or worked on these already made up things. So we decided to make our own in the best way possible. After getting new ideas and improving our web content, we moved to the design part.
We started out by hand drawing a couple of sketches of the site layout and we had two good sketches that we integrated in one sketch. After setting our goal of how we want our website to appear, we fired up Photoshop CS3. Just making the design for the website took us 3 weeks to do. We had over 12 Photoshop files, +1200 layers, +600 folders, +900 affects overlay, +100 pictures, +320 MB Photoshop files, which all ended up in 1.50 MB folder with 369 pictures with 16 folders.
After completing the design part of the site, we were faced of what resolution we should use for the site. After looking through Google about resolution polls, we decided that the best resolution was 1200 pixels wide. We started Dreamweaver CS3 and began to pump out page by page. We used one main template with six other templates connecting to it so we can update our site very easily. We could of used Div tags with CSS but we didn’t see a good point of doing that because we can use tables with Div with CSS which focus on the same thing but much easier to lay everything out with better control.
CSS was an important key that we considered as well as accessibility option. We made it very easy for navigation especially the side navigations where you have the ability to be able to expand or collapse the tabs. We didn’t favor drop menus because it gets annoying and uncontrollable to uses at one point or another. We decided to use Google search button so we can make it easier for visitors to find exactly what they looking for. Also, there is a font resizing option to accommodate our users.
Lastly to say, we worked very hard making this website and hopefully you guys appreciate all the hard work and effort that was put in.
This section is about team 56 where all our team information. You can find the team members’ bio on the left navigation. The sub-group tab describes the team groups that we are divided in. If you would like to sponsor us, click on become a sponsor button.
Here is where all FIRST information lays. Anything and everything you would like to learn about the program is here. If you are interested in learning more about FIRST Teams, choose which team you would like to explore. Under FIRST resources, there is a list of all New Jersey teams as well as FIRST board of directors.
FIRST 2008 Game, Over Drive information. Watch game video and learn more about it.
Team 56 has a great history with great robots. If you would like to learn more about our team history, choose the year you want to view and you will find our robot, our team picture, and the awards won in that year.
This is Team 56 Multimedia section where we add the team pictures and videos. Please visit it often because it will be updated constantly. There is also an Arcade section where you can play some fun games on whenever you get tired of reading.
This is an important section where it contains all the helpful resources that a visitor would like to have. Lots of helpful links, FAQs, Files & Documents, a download section, and a site map to easily locate what you are looking for.
If you need any help or have any suggestions, questions, anything—please contact us and we will be more than happy to help you. There is more than one way where you can reach us. Please choose your option and say whatever is on your mind.
