602 - Website - Interactive Design

Deciding that I would get to grips with a new piece of Adobe software got me excited and intrigued on how this could differently develop the route of my practise - as there is a lot of money in web design if you learn it right. 
I began teaching myself how to use widgets to add forms, menus, slideshows, social media buttons, and more to my web pages - getting me ready to begin my designs for my own website.

You can add these interactive site features and dynamically generated content using the widgets in Muse. They are basically pre-constructed configurable objects that offer common web functionalities such as menus, forms, slideshows, and so on. Muse provides a range of widgets that make complex web design simple - aswell as some free ones online too!

Widgets within Adobe Muse can be style per the design of your site, allowing you to blend them perfectly with the rest of the designed web pages. The Widgets Library contains all of the prebuilt site features (Widgets) that you can drag onto pages, configure to control their behaviour, and style to modify their appearance.

Types of Widgets
Adobe Muse provides the following kinds of widgets:

• Composition widgets: These widgets allow you to interact with an area on the web page in order to change the content shown in another area. A fade or sliding animation occurs on change. 
• Form widgets: Add a form visitors to your site can use to contact you. Different form fields are available depending on which form widget you choose.
• Menu widgets: Create a dynamically or manually populated menu bar that includes states for each menu item. On each page, the proper menu link will automatically have an "active" state to show that is the current page.
• Panel widgets: Show only one panel of content at a time, with intuitive navigation links to switch the visible panel. Choose between a sliding animated accordion structure or a familiar tabbed look.
• Slideshow widgets: These widgets enable you to easily display your images in a gallery with sleek animations. They're best used for simple image-based slideshows; more complex use cases are better served by a composition widget.
• Social widgets: Social widgets provide an easy way to configure custom HTML and embed it into your Adobe Muse pages. Most of the Web widgets provide functionality that is also available by embedding HTML from third-party websites. You can save time by adding and configuring the web content from within Adobe Muse, rather than generating the code outside of the application and pasting it into Adobe Muse as embedded HTML.

Configuring and customising widgets

Adobe Muse allows you to configure widgets via Options panel after placing them on web pages. 

The Options panel is a contextual panel that lets you apply changes and update settings that are specific to a widget. The Options panel contains settings that help determine the appearance of content.

The Fill and Stroke options allow you to greatly enhance the appearance of a widget. If the widget contains text, you can use the Text panel (Windows > Text or text options on control panel) to modify and style text per your design needs.

To configure a widget, select the dragged on widget on the page, click the play button to display the Options panel and then an externally powered window will appear inside the app allowing you to modify or update the settings as necessary...
Options panel for a Horizontal Menu widget.Example of one I am going to use within my work..

Widgets such as Scroll Reveal..

add interactivity and UX to the site, giving off a much more of a professional feel whilst more appropriately revealing each piece of information as you navigate through the site, this can make scrolling much less congested and keep viewers much more engaged with content.

- Other efficiency related functions can include Back to the Top Buttons and Social Sharer Buttons making it easier for viewers to invite and share others to the content on the page.

https://demo.muse-themes.com/widget-scroll-reveal/index.html#anchor-u641