Learning Journals
Web Development Perceptions - Tutorial #1
In Tutorial 1 of the book Blended HTML, XHTML, and CSS, I’ve learned so many things. I first learned the difference between the internet and the www; I also learned the basics about HTML and XHTML, and what those acronyms represent. I learned how to type the basic XHTML codes/tags, needed for every document. I learned about the W3C, and how to set up my coding according to XHTML 1.1 Strict guidelines, to ensure the highest readability of my web pages in a browser. And finally, I learned how to create lists, and enter images and metadata into XHTML code.
My current view of Web Design is one of great curiosity. I’m very excited to be learning about web development. I must be honest, when I first realized it was XHTML coding, I didn’t think I would do very well in this course; I didn’t think I was smart enough to grasp all the concepts in the class. But once I started working through the exercises, I realized that as long as I took it one small step at a time, I would eventually be able to ease my way further along in my studies, and I actually find it really fun. I am a little bit concerned though, with all these new web page editors online coming out that maybe my skills in web design won’t be all too necessary soon. There are so many sites springing up that let people do all I’m learning to do from home, and I’m hoping the industry will still need to hire web designers to help develop those types of sites, instead of replace designers with a few “templates” they already have.
The occupations available to a web developer include Graphic Designer, Web Designer, Multimedia Artist, and many more occupations. Easily, you could be a Graphic Designer without any Web Design experience, but with technology advancing the way that it is, it’s really a significant benefit to develop skills not only in print and video design, but in web design as well. A well-rounded education in all those subjects will ensure a wider range of careers for an entry-level graphic designer to pursue. “Why hire two people when you could hire one, with the smarts of two people?” That’s one question you could employ during a job interview as a web designer/graphic designer, to make your established education in both fields make you seem more employable, as well as more attractive. That’s what I plan to do with my education at CSI; I plan to become a well-rounded graphic designer/web designer, so that I can enter the advertisement industry and become employed by, perhaps, a mid-market television station to work in the Creative Services Department. I did once worked at a television station in Creative Services, but my lacking of a degree was surely holding me back; so in lieu of ending my career, I decided to advance it with an education in Digital Media. I plan to take my A.A.S. onto a 4-year college, and receive a B.A.S. or Master’s in Digital Media; depending on the programs available.
HTML History - Tutorial #2
In Tutorial 2, I learned all about Hyperlinks, and how to FTP to a server. I learned about protocols http:// and ftp://, and about linking to other places on my computer and on the internet. I learned how to use images for thumbnail links and for image maps, and how to code them properly. And I also did learn how to use text as a link. I learned how to effectively and efficiently store my files for my website on my computer, and the codes needed to access a file in a folder separate from my document. Finally, I learned the mailto: protocol that is used to open an email program when a client desires to send a message to you via your webpage.
The HTML History
The first proposal for hypertext was made by Vannevar Bush in the mid 1940s; his concept propelled creative thinkers like Tim Berners-Lee and Dan Connelly to help develop the World Wide Web. In the beginning, before a widespread internet was developed, ARPAnet was funded by the U.S. military, in the hopes of obtaining communications that could survive even in the looming threat of a nuclear attack (1969). ARPAnet is responsible for creating the TCP/IP standard. Soon, advanced computer engineers adopted the ideas and concepts created by ARPAnet, and started sharing computers on a very small scale; this was only the beginning of the World Wide Web.
Tim Berners-Lee was the “main man” leading the progress of the web; helping to create HTML, HTTP, and URLs, at the beginning of the ‘90s. Lee, who worked at CERN spent 1989-1990 really cracking down on the vital elements of his internet and HTML. As a worker at CERN, the European Lab of Particle Physics, Lee wanted a way for researcher to quickly communicate to one another from far away, remote locations. Lee though of instead linking to individual computers, that you could instead link to individual files on your computer, and share them. Hypercard by Bill Atkinson (1980s) was similar to Lee’s ideas of the 90s, but failed to link to other computers, as hypertext jumps could only be made on the personal computer, and not sent out to the public domain. Tim worked on his hypertext, and developing ways to better display it through the 1990s.
In September 1991, WWW-talk arises on the internet, enabling researchers to electronically discuss the internet and HTML via internet connection. This was all occurring in Europe, while the States’ researcher became eager to jump on the bandwagon. Hardin and Thompson of NCSA decided to design a browser known as Mosaic. Among the Mosaic creating team were Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina. Andreessen introduced the idea of the IMG tag on the WWW-talk forum for Mosaic, it was taken very unpopular. A year later, Montulli released a browser named Lynx 2.0a; he was later recruited by Netscape Corp. Finally, in 1993, the Mosaic Browser was up and running, and released to the public for use on the UNIX systems; but many of its attributes were “choppy”, and “badly designed”. Even with the raucous over the internet, large companies failed to recognize the importance of the internet, and nearly no money was donated from large companies, leaving many of the founding fathers of the internet/html fending for themselves, working grueling hours from home trying to work out the kinks of the internet. In May 1994, the first WWW conference was held, with a presentation conducted by Dan Connelly advocating the importance of cross-company uniformity in the HTML standard; the subject was well received when decided a standard for HTML was needed to ease the confusion of butting-head HTML codes.
Later that year, the IETF created a group to deal with the HTML standardization and the development of the internet on a large scale; it was a group open to anyone interested in helping with HTML. 1993-1994 the definition of the HTML language was becoming difficult to recognize, as too many tags were being created for individual browsers, opposed to being compatible with all browsers. Dan Connolly went about compiling a list of HTML tags, and decided to create the Document Type Definition, a specific description of the HTML language.
In 1994, Andreessen felt inadequate with just Mosaic, and joined forces with Jim Clark to create Netscape, in hopes of creating their own browser separate from Mosaic; and started creating Netscape specific HTML tags, further blurring the language. In late 1994, the W3C formed, to create an open standard for HTML, to finally create a universal HTML language for all browsers. The W3C continued through 1995 developing new tags for HTML, and deprecating ones that were simply unnecessary. At the end of 1995, the draft for HTML 3 was released. At the end of 1995, Internet Explorer was released, surprising many, and the HTML working group was sabotaged among itself, the flurry of over emailing to and fro, and were subsequently too slow in making decisions, and were disbanded. Dave Raggett in conjunction with many browser companies created his own HTML standardizing group, since the HTML working group was taking too long to decide anything, and they were successful in making effective HTML decisions. Dave Raggett, along with others, including the W3C, introduced Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). In ’96, ERB was formed to help with the HTML standardizing; they were developing the new standard known as COUGAR.
There was a power struggle between the creators of the respective browsers, each was making browser specific HTML tags to create competition between companies, but the oversights and decisions by the W3C helped to mandate the standard, and disperse feuds between browser creators. COUGAR eventually became known as HTML ver. 4.01, and came about in December of 1997. This is where Netscapes’ Navigator 4.7 took a major hit, as it didn’t conform well to the new standard, sky-rocketing the success of the modern browsers. And finally, in the year 2000, XHTML 1.0 was released (our current 1.1 being a small revision of 1.0) creating easy access and fluidity of the browser.
What I found interesting about the history is that the internet sat stagnant for nearly 30-40 years, until Lee decided to reflect on the concept of the internet connection from computer to computer…we could have had the internet much quicker had it been recognized as such a substantial resource beforehand. As for implications of future changes, there will always be changes to the XHTML/HTML/CSS standards, as technology advances more and more, and were able to do even more tasks on our computer, I think we’ll need to update our standards for the language and maintain a cohesive structure for HTML for the years to come.
CSS History - Tutorial #3-4
CSS has been a major player in web design the recent years because CSS makes it easier and more efficient to design multiple web pages simultaneously using external style sheets, instead of having to create separate styles for each page. It is beneficial to use style sheets, whether they are embedded or external, because they allow the web designer to create styles for the XHTML data that XHTML code cannot do on its own; because XHTML code is the data that goes into the web page, and CSS code is the data that styles the data on the web page, XHTML can’t do everything on its own. Another benefit of using style sheets is that you don’t have to put a style sheet on every single page of your web site, you can instead create an external style sheet to your website, and make minor changes on the External style sheet, instead of manually opening every single XHTML file and having to correct them one by one; that would take way too much time and be tedious for a busy web designer. And another benefit is if your CSS code is in a separate style sheet, you can validate it; when its embedded, the CSS code will not validate properly. The purpose of HTML is to provide the content of a web page to the user, while the purpose of CSS is to stylize the content/webpage, to make the content appear easier to read, and more pleasing to the eye. And the relationship between the two is just that, CSS styles the HTML code to make it readable and engage/attract the user from clicking away to another web site. The current version of CSS is 2.1. The W3C is currently working on CSS 3, to try to work out the kinks with such features of CSS, such as Pseudo-Classes appearing in all browsers similarly, and trying to make working with flexible layouts in a more controllable way. My personal feeling concerning HTML/CSS, I love it! It is so much fun creating web pages and being able to instantly see the results of my labor by using the Open File command in my browser, I really look forward to what the new editions of HTML and CSS will allow the web programmers to do next.
Web Design - Tutorial #5
I really enjoyed reading the article The Principles of Beautiful Web Design by Jason Beaird. I really liked the way he wrote the article, informal and funny, it kept me engaged in the article, instead of tossing it aside right after the first page or so. His funny little tidbits made the article readable and exciting. I did find that this article was worth my while to read, I did find it informative and chuck full of good information to help me design my web pages better. I really like the idea of making a mockup for web pages into a rule of thirds grid to give you a starting point for designing web pages, I will surely use that technique the next time I have to design/create a web page. What I found the most interesting about the article was the “rule of thirds”, because I’ve actually used that technique before in my designs, but have done it subconsciously without even thinking twice about it. I really liked how he linked to multiple websites that employed the design layouts he discussed: such as left-column navigation, right-column navigation, and three-column navigation. I also will start a Morgue File like he recommended using for inspiration for my web pages that should be fun. I don’t want to sound bad, but I don’t think there was anything about the article that I didn’t like, the author was very good at addressing what I believe to be all the essential topics for entry-level designers, and I took a lot of useful information away from this article. It was interesting to see, with this being my first semester at this college, how much this classes key terms correlate with my other classes, like Typography and Design I, it makes me feel like I’m getting a very well-rounded education with the roots to help me to obtain the career position I truly desire.