Journal #1
Crystal Eldredge
Html Friday 9-11 class
Fall 2010
9-24-10
Web Development Perceptions
What have I learned in the first week of class? Basically I am beginning to learn a whole new language. When I first looked at the chapter assignments they were gibberish to me, and meant nothing. As I worked through the assignments and applied the new language it has begun to make some sense. I am starting to understand a little of the method to the madness. I don't quite understand why <strong> and <em> are used in place of bold and italic, but I am willing to believe there might be a reason, and for now I am just going with the flow. Taking one assignment at a time, so I don't get too overwhelmed with the bigger picture. I think getting my files organized was my hardest trial so far. Getting everything organized, where to put my files on my computer and getting everything straight in my head , nearly overwhelmed me until I straightened it out in my mind. Then things flowed much better.
I think web design is going to expand and flourish in the next few decades. Everything is going digital these days. Even books, magazines, and newspapers are now found online, or digitally published. Almost everything you could ever want can be found on the internet now and people need to be well versed in all aspects of computers. I am a Digital Media, Graphic Design major with my emphasis in printing. The more I learn and see, the more I realize the demand for graphic design is shifting from print to digital. Now that newspapers are online, they need designer who can design for both the print and the web side of things. In order to be competitive in today's job market it helps to have a well rounded education, and experience with all aspects of design and development. If you are a designer it helps to have at least a basic knowledge of web development as well, in order to have a marketable resume. The more you know, the more skills you develop, the better off your future prospects will be. I personally would like to design books and magazines. I'd rather focus on the print side of things, but I need to be able to design for the web as well so that I can be prepared for any changes the future holds. I am not a boy scout but their motto, "Always be prepared," sounds like good advice to me.
Journal #2
HTML History
The learning of html code does not seem to be coming naturally to me. I keep getting confused by it. Just when I think I am starting to understand it, and have it organized in my head. I find I am either wrong, confused, or both. At first glance, links seemed to be common sense, but as I got further into the chapter, I found the many different types of links possible blended together in my mind and made it difficult to remember which code was for which link. I have dog eared the pages of my book, turning back and forth for references, as I was doing the homework. I hope someday the html code will become clear to me. That one day everything will fall into place and make sense. Until then I will keep plugging away at each lesson, and hope for clarity in the future. I think the most difficult part of this chapter was understanding the links to files; parent files, sibling files, and child files. I am glad there was a video tutorial otherwise I would have been lost. I also hope I will be able to upload these files—using the ftp—to the server. That part is still pretty murky to me. All I can do is try.
In the relatively short time html has been in existence it has gone through a tremendous metamorphosis. From 1995 to 1997 form based file uploads were invented along with tables, client–side image maps, and it went international. Then html 2.0 was declared obsolete by html 3.2, which was published as a W3C recommendation in 1997. Html 3.2 dropped math formulas altogether, and reconciled overlapping property extensions. Fourteen months later a markup for mathematical formulas was standardized. In December 1997 Html 4.o was published as a w3c recommendation with three variations.
- Strict –forbidden deprecated elements
- Transitional – deprecated elements were allowed
- Frameset – only frameset elements allowed
Next came the prototype for todays working model. Html 4.01 was published in December 1999. Then the Iso Html version was introduced in May 2000. It was based on the html 4.01 strict version.
XHTML 1.0 was published in Janurary 2000 it was started as a reform of html 4.01. It has undergone only minor changes since May 2001, when Xhtml 1.1 was recommended. There may be a newer version coming out alongside the new html 5 version.
Most of the problems with the early web development were mostly in the are of communications. People were competing with one another to get their version up and running first; Instead of working together to make the whole internet function better and faster. For the most part W3c has changed that by implementing a standardized code and protocols so that the internet actually works.
I found it interesting that of the original 20 elements in the first html code that Berner–Lee developed; 13 elements still exist in html version 4. Just goes to show he knew what he was doing, and it was everybody else's input that snaggled things up. That is until they started to work together.
What this all seems to boil down to is that the more refined the html program becomes, there is less need of extensive revisions. So the Html and Xhtml codes can be used longer and more effectively with only minor revisions in the future. Unless some new discovery drastically changes the status quo.
Journal #3
CSS History
Css has become a major player in web design in recent years because people want good design, as well as acessability, and usability. CSS is the advertising package for the html content and structure. They work best when their used together. The use of CSS has allowed more flexibility and better design. Which means more sales value to the companies that need their websites to advertise for them, in order to make money. People like well designed websites, as well easy to use websites. Which is why CSS has been so well recieved. CSS is beneficial because it allows content of html, better accessibility, flexibility, and more control of how web pages actually look. Html's purpose is to provide structure for a web page. CSS's purpose is to add pleasing design to the web page. CSS defines the presentation of html and xhtml documents. It gives greater style to website pages written in markup languages. Currently CSS version 2.1 is supported by most modern web browsers. CSS version level 3 is the next proposed version of CSS to come out. One addition I read about was the white space property which is the shorthand property of white space and text wrapping. It will make it easier to format a web page like a word document.
I found CSS to be both easier and harder to use in someways than html. I like the flexibility to improve the web page design that CSS provides. But, I also found it somewhat confusing because there were so many more options to choose from than html had. More room fo mistakes, I guess, but I liked how much better the pages looked because of CSS and the fact that you could apply an external stylesheet to all the html documents already written, using just a link. So much easier and less time consuming.
Journal #4
Web Design
I felt like this article was extremely helpful for getting over the blank page writers block feeling of, "where do I start?". It gave me a number of ideas I'll be sure to use on my next website designing project. His suggestions were practical and made a lot of sense. It was definitely worth my while to read that article. I believe I will be able to design better websites in the future. I found the idea of sketching the website ideas out on paper, and then in photoshop extremely instructive, and interesting. It makes sense to brainstorm how you want the site to look and then figure out how to accomplish it with the CSS style sheet, and technology. Also his suggestion of a morgue file will surely come in handy in the future.The least interesting part of this article to me was about the fixed width vs. liquid width. By the time he started talking resolutions, my brain was tired of thinking, and having trouble concentrating on his technical jargon.Otherwise it was a great article and extremely helpful.
Journal #5
Out of the Box
Mostly what I got from this artlcle was a new view of CSS. It opened my eyes to the possibilities that CSS doesn't have to be boxy and boring. Once I fully learn to use CSS, I'll be able to make strong and interesting web designs, that aren't at all boxy. I think it was worth my time to read this article, even though I only half understood all of what he was saying. It opened my eyes I can use curvy lines in my web design once i figure out how. For me the least interesting part was the code. Right now it is hard for me to focus on and read the code correctly. It still feels like a foreign language, but it is getting easier to understand bit by bit, which each new lesson.
Journal #6
Table Vs. CSS
This article was insightful, and interesting. Looking back at the old, dinosaur, way of writing code was very eye opening to me. The wide spread use of tables and complicated code, seemed to me very backwards like building a skyscraper from the top down. Most probably because I learned CSS first. I can see the authors point of view about tables being solid and indestructable by different browsers. So the design doesn't change, but that is also the table methods drawback. It is not easily changed. Where as CSS allows for adaptability in a changing market, and can be recycled and reused easily. The oldfashioned way not so much! The most interesting thing about the dinosaur way was the amount of code that was neccesary to use in direct relation to CSS, to create a exact duplicate. It was astonishing. This was a great way to illustrate the two methods of building websites. To compare and contrast the pros and the cons to each method. I found it all very interesting and worth my while.
Journal #7
Specificity
What I got from this article was this, the more specific the selector, the better chance of it being used, but not always. Sometimes you can have a tie, and then the one lowest on the page is the one that will be used.
Of all of the words and numbers used in this article the above statement was the one I came away with because, it was the least complicated to understand. I read the article and it was like staring through a thick fog, trying to catch a glimpse of understanding. It was a good article but still way over my level of understanding.
What I found most interesting about this article was also what I found least interesting. How the letters abcd, translated into numbers by calculating the number of selectors for each category and adding them together to determine the specificity score. I am really not good with numbers. This was way over my level of understanding.