Web Development Perceptions
Well, the worst is over with. The fear of putting my two feet in was much worse than actually being in it, over my head. I must say, just registering for the course and signing in to everything, then learning to navigate the blackboard system and then peeking at the future assignments, which of course, were written in Greek, was much harder than actually reading the first page of the textbook, and plinking away on the first keys of the keyboard. But I do have to remind myself that although the first chapter went relatively smoothly, it was only one day of learning. ONE. If this were easy, everybody would be doing it. Like eating chocolate. So far, I like it. I want to like more of it. But when I look ahead to just how much I need to learn, I get a tad anxious, and wonder if I am doing the right thing.
One thing I have to do — no, MUST — is take better care of organizing my time. This has been a lifelong struggle, and if I want to keep pace with the class, there is no alternative but to coordinate myself. This will be my most celebrated victory. And then perhaps to love this class and this type of work, well, I will throw a huge party for myself for nailing the two birds with one, huge, eight – week – long stone.
I do think that I will continue to enjoy this course. I truly can't wait to learn more. What I wonder is what I will be doing next. I feel like I need to learn so much, it makes my eyes cross. What is Java anyhow? Or PHP? I am fretting that I won't know enough by the end of this course to create a cool website. As two friends have already asked me to create one for them, I had better get on it.
I am a little foggy as to what jobs I could do with my knowledge as a developer, besides, maybe, Developer. Perhaps Webmaster, or a Designer, but I have a hard time saying things like a DBA or an Information Architect, because I don't have a clue how much more you need to know to do these types of jobs. It seems like truckloads. And they don't sound that fun anyhow.
HTML History
I am feeling that what I have learned in this chapter is somewhat more introspective than otherwise. For instance, there was a moment, no, hour, that I was so frustrated that I wanted to smash my computer to smithereens, not becuase it wasn't working, but because my logic was not. If I can learn to concentrate on the task at hand, then I am okay. But when I think about the pages ahead, or developing my website, and the file and folders, for the love of god! It is difficult leaning from a book and not participating in a classroom. The folder issues have caused me to lose sleep. I am guessing that my queries could be answered had I watched the lectures. Pity me who has a bitchin' Mac. It's been a huge pain trying to find a PC that I can borrow. So this is what I have learned. Deep breaths. Page by page. Learn from my mistakes. It can't be all that bad, everybody's doing it. Quit procrastinating. Prioritize. Keep my shoulders away from my ears. Look away from the screen from time to time. Ask stupid questions.
Now let's move on to HTML history. If I wasn't sitting here Monday afternoon with my website STILL not set up, I would have perused more websites for information. but time is of the essense. As far as I have learned in matter of five minutes, some genius dude worked up some code in 1990. In fact, he put the first HTML coded webpage on the www. It is still viewable today! Since then, some coding has deprecated, but the fundamentals are still going strong and only moving forward to more cohesiveness. Welcome HTML 5.0. When, and if, I make it through this course and if I end up liking it and still have all my hair, I think I will delve into learning about 5.0.
CSS History
I am very glad at this point that I don't have any feelings to talk about, just CSS. So is my therapist. (Kidding, I can't afford one of those.) CSS has a little bit of a crazy history. Originally, the W3C presented 9 different types of style sheets. From those, two of them became the foundation of CSS today. Those two were CHSS and SSP. And, if you can believe it, style sheets originated sometime in the 1970's. It is hard for me to write that because I kind of can't see how, but there you have it.
The relationship of HTML and CSS is simple in the sense that you need a mark-up language to even use CSS. However, you don't need CSS to use HTML. But if you don't, you will have the ugliest website ever created. Like my website, for instance, because at the moment I haven't gotten to it just yet. CSS and HTML were purposely created to be used separately (after problems arose when so many new tags were being created for presentation in HTML by different web browsers), so as to make it easier to make changes to the presentation. CSS is for presentation, HTML is for the structure. Imagine the chaos if the code for presentation was written withinin the structure. It would be a nightmare to try and fix things, or to make changes, as structure and presentation truly are two very different things.
Web Design
This article gave me a little stress. I have to remember, only one step at a time. If I think too far in advance, I get scared, and then I am just staring at my computer screen, wanting to be doing something else. Anything. But it also made me want to learn more. There is just so much to learn, it makes my head spin. I am always interested in learning more. I like reading the articles, and I like talking to my friend who is a designer, and another who is a programmer. It is something new to talk about rather than the everyday Who is getting divored and Who did what and Who is winning on So You Think You Can Dance. (Seriously, kidding. I am a little more interesting than that.)
The most intersting thing for me was looking at the graphics on some of the figures. They amaze me and I hope I don't really need to learn how to do those, unless they are all icons of some sort and it isn't that hard. The least interesting thing is that I really didn't learn that much. Boxes? Thirds? I get it, but I also don't. I am thinking about buying those lectures online. I like to SEE things being done, not just the finished project.
Breaking Out Of The Box
Oh, man. I think this article confused me a little more than it did to help. If I get any extra time in the next week, I think I am going to duplicate her code and see what really happens, literally step by step. Floating both of the columns right was a really confusing concept, so I guess floating in CSS is hard for me. Floating in water is equally as hard. Right now, floating might be my nemisis. I can't float.
I kind of understand the negative margins. Kind of. I do have to say that her webpage was, indeed, awesome. It had wonderful simplicity and was easy to read. Except for the latin. I liked her colors. I just can't imagine the day that I can simply fly through code and whip something out quite like that. I think I need to take some additional classes on design because I suspect I might like that aspect of building a website as much as writing the code. But today, my brain hurts.
Tables vs. CSS
Wow! Finally, an article that made sense to me. Of course, I don't understand a thing about tables, but the simple fact that the author mentioned that even seasoned designers must practice A LOT made me feel so much better about tackling the CSS formatting, I can't even tell you. Not to mention, this guy who wrote the article had a fabulous sense of humor, and I could feel the geek throughout his article.
I am also quite happy that I am learning this webamarole right now, and not, say, two years ago. I can't even imagine trying to learn how to make tables in the code/content. And I also don't feel quite as ridiculous to find that the author also scratches his head from time to time when it comes to floating an element. Seriously, yeehaw! Basically, this entire article was very positive for me, and I can't really find anything that I didn't like about it. I might change my mind, however, when I start trying to figure out a calendar of events. This particular assignment seems to be a little more in depth than anything we learned in chapter 8. We'll see. (Insert eerie slasher music here.)
Specificity
Ahh. Specificity. Glad to know. Funny, sometimes I will style an already styled element, and nothing happens. And yes, I have scratched my head over it for many an hour. Now I know. I did have to read it over a few times to really understand the article, though. I find that I get to caught up in the things that I don't know, for instance, a peculiar selector that I have never seen before, and I lose track of the task at hand trying to figure out instead what in the world that selector would look like or what it is.
But after a few rereads, I was able to focus on what he was teaching and it does make some sense. I just don't know how the p element could be styled so many darn times. I don't think that I would ever have a webpage with that much junk in it because I have an idea that I want all of my future websites to be very, very simple, with a lot of white space, and not too many colors. I wish I already knew how to do that, but I don't. However, I can envision it.
I do wish the author was a little more humorous. When you are reading on a subject that is very technical, it is a nice break to sense a little self deprecation or mischieviousness in their writing. Everyone can use a little bit of a laugh in their daily existence.
