Work 1
I believe my initial skepticism came from a place of frustration. One difficult lesson I had to learn when taking java that working with CSS has reinstated is that working with these coding schemes like CSS and HTML is in fact like learning a new language. Each has its own vocab, structure and syntax so while it may be frustrating when that language barrier makes it hard to communicate your requests effectively to the program, it just emphasizes the importance of comprehending the languages before trying to control them. Regardless of the introductory hardships, in hindsight I can very confidently say that the satisfaction I received from making successful edits and watching my page get a little closer to my vision following each hard reload was worth every futile attempt that preceded it.
Once I became more comfortable utilizing CSS to customize my site, I became very thankful for the work we did up until taking on the website in its entirety. I think being forced to create an ‘about me’ statement helped to preemptively uncover who my audience could theoretically be and gave me a better idea of the potential purpose. Having stated what my intensions were made it easier to write about how I felt my website should look and feel in the next in class writing assignment. Within that assignment I emphasized establishing a light and fun aesthetic to my site while maintaining a simplistic and professional appearance.
When I say the word simplistic I understand that the implication is very broad and that it is a widely utilized motif in web design so I will now attempt to explain how and why I applied the common concept uniquely. Naturally I didn’t want the pages to be too busy so to achieve that goal I knew I intended on leaving a lot of white space. A more spacious layout is easier to navigate for the user and I think it helps to present me, the author, as uncomplicated, neat and natural as opposed to an author who potentially unnecessarily adds boldness and or flare. Admittedly, another reason for a simpler site is purely inexperience but for that reason I think my sites elementary navigation bar and page layout is a more honest representation of my level of experience, and allows me to illustrate an honest impression to the user.
During my revision process, it became apparent that in order to achieve the customizability that I thought necessary, I was going to need multiple .hmtl and .css folders on git hub as well as multiple classes for the elements within my coding. I also learned that you can attach more than one .css stylesheet to a single .html folder which was very useful as well as a bit confusing. My strategy initially consisted of a lot of copying and pasting which allowed me to give each page on my site a level of uniformity and organization, but once I had the skeletal structure in tact introducing colors was necessary to give each page a subtle uniqueness. After applying a few color schemes I settled on the colors of the standard rainbow for a few reasons. The rainbow is an archetype that has existed for years, which speaks to the fact that those primary colors in that specific order have withstood the test of time. The rainbow is a symbol of happiness and fun and coupled with my dotted borders helped to put across an almost child-like decorum, all themes I wanted to represent to my users given the fact that in my about me I disclosed that I intend on working with children or in a child related field in my future. I also added a sort of pun on my homepage, which I think is fun and light.
By the end I was fairly happy with my sites design and functionality, but that isn’t to say that my work on this project didn’t inspire an interest in acquiring further experience and additional skills. I have always wanted to learn more about photo shop so I am very excited to delve into that in future classes. On top of learning how to crop photos in photoshop which I think could be useful in a variety of personal and potentially professional aspects of everyday life, I also have a fascination with advertising and marketing. I love the idea of reading people and constructing effective ways to communicate and appeal to them, I think that the topics we will discuss about pitching ideas and reading your audience will be really applicable to that field.
On top of those specific areas of interest I would generally like to advance in my ability to use .css effectively and efficiently. I found that while I could eventually figure out how to make links functional and how to place text boxes on the page I did feel like it took me a longer time than it should have and I feel as though my code is probably more round about than necessary. I tried to comb through my codes and eliminate excess command lines but I do still think that I took unnecessary steps. Throughout the process of designing the site and editing it there was more guess work and trial and error than I would have liked so honing CSS as well as the review and editing process is something I look forward to.