Final Blog

WOW...this has been a challenging course for me but, one that has been worth the effort. I have learned so much about usability, design layout, XHTML, CSS, validation clean up, and much more. I have decided that this will be my area of focus and I am looking forward to taking many more classes learning web design. Next semester I am taking a Web Languages 1 class next semester to help me further progress and learn more about coding. Many thanks to Mr. Stein and the class for your many comments and help. Sometimes it is hard to hear that your design needs help but, I would rather know what to work on than not. I'm grateful for the final project and the final push we have been given for this class.

CSS Design for print

http://www.alistapart.com/stories/goingtoprint/

This article mostly touches on what CSS would be good for print and which browsers. For example, it talks about making our sites "printer friendly". We can do this with our margins, fonts, padding, background colors, foreground colors, floats, and making sure our links still look like links when printed.
Some browsers only see what is on the screen and not below it when printing. So what would happen is it would only print what shows on the screen. Because some browsers don't like floats in websites it talked about doing a float: none in the CSS page to make it easier to read and print. This would allow the entire page or document to print. Also printers deal better with margins and not padding because, it doesn't know how to read them. For now it is better to use margins whenever possible instead of padding.
It also said that printers don't print white, so you would want to set the background color to white and for print you would want to remove any background images. You can also set the foreground color to match the background color if you wish but, it isn't necessary.
To make the links on the site show up for print the article talked about underlining and making the links a darker color. This would ensure that someone would know that they were links.
This article is very well written and easy to understand. A lot of times this semester I have been thinking what would look good for my site, is it user friendly, is it pleasing to the eye, but, I never once thought about printing. As web designers it is important for us to look at ALL aspects of a site. It is a valid point for our users to be able to print out our entire site if they choose. This is another great example of thinking outside the box and what would be good for those we are creating the websites for.

My recent learnings

My recent learnings have been focused mainly on learning more about CSS. I have felt that making it pleasing is a lot harder than it looks like it would be. I have an image of how I would like my site to look like but, getting it there using CSS has been a challenge. Nothing in this class has come easy for me and I have had to work really hard on every project. It would be so helpful to get feedback to know if my work is paying off or tips to make it better would also be appreciated. Lately I have been learning about bottons and different ways to make the navigation bar look good. I know it is something that I need help on because a few in class have said my site looks good except the navigation bar. This class has been humbling to say the least but, I am trying very hard to put in the work needed. We have also recently been doing an assignment about bottons, links, hovering bottons to highlight. I have been using our text to help me and also www.w3schools.com to provide me with examples to work from.
I know that once I get the hang of CSS more that I will not get so frustrated with every assignment. I know that I will enjoy it because that is what I am specializing in, is web design. I really have the desire to learn this and I just need to be a little more patient with myself to finish learning it. I don't want to quit because, I know this is really important for me to learn. Thanks for reading my ramblings.

My new skills

To be honest when we had to do lesson 4 of recreating a web site using XHTML and CSS code, I panicked. I felt thrown into the deep end of a pool and drowning. But, it turns out that was the best way to get a refresher quickest. It forced me to revisit what I had learned in Web Essentials class that I took last semester.
After lesson 4, we now have gone back and are diving more in detail to our XHTML and CSS. I am learning that there was quite a few mistakes that I made on my lesson 4 which is good, because now I can learn from them and not do it anymore. I didn't realize that I was using break, bolds, and span tags to much. I need to learn how to do it differently in CSS. But I want it to still give me the same results.
I appreciated the feedback for lesson 4. Otherwise, I would not have known that I was using my code wrong. I would also like to have feedback on my other assignments. I would like to honestly known when I am doing a good job or if my work needs more changes made. This has been my favorite class so far and I feel like I am learning so much. This is the field of my choosing for a career and I just want to learn as much as possible. Thank you for any help or advice I can get.

Thinking Outside the Grid

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/outsidethegrid

This article is called Thinking Outside the Grid and the author did a very good job writing and using her personal experiences to make it interesting.  Molly, the author, talks about how we need to get outside of our normal thinking, that a web page has to be a table or a grid.  The wonderful thing about CSS is it gives us volumes of room to make our pages interesting and fun.  She said that there is a new employee at her work who thinks the rest of them are weird for not using CSS more to control the look.  They do what they are used to doing and using. She hopes that in todays world and those of us just graduating can change and revolutionize the web.

She stated that there are advantages to using a table based grid but, a strength can also become a weakness.  I think that she means that because we are changing so fast in the web world that we need to change and evolve with it.  We have to keep are strengths a strength and not let it be a weakness.

Molly has a point, we can use the table grid and change it up a bit, or we can use a non-conventional way of designing.  We want them to have great usability, style, theory and funtion well to get many more people to visit our site.  But, there is not just one way to create a site now.  We just have to be willing to keep learning the new ways and don't get stuck in a rut.

New Learning

I started this semester with the intent to grasp all that I can from web design. This is my area of focus that I want the most. I want to be like a sponge and gather all the fundamentals and tricks that I can to be good at XHTML and CSS. This last assignment, which I am still tweeking, has thrown me into the deep end and is teaching me to swim. The big commission assignment in lesson 4 has helped me remember the fundamentals of XHTML. I feel like I understood XHTML from our Web Essentials class pretty good but, I never quite grasped CSS. I have enjoyed the big commission assignment and have learned much more about XHTML. But I am just begining to grasp CSS and have come a long way.
In my CSS page I have been able to create fonts, colors, margins, paddings, styles, sizes, floating, positions, div tags, external style sheets, internal style sheets, embedded style sheets and much much more. I understand the reasons behind needing CSS now. I want to learn more about it and feel like I can. I have been able to receive some help from fellow classmates who are in the class or have taken the class in previous semesters.
I am really enjoying and desire to perfect my own website in this class. I have appreciated the steps that we have taken to make my site more usable. I want to bring colors to the surface with the images and layout that I choose. This website is very important to me. I really want to prove to myself that I can do this. That this is the field that I want to be in. I want to be more than just mediocre in this class. I feel like that is what my creativity has been in the other areas in this department but, not this one. Not the one that I want as a career. I want to make this a site that people will want to come back to. One that they will tell others about! I do need lots more help in learning more about CSS and XHTML. This is what I am hoping to pull from this class. If I do nothing else in my other classes....I want to understand and apply this knowledge in to my future websites,web page designs and career.

CSS - Quiz 2: Name The CSS Properties

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Created by OnePlusYou

I took the "Name the CSS Properties" Quiz and named 118 CSS Elements in 7 minutes!