Final Learning Blog

I have definitely learned a lot in this class, not only about website design itself but about other internet topics & issues. Something that has resonated with me is what I learned about browsers. As strange as it may sound, whenever I have a problem online the first thing I think about is if it has something to do with the browser I'm using (I used to assume it was the individual website I was using, or my computer having issues). For example, when I use some Ebsco databases in Google Chrome, I can't view full-text PDFs. It gives me an error message. But, if I try the same thing with Internet Explorer, the PDFs work just fine. I might just not have the right applications and such downloaded for Chrome, but first trying with another browser saved me a lot of time and frustration!

At the beginning of this class I thought I was a step ahead just because I knew a little HTML already. Well, after learning XHTML and CSS I now know I wasn't really that far ahead of anyone else in the class! Sure, I recognized the very basic elements and how to use them but everything changed about halfway through the semester and I had to "forget" what I originally knew and start fresh without any of that previously-learned HTML causing me to make assumptions.
At first this was kind of frustrating, but once I went along with it, I started to understand WHY CSS is used and how nice it actually is (while at the same time being so fussy and detail-oriented!)

Even though it was a lot of work and my site ended up being probably more "simple" than websites of the other groups, I am glad I chose to do this project by myself. At the mid-point of the semester when I decided to change the entire look of the site, I was glad I didn't have to get approval from anyone else. Not to mention, I operate on a slightly "non-traditional" schedule (late nights and late mornings) so getting together with group members all semester might have been challenging--and frustrating for the others in the group.

In the end, I'm basically happy with my website. If I were doing this "for real" it would be a site that is constantly updated and revised...Some things I might have included if time & technology allowed would have been podcast and/or video lessons. I've seen some video presentations given at online writing conferences that were great. Not to mention, hearing the instruction might resonate more with young adults than having to read it all.

A few other things from the class that have stuck with me are: the info on cloud computing (I'm glad I understand it now that there are commercials on TV about going "to the cloud"!), and the copyright law info. This is something that will always come to mind when I'm viewing or downloading content online.

I have a huge amount of respect and admiration for professional web designers now that I know how much time, effort, and frustration go into creating websites! You certainly can't learn everything about web design in one semester! (although we got a very good introduction. I can actually hold a conversation about web design with some professional designers now!)

Learning Blog 12

Big thing I learned this week: linking a CSS style sheet (rather than writing CSS on each individual page) makes everything SO much easier!
I spent last week updating all my pages to the new style and having the separate CSS file really helped.

This week I'm working on adding images & boxes with writing quotes. Also embedded a YouTube video on one of my pages (cut & pasted code supplied by YouTube). Some things I wanted to do probably aren't going to be possible because they require JavaScript code. Even when a website provides the code, I don't understand it enough to get it to work. (one thing I'd been thinking of was having hover or mouse-over pop up text boxes for vocabulary words. Code for this is very long and confusing!)
Another thing is being able to click on an image to enlarge it without leaving the page it's on. I've seen this online, also, but again, don't understand the JavaScript.

So, with those "interactive" things not being really possible to include in my site, I'm not sure what else to do to make the site interesting...I guess that's my major challenge this week.

One thing that worked out was adding the "submission form" on my Contact page. I took the code directly from the textbook. It won't work, though, because that code requires a link to a .php file (which I don't think I can create...) That might affect the validation of that page.

I do have one question about the submission form: In my "textarea" box, the title of that box ended up beside the bottom border instead of the top, so it looks a little weird.